Emotion Regulation skills are developed during childhood through children’s interactions with their parent’s and other close relatives. The first year of emotional development is dependant on a child’s emotional communication with their parents-- this happens through the recognition of “attunement” and the development of secure attachments to the primary caregiver. Attunement is the process of aligning one’s “state of mind” with another, as well as the ability to read emotional signals (Schore & Schore, pg. 10). Eye contact and facial expressions are a necessity for infantile emotional development, because they allow the child to begin to understand the feelings of others through nonverbal communication so that he or she can communicate emotionally
