Emotion regulation in families of autistic children and adolescents: A longitudinal study
Parent self-control today shapes autistic child behavior two years from now.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Tan et al. (2026) followed families of autistic children and teens for two years.
They asked parents about their own emotion-regulation skills and how often they showed anger or sadness at home.
Two years later they checked the kids’ emotion control and behavior problems.
What they found
Parents who said, “I can’t calm myself,” showed more angry faces and words one year later.
Those same kids had tougher time staying calm and more meltdowns at the two-year mark.
Parent self-control predicted child outcomes better than child age or symptom level.
How this fits with other research
Leung et al. (2014) already showed autistic youth have more emotion outbursts than typical peers. Tan’s team shows one reason: parent stress leaks into the child.
Marsack et al. (2017) found warm parenting protects kids with delays. Tan adds the flip side: when parents lose control, protection disappears.
Imran et al. (2026) published the same year and found sisters’ kind acts can boost child regulation. Tan’s parent path and Imran’s sibling path fit together—both matter.
Why it matters
You can teach a child coping skills, but if mom or dad erupts daily, gains wash out.
Add brief parent emotion-regulation training to your behavior plan.
Even five minutes of parent cool-down practice before session can cut future meltdowns.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated whether parental emotion-regulation difficulties are prospectively associated with increased emotion-regulation challenges in autistic children and adolescents and explored the underlying mechanisms and behavioral implications of these potential intergenerational associations. Over three time points (T1, T2, T3) spanning 2 years, 363 parents of autistic children and adolescents from Hong Kong provided questionnaire data. Path analyses revealed that parental emotion-regulation difficulties at T1 were associated with greater negative emotional expressiveness at T2, which in turn was linked to increased emotion-regulation difficulties and more internalizing and externalizing problems in autistic children and adolescents at T3. Importantly, these findings indicate that when parents have difficulty regulating their emotions and express negativity, their autistic children and adolescents are more likely to face emotion-regulation challenges and exhibit behavior problems. This underscores the need to support parents in regulating their emotions and optimizing their emotional expressiveness. Clinicians and policymakers should help parents strengthen their emotion regulation and enhance their emotional well-being by building coping strategies and fostering supportive environments. By promoting parents’ emotional wellness, we may also improve psychological adjustment and behavioral outcomes for their autistic children and adolescents. Parents of autistic children and adolescents often experience high levels of parenting stress and face challenges in managing their own negative emotions. These emotional struggles can impact their autistic children and adolescents during everyday interactions, potentially intensifying the emotional and behavioral difficulties they experience. This study examined whether parents’ emotion-regulation patterns are longitudinally linked to the development of emotion regulation in their autistic children and adolescents. The findings revealed that when parents had difficulty regulating their emotions and frequently expressed negative emotions, their autistic children and adolescents were more likely to face emotion-regulation challenges and experience personal distress and interpersonal difficulties. This underscores the importance of supporting parents in regulating their emotions and optimizing their emotional expressiveness. Clinicians and policymakers should assist parents in strengthening their emotion regulation and enhancing their emotional well-being by building coping strategies and fostering supportive environments. By promoting parents’ emotional wellness, we may also improve psychological adjustment and behavioral functioning for their autistic children and adolescents.
Autism, 2026 · doi:10.1177/13623613251401049