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Maternal Reminiscing Style and Children’s Developing Understanding of Self and Emotion | Clinical Social Work Journal | Springer Nature Link

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Individual differences in how mothers structure reminiscing about shared past experiences with their preschool children are related to children’s developing autobiographical memory skills and understanding of self and emotion. More specifically, mothers who engage in highly elaborative reminiscing have children who come to tell more coherent and emotionally expressive autobiographical narratives, and these children also show better understanding of self and are better able to regulate emotion than children of less elaborative mothers. This body of research is reviewed and relations between maternal reminiscing style and children’s developing self and emotional understanding are explicated.

Remembering is a social activity. Whether recounting the details of our day over the dinner table, laughing over told and retold stories with friends and family, or meeting new acquaintances, we all talk about the experiences of our lives, and these stories of our past define who we are (Fivush, 1988; McAdams, 2001). Most intriguing, it is through sharing these stories with others that these memories take on personal meaning for the self. Through shared reminiscing, we re-interpret and re-evaluate our past experiences in ways that create new meaning. Thus autobiographical reminiscing is a…

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