The Effects of Child-Parent Interaction-Based Play on Anger, Anxiety, and Cognitive Emotion Regulation in Aggressive Students

Aggression is a major problem in the education of children and it has become very difficult to control. Additionally, aggressive students present high anxiety levels. Anxiety in these students creates unhappiness and could cause concerns. Furthermore, the lack of emotional adjustment threatens aggressive students’ self-esteem. Cognitive emotion regulation could affect emotional-driven processes, cognitive processing procedures, as well as emotional and cognitive development. Playing is essential in therapy. The emotional relationship between parent and child is critical in the play process. Besides, with play, parents could even provide therapeutic advantages for their children. The present research aimed to explore the effects of the application of play based on child-parent interaction on anger and anxiety in aggressive students.

This was a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest and a control group design. The study sample consisted of 32 aggressive students (n=16 per experimental & control groups). They aged from 9 to 13 years and were students of third to seventh grade in the elementary schools of Tehran City, Iran, in the academic year of 2018-2019. The study participants were requested to complete the Childrenchr('39')s Inventory of Anger (ChIA) (Nelson & Finch, 2000), the Spence Childrenchr('39')s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) (1998), and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ; Garnefski et al., 2001). Parent-Child interaction-based game ssessions were provided based on the Ccorresponding Practical Guide (Bratton & Landreth, 2005). In total, 12 sessions of 90 minutes were held for the experimental group. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The significance level was set at 0.05.

The present research results suggested that employing parent-child interaction-based play reduced anger (p<0.001), anxiety (p<0.001), negative cognitive emotion regulation (p<0.001), and increased positive cognitive emotion regulation (p<0.001) in the investigated aggressive students in the experimental group, compared to the controls.

Parent-child interaction-based play approach is an effective method to increase positive cognitive emotion regulation and to decrease negative cognitive emotion regulation among aggressive students. Therefore, it is suggested that the parents of aggressive students and counseling centers pay particular attention to the effectiveness of the cognitive-behavioral play approach.