Introduction

Within a few years, children show incredible growth in their emotional development. They learn to deal with different emotional situations between their fifth and twelfth year of life. In the past, most research has viewed this emotional growth as single or intrapsychic processes. Few studies have taken a transactional or interpersonal perspective when it comes to emotional developments while all people are born as social beings who cannot survive or develop without significant relationships with other people. There are several theories that emphasize the importance of an interpersonal perspective on emotions. However, most of these theories focus on one or a few components of emotions, namely the development of cognition, subjective experiences or the expression of emotions. It is important to view these separately because these components each follow a different and independent development path.

Current research looks at theoretical formulations and empirical findings with regard to emotional development in the three interpersonal relationships that are most important to primary school children. These are their relationship with their parents, their peers and their friends. The purpose of this review is to show the challenges that children face within emotional development in relation to these individuals. Challenges are tasks that confront children in their emotional life in a certain relationship at a certain moment of their development. These emotional challenges can cause problems and difficulties, but can lead to development and adaptation in the long term.

Emotional development: parents and children

Previous theories emphasize the importance of fathers and mothers on the emotional development of their children through the reciprocal investment that takes place over a longer period of time. This relationship is asymmetrical because for a long time the parent has more to say in the interaction than the child. Two important aspects of the relationship between children and their parents are the support that children receive and the learning that occurs.

For a long time, parents are the primary caregivers to children when they experience pain, anxiety or stress. They help children with their emotion regulation. Until adolescence, and sometimes longer, parents play a major role in the psychological functioning of their children at difficult moments. Parents teach their children basic lessons on how to regulate emotions. This is influenced by, for example, the responsiveness of parents and the form of attachment of the children to the parents. Parents are also the emotional coaches of children. By talking about feelings, they learn their child how to regulate these emotions. They also transfer culturally prescribed and valued rules with regard to experience and showing emotions (display rules). A limitation on the help that parents can offer is that they are further developed cognitively and emotionally than their children. For example, if their children are afraid of a ghost, this will not scare the parent. In addition, they will sometimes limit children in their emotions, for example if their emotions are culturally inappropriate at a certain moment. The extent to which parents influence their children and the emotion regulation and the way in which, differs per parent and depends on individual differences between parents. Individual parents differ in their willingness and capacity to respond empathically to their children if they show signs of stress.

Emotional development: peers

The relationship between children and their parents is symmetrical because both partners have about the same amount of social power. Relationships with peers, such as classmates, are often involuntary and many are not close, meaning that they do not share intimate thoughts or activities with each other. Yet peers seem to have an important influence on the emotional development of children. First of all, peers seem to be in a better position to understand each other's emotional lives than parents or children of other ages by the same age. Secondly, peers form a group. Being together with a group can reinforce some children's emotions, such as laughter at school and joint activities and or fears. As a group, children and adolescents create a culture with their own norms and values.

In groups of peers, the norm now seems to be to reduce the expression of emotions in many situations. Empirical research shows that children indicate that they only report anxiety and pain to their peers if it occurred to an extreme extent or if it was visible from the outside, such as a wound or bleeding. Primary school children expect more negative reactions if they show fear or sadness in their peers than in their parents. These rules appear to occur not only in fear and sadness but also in anger. This standard appears to be particularly strict with boys.

There are two possible ways in which peers can ensure that a culture is created and preserved in which the expression of emotions is muted. One method is teasing and bullying, a method that occurs in children who go to school. The other mechanism is more indirect: through gossip. Peers tend to reject children who do not fit their rules about showing emotions.

Emotional development: friendship

Friendship is often only distinguished from relationships with 'normal peers' in the pre-adolescence phase, because friendship then reaches a new level of intimacy. A difference between friends and peers is that friends choose each other. Friendships are therefore voluntary relationships that are generally based on mutual sympathy. Friends who are close can help each other to see which feelings are 'appropriate' and which are not. They also learn what expectations go with a friendship, such as 'being there for your friend when he or she needs you'. In addition, close friends also learn how to deal with disagreements. Also, children learn to deal with feelings of competition in friendship. Friendships are vulnerable because we voluntarily choose our friends. Anger, jealousy and other negative emotions can cause a friendship to change or end.

Conclusion

Many of the studies have been conducted in Western industrialized countries. This limits the generalizability of the results. A further limitation is that many studies have used self-reporting. These self-reports are not objective and the reports may be biased because, for example, social desirability. In the last ten years there has been a large number of studies on emotional development. It is now time to delve deeper into these studies and the material studied. It is time to make a distinction between the various components of emotions and to look into the development of attention and physiological components of emotions in future research.