Discrepancies between Turkish mothers' and adolescents' reports of adolescents' emotion regulation difficulties.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the present study was to examine discrepancies between Turkish mothers' and adolescents' reports in terms of adolescents' difficulties in emotion regulation. In addition, the mediating role of mothers' own emotion regulation difficulties between mothers' psychological symptoms and the discrepancy on reports of adolescents' difficulties in emotion regulation was examined.

METHOD

A total of 595 first-year high school students (300 females and 295 males) whose ages ranged between 14 and 17 years participated in the study. In addition, 365 mothers (61.34%) completed the questionnaires. Mean age of mothers was 41.86 years (standard deviation = 5.02) ranging from 32 to 61 years.

RESULTS

The results revealed that adolescents tended to report higher levels of difficulties in emotion regulation for themselves as compared with mothers' report, and girls reported more difficulties for their emotion regulation than boys. It was also found that mothers' own emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relation between mothers' psychological symptoms and discrepancy on reports of adolescents' emotion regulation difficulties.

CONCLUSIONS

Mothers may be less likely to endorse their children's emotion regulation difficulties since they cannot observe various aspects of their children's emotion regulation. On the other hand, the mothers' perception of their children's emotion regulation could be affected from their own emotion regulation difficulties, which could be a result of their psychological problems.