Five to seven year old children's strategies for regulating anger, sadness, and fear

83 children from kindergarten and primary school were asked to tell what they would do to stop being angry, sad, or frightened. Their proposals were conceived as emotion regulation strategies, and the great majority both of five and seven year old children's responses (80.5% and 88.1 %, respectively) could be classified into one of four categories. The most frequent regulation strategy category was social interaction (e.g. "being with someone"), which comprised about 40% of responses in both age groups. Strategy frequencies did not sustain an expectation based on differential emotions theory that results should show variation with emotion type.