Despite its centrality within the Convention on the Rights of the Child, teachers' behaviors promoting progressive autonomy, the psychological processes involved in their implementation and their consequences for teachers' well-being has been neglected. Two studies assess early childhood teachers' promoting progressive autonomy behaviors and their relationship with their strategies to regulate children's emotions and their own job well-being. Overall, results support the presence of a virtuous circle where teachers use of strategies improving children's emotions is associated to higher levels of progressive autonomy promotion and job well-being which in turn has been related to willingness to use affect improvement strategies.