Enhancing Preschoolers’ Emotion Regulation Skills through Shared Book Reading and Journaling

Emotion regulation plays a critical role in young children’s social and emotional development, influencing their ability to form relationships, cope with stress, and adapt to their environment. This study aims to examine the effects of interactive book reading, journaling, and the simultaneous implementation of these two interventions—complementary to the preschool education program—on children’s emotion regulation skills. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was employed. The study sample consisted of 67 children, their mothers, and four preschool teachers, who were divided into three experimental groups and one control group. The findings indicate that interactive book reading and journaling activities have positive effects on children’s emotion regulation skills. In particular, the simultaneous implementation of these two interventions was found to have a stronger impact on the development of emotion regulation skills. Moreover, the effects of the interventions were observed to be sustained, as a follow-up assessment conducted three weeks after the posttest revealed that improvements in emotion regulation skills persisted. These findings suggest that interaction-based language and emotion-focused approaches in early childhood can support the development of emotion regulation skills.