Parental Emotion Coaching and Child Emotion Regulation as Protective Factors for Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

We assessed linkages of mothers' emotion coaching and children's emotion regulation and emotion lability/negativity with children's adjustment in 72 mother–child dyads seeking treatment for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Dyads completed the questionnaires and discussed emotion‐related family events. Maternal emotion coaching was associated with children's emotion regulation, which in turn was related to higher mother‐reported adaptive skills, higher child‐reported internalizing symptoms, and lower child‐reported adjustment. When children were high in emotion lability/negativity, mothers' emotion coaching was associated with lower mother and child reports of externalizing behavior. Results suggest the role of emotion regulation and emotion lability in child awareness of socio‐emotional problems and support the potential of maternal emotion coaching as a protective factor for children with ODD, especially for those high in emotion lability.     

Assessing low‐income African‐American pre‐schoolers' behaviour problems in relationship to community violence,inter‐partner conflict,parenting, informal social support and social skills

This study examined the relations among community violence exposure, inter‐partner conflict and informal social support and the behaviour problems of pre‐schoolers, and explored how mothers' parenting skills and children's social skills may mediate the child outcomes associated with such exposure. Participants were 185 African‐American mothers and female caregivers of Head Start children who completed study measures in a structured interview. Path analyses revealed that greater inter‐partner conflict was associated with more internalizing and externalizing child behaviour problems. Positive parenting was associated with fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Higher levels of child social skills were associated with fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems. Child social skills fully mediated the relationship between community violence and externalizing behaviours as well as between informal support and externalizing behaviours. Social skills partially mediated the relationships between positive parenting and externalizing behaviours. No mediating effect was found on the relationships between inter‐partner conflict and child behaviour problems. Implications of the findings for intervention and future research are discussed.     

Marital Conflict, Children's Representations of Family Relationships, and Children's Dispositions Towards Peer Conflict Strategies

The links among marital relations and children's representations were examined. Forty‐seven children between the ages of 5 and 8 completed the Family Stories Task (FAST) to obtain their narrative representations of family relations and performed a variation of a puppet procedure ( Mize & Ladd, 1988 ) to assess children's dispositions towards peer conflict strategies. Their parents completed a set of questionnaires regarding marital quality. Results demonstrated relations between marital conflict and children's dispositions towards peer conflict strategies in conflict situations. Children's more negative dispositions towards peer conflict and aggressive behavior in the peer conflict scenarios were each associated with more overt conflict behaviors by mothers and fathers, respectively, and more covert conflict behavior by mothers. In addition, children's internal representations of parent–child relations served as a mediator between marital conflict and children's notions about conflict behavior towards peers.     

Marital Conflict and Children's Adjustment: Parental Hostility and Children's Interpretations as Mediators

The associations between marital conflict, maternal and paternal hostility, children's interpretations of marital conflict, and children's adjustment were examined in a sample of 136 school‐aged children and their parents. Observational measures were collected from videotapes of marital interaction and family interaction. Self‐report data were collected from parents and children. Results showed that mothers’ and fathers’ hostility mediated the association between martial conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Children's feelings of being to blame for marital conflict and being threatened by it mediated between marital conflict and children's internalizing problems but not their externalizing problems.     

Interaction between adoptive mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms in risk for children’s emerging problem behavior

The effect of parental depression on children's adjustment has been well documented, with exposure during early childhood particularly detrimental. Most studies that examine links between parental depression and child behavior are confounded methodologically because they focus on parents raising children who are genetically related to them. Another limitation of most prior research is a tendency to focus only on the effects of maternal depression while ignoring the influence of fathers’ depression. The purpose of this study was to examine whether infants’ exposure to both parents’ depressive symptoms, and inherited risk from birth mother internalizing symptoms, was related to school age children's externalizing and internalizing problems. Study data come from a longitudinal adoption study of 561 adoptive parents, biological mothers, and adopted children. Adoptive fathers’ depressive symptoms during infancy contributed independent variance to the prediction of children's internalizing symptoms and also moderated associations between adoptive mothers’ depressive symptoms and child externalizing symptoms.     

Parental emotion regulation strategies and parenting quality predict child internalizing symptoms in families experiencing homelessness

Adaptive emotion regulation (ER) in parents has been linked to better parenting quality and social–emotional adjustment in children from middle‐income families. In particular, early childhood may represent a sensitive period in which parenting behaviors and functioning have large effects on child social–emotional adjustment. However, little is known about how parent ER and parenting are related to child adjustment in high‐risk families. In the context of adversity, parents may struggle to maintain positive parenting behaviors and adaptive self‐regulation strategies which could jeopardize their children's adjustment. The current study investigated parents' own cognitive ER strategies and observed parenting quality in relation to young children's internalizing and externalizing problems among families experiencing homelessness. Participants included 108 primary caregivers and their 4–6‐year‐old children residing in emergency shelters. Using multiple methods, parenting and parent ER were assessed during a shelter stay and teachers subsequently provided ratings of children's internalizing and externalizing difficulties in the classroom. Parenting quality was expected to predict fewer classroom internalizing and externalizing behaviors as well as moderate the association between parent ER strategies and child outcomes. Results suggest that parenting quality buffered the effects of parent maladaptive ER strategies on child internalizing symptoms. The mediating role of parenting quality on that association was also investigated to build on prior empirical work in low‐risk samples. Parenting quality did not show expected mediating effects. Findings suggest that parents experiencing homelessness who use fewer maladaptive cognitive ER strategies and more positive parenting behaviors may protect their children against internalizing problems.     

Parental Depressive Symptoms, Children's Representations of Family Relationships, and Child Adjustment

This study extends the investigation of family process models of parental dysphoria and child adjustment, by examining depressive symptoms in both fathers and mothers, and by examining children's representations of family relationships as possible explanatory mechanisms. Participants were 232 children (Time 1 mean age: 5.99; 105 boys, 127 girls) and their cohabiting parents, who participated for three consecutive years. Children's internal representations of multiple family relationships were assessed by means of a story stem completion task. Structural equation modeling indicated that children's inter‐parental and attachment representations are part of the process whereby parental depressive symptoms influence child externalizing symptoms. Maternal depressive symptoms also predicted changes in children's representations of marital and attachment relationships over time. The implications for family process models of relations between parental depressive symptoms in community samples and child development are discussed.     

Caregiver Emotional Expressiveness,Child Emotion Regulation,and Child Behavior Problems among Head Start Families

The present study examined the relationships between caregivers' self‐reported positive and negative emotional expressiveness, observer assessments of children's emotion regulation, and teachers' reports of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 97 primarily African American and Hispanic Head Start families. Results indicated that higher caregiver negativity and lower child emotion regulation independently predicted more internalizing behavior problems in children. Additionally, children's externalizing behavior problems were negatively predicted by caregivers' self‐reports of positive emotional expressiveness. Importantly, results also suggested that caregivers' emotional expressiveness and children's behavioral problems may be non‐linearly related, and that child gender may play an important moderating role. These results emphasize the importance of family emotional climate and child emotion regulation in the behavioral development of preschool‐age children, and highlight the need for improved theoretical and practical understanding of socioemotional development in diverse populations.     

Emotional Climate in Families Experiencing Homelessness: Associations with Child Affect and Socioemotional Adjustment in School

This study examined associations among family‐level risks, emotional climate, and child adjustment in families experiencing homelessness. Emotional climate, an indirect aspect of emotion socialization, was indexed by parents’ expressed emotion while describing their children. Sociodemographic risk and parent internalizing distress were hypothesized to predict more negativity and less warmth in the emotional climate. Emotional climate was expected to predict observer‐rated child affect and teacher‐reported socioemotional adjustment, mediating effects of risk. Participants were 138 homeless parents (64 percent African‐American) and their four‐ to six‐year‐old children (43.5 percent male). During semi‐structured interviews, parents reported demographic risks and internalizing distress and completed a Five Minute Speech Sample about their child, later rated for warmth and negativity. Children's positive and negative affect were coded from videotapes of structured parent‐child interaction tasks. Socioemotional adjustment (externalizing behavior, peer acceptance, and prosocial behavior) was reported by teachers a few months later. Hypotheses were partially supported. Parent internalizing distress was associated with higher parent negativity, which was linked to more negative affect in children, and parent warmth was associated with children's positive affect. Neither emotional climate nor child affect predicted teacher‐reported externalizing behavior or peer acceptance, but parental negativity and male sex predicted lower prosocial behavior in the classroom. Future research directions and clinical implications are discussed.     

Sibling Relationships and Social-emotional Adjustment in Different Family Contexts

The aims of this study were to examine family type (nonstep, stepfather, stepmother, and single mother) and sibling type (full‐ and half‐siblings) differences in sibling relationship quality (positivity and negativity), and to investigate links between sibling relationship quality and child externalizing and internalizing problems. The sample included 192 families with a 5‐year‐old target child and an older sibling. In addition, 80 of these families included a third older child. Mothers and the older siblings (8 years and older) completed questionnaires and interviews regarding conflict and support in their sibling relationships, and parents and teachers reported on each child's social‐emotional adjustment. Sibling negativity (conflict, aggression) was highest in single‐mother families and full‐siblings were more negative than half‐ and stepsiblings. There was some evidence that sibling antagonism was associated with more child behavioral and emotional problems, but these effects were moderated by family type.     

Black‐White Biracial Children's Social Development from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade: Links with Racial Identification,Gender, and Socioeconomic Status

In this study, we investigated trajectories of Black‐White biracial children's social development during middle childhood, their associations with parents’ racial identification of children, and the moderating effects of child gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study utilized data from parent and teacher reports on 293 US Black‐White biracial children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS‐K). Growth curve models suggested increasing trajectories of teacher‐reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors between kindergarten and fifth grade. Parents’ racial identification of children predicted child externalizing behavior trajectories such that teachers rated biracially identified children's externalizing behaviors lower relative to those of Black‐ and White‐identified children. Additionally, for White‐identified biracial children, the effect of family SES on internalizing behavior trajectories was especially pronounced. These findings suggest that in the USA, how parents racially identify their Black‐White biracial children early on has important implications for children's problem behaviors throughout the elementary school years.     

Marital Conflict, Child Emotional Security about Family Relationships and Child Adjustment

Addressing a gap in process‐oriented understanding of relations between marital conflict and children's adjustment, propositions of the emotional security hypothesis from a family‐wide perspective were tested in a longitudinal research design. Participants were 181 families and their 11–12 year‐old‐child (115 boys, 76 girls) living in Wales, in the United Kingdom. Relations between marital conflict, children's emotional security about marital conflict and parenting, respectively, and children's adjustment were assessed based on reports by mothers, fathers, and children and videotaped analogue procedures completed by children. Structural equation modelling indicated that children's emotional security about interparental conflict (emotional regulation, cognitive representations and behavioural regulation) mediated the relation between marital conflict and children's security about parenting. Processes pertaining to children's security in multiple family systems (i.e., interparental and parent–child) provided an indirect mechanism through which interparental conflict affected children's symptoms of psychological distress (internalising and externalising problems) assessed 12 months later. Future directions for further tests of comprehensive, theoretically based models for the effects of marital conflict on children are discussed.     

Predicting social adjustment in middle childhood: the role of preschool attachment security and maternal style

Children's social and emotional adjustment at age 8 were examined in relation to attachment security, parenting style, setting conditions, and social and emotional adjustment at age 4. Seventy-nine children participated in videotaped interaction sessions with their mothers and with unfamiliar peers at the two ages. Data were derived from videotape coding, mother questionnaires, and child sociometric ratings. Results indicted that internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and social engagement were related at the two ages. After removing the variance due to the relationship between child behaviors at the two ages, a comparison of mother-child relationship predictors indicated that attachment security at age 4 was the strongest predictor of internalizing problems and social engagement/acceptance at age 8, while maternal style was the strongest predictor of externalizing difficulties. Results point to the importance of both aspects of the mother-child relationship, and indicate that the nature of family and peer links may vary depending upon the specific social domain assessed.     

Ethnic Differences in the Effects of Parental Depression on Preschool Children's Socioemotional Functioning

The present study describes the depressive symptomatology of 393 parents of prekindergarten children and assesses ethnic differences in the depression scores of these parents and their differential consequences for children's social competence. Data are drawn from the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) classroom study, a national, longitudinal study examining the quality and outcomes of prekindergarten programs operated in schools or under the direction of state and local educational agencies, and the supplemental NCEDL familial and social environments study. Analyses indicated that Latino parents were more likely than African‐American and White parents to be depressed. However, as reported by both parents and teachers, behavioral outcomes for African‐American children of parents with elevated depressive symptomatology were worse than children of their Latino and White counterparts. Interactions between ethnicity and depressive symptomatology emerged in the parent‐child relationship, with African‐American parents with elevated depressive symptoms reporting significantly greater levels of conflict in the parent–child relationship than their non‐depressed counterparts. African‐American parents with elevated depression scores were also less likely to be in marital relationships than their non‐depressed counterparts. Among African‐American families, parent–child conflict served as a mediator of the effects of parental depression on child outcomes. Implications for intervention are discussed.     

Parental Reactions to Toddlers' Negative Emotions and Child Negative Emotionality as Correlates of Problem Behavior at the Age of Three

Parent‐reported reactions to children's negative emotions and child negative emotionality were investigated as correlates of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Children (N = 107) and their parents participated in a short‐term longitudinal study of social development. Mothers and fathers independently completed questionnaires assessing parental reactions to their child's negative emotions and child negative emotionality at Time 1 (33 months) and child behavior problems at Time 2 (39 months). Child negative emotionality was significantly related to greater internalizing and externalizing behavior. Maternal and paternal punitive reactions were related to greater internalizing behavior, but only for boys with high levels of negative emotionality. Results indicate that child temperament and child gender may be important moderators of the relation between parental emotion socialization and child internalizing problems during the toddler and early preschool years.     

Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

Emotional and behavioral maturity expectations increase as children transition to primary school; thus, maternal responses that support and encourage children's expression of negative emotion may not benefit school‐age children as much as preschoolers. The current study explored a change in the utility of these maternal responses among 187 families (62 5‐year‐olds, 75 6‐year‐olds, and 50 7‐year‐olds). Mothers reported on their responses to children's negative emotions and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at two time points over 1 year. Multiple group analysis within cross‐lagged path models revealed a positive association between non‐supportive maternal responses and later child externalizing behaviors among 5‐year‐olds. However, non‐supportive responses were related to decreases in externalizing behaviors among the 7‐year‐olds. Discrepant findings between the 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds may represent a developmental shift in the function of mothers' emotion socialization practices.     

Mother–Adolescent Conflict: Stability,Change, and Relations with Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems

Stability and change in mother–adolescent conflict reactions (CRs) and the prediction of CRs from adolescents' earlier behavior problems (and vice versa) were examined with 131 mothers and their adolescents (63 boys). Dyads engaged in a 6‐min conflict discussion twice, 2 years apart [M age was 13 at Time 1 (T1)]. Non‐verbal expressive and verbal CRs during the conflict discussion were coded. Mothers, fathers, and teachers reported on adolescents' problem behaviors. There was inter‐individual (rank‐order) stability for adolescents' CRs whereas mothers' reactions were less stable. Mean levels of mothers' negativity, anger, and positive reactions and adolescents' negativity declined with time. Mothers’ CRs, more often than adolescents’ CRs, predicted and were predicted by adolescents’ problem behaviors in zero‐order correlations. In structural equation models with the stability of the constructs accounted for, adolescents' externalizing problems at T1 predicted higher maternal anger at Time 2 (T2). Mothers' anger and positive CRs at T1 predicted fewer T2 adolescents' internalizing problems. Stability and change in CRs are discussed.     

Trajectory of quality of mother-child interactions: Prospective links with child socioemotional functioning

Research shows that the quality of mother-child interactions is a robust antecedent of child socioemotional functioning. Yet, relatively little is known about the evolution of this relational quality over time, and even less about how changes in relational quality may bear on child adjustment. This study aimed to describe the trajectory of quality of mother-child interactions between ages 2 and 7 and to investigate associations between individual differences in this trajectory and child socioemotional functioning at age 8. In a sample of 233 mother-child dyads primarily comprised of White French-Canadian mothers, the quality of interactions was assessed during 10-min play sequences when children were aged 2, 4, and 7 years. Child internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors were reported by a subsample of 171 teachers at age 8. The results showed that on average, quality of mother-child interactions decreased over time. In terms of individual differences, children who experienced a slower decrease in the quality of interactions with their mother from 2 to 7 years showed less internalizing behavior at age 8, over and above initial quality at 2 years. Children involved in higher quality interactions with their mother at 2 years showed more prosocial and less externalizing behavior at age 8, independent of the subsequent decrease in the quality of those interactions. The findings suggest that initial levels and subsequent changes in the quality of mother-child interactions are two distinct indicators of their relationship with potentially different implications for child adjustment.     

The mediating role of coping self‐efficacy beliefs on the relationship between parental conflict and child psychological adjustment

The effect of parental conflict on children's psychological adjustment is variable. Coping self‐efficacy refers to a person's perceived ability to self‐motivate and access the required cognitive resources to take control of, or exert their coping efforts in a stressful situation. This study investigated the mediating role of children's coping self‐efficacy beliefs between parental conflict and children's psychological adjustment (internalizing, externalizing, anxiety, and prosocial behavior). The participants were 663 school students in grade 5 (M = 10.17 years, SD = .53) and grade 7 (M = 12.11 years, SD = .52). The ethnic composition of the sample was approximately 72% White, 20% Asian, 4% Middle Eastern, and 4% from other ethnic groups. Coping self‐efficacy for avoiding maladaptive cognitions mediated the effect of parental conflict on children's internalizing symptoms longitudinally. The higher the level of parental conflict, the lower the level of children's coping self‐efficacy for avoiding maladaptive cognitions and in turn the higher their levels of internalizing. These findings support the mediational role of children's coping self‐efficacy beliefs in the context of parental conflict. It is proposed that these beliefs should be considered in designing and implementing preventative interventions for children in the context of parental conflict.     

Anxiousness, Frustration, and Effortful Control as Moderators of the Relation between Parenting and Adjustment in Middle-childhood

Interactions among multiple dimensions of child temperament and parenting were tested as predictors of change in child adjustment problems using a community sample (N = 188) of children (8–12 years). Significant interactions suggested that the effect of parenting on changes in problems were dependent upon temperament and, in some cases, child sex. Effortful control mitigated the potential negative impact of inconsistent discipline and physical punishment on externalizing problems, whereas frustration exacerbated the effects of inconsistent discipline and rejection. Anxiousness moderated parenting only for boys, mitigating the impact of inconsistent discipline on internalizing and externalizing problems but exacerbating the effects of physical punishment on externalizing problems. Implications for identifying children at risk for developing adjustment problems and for parenting interventions are discussed.