Mother-Child Emotion Dialogues: A Window into the Psychological Secure Base

Mother-child conversations about the past, including dialogues about distressing events experienced by the child, play an important role in the development of children's autobiographical memory. This chapter describes studies of such dialogues and reviews findings that point to their importance. Findings from the longitudinal studies including both low-and high-risk samples highlight the importance of the dialogues that evolve between mothers and children when they discuss children's memories of emotional events. Within this context, mothers' sensitive guidance and structuring of the dialogues and children's openness and cooperation while jointly negotiating the narrative have emerged as particularly meaningful.