Miss, I got mad today!’ The Anger Diary, a tool to promote emotion regulation

Effective management of emotions has strong implications in the development of adaptive behaviours during childhood and adolescence. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of a new method of emotion regulation named the ‘aRRabbiadiaro’ (Anger Diary), with primary school children. The participants included 119 children attending 7 classes from three primary schools located in middle-class urban communities in the province of Pavia, Italy. In the first phase, the participants were asked to complete a narrative tool which investigated how they coped with anger in their everyday life and whether the use of narrative applied to episodes of anger and facilitated adaptive ways of coping with negative feelings. Subsequently, the study assessed the relationship between effective anger management and social functioning in the peer group. Our findings suggest that the use of diary writing seems to represent a promising instrument to promote the development of emotional and socio-cognitive skills in school children