Multiple Informant Cluster Analysis Findings: Which Military-Connected Preschool Aged Children Are Doing Well and Why?

Informed by models of resilience in military families, we explored factors theorized to be associated with social-emotional resilience and risk among young military-connected children. Our secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from 199 military-connected families (n = 346 parents) with at least one preschool-age child in the home (n = 199) led to the empirical identification of two distinct clusters: families with children demonstrating healthy social-emotional functioning and those showing indicators of poor social-emotional functioning. We then identified factors associated with membership in each cluster to determine which deployment and parental wellbeing variables were salient for young child adjustment.

Conceptualizing Emotion Regulation and Coregulation as Family-Level Phenomena.

The ability to regulate one's emotions is foundational for healthy development and functioning in a multitude of domains, whereas difficulties in emotional regulation are recognized as a risk factor for a range of adverse outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Caregivers play a key role in cultivating the development of emotion regulation through coregulation, or the processes by which they provide external support or scaffolding as children navigate their emotional experiences. The vast majority of research to date has examined coregulation in the context of caregiver-child dyads.

Emerging biomarkers for child & family intervention studies: A review of EEG studies of parenting.

Most interventions for childhood mental health problems require significant parental involvement, and treatment programs are increasingly incorporating components aimed at enhancing parents' own self-regulation in the context of potentially stressful parent-child interactions. This paper discusses the promise of EEG in examining the rapidly unfolding perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and regulatory processes that occur in parenting, in hopes of ultimately informing child and family interventions. First, we review two separate bodies of work that have used EEG with parents: one examining event-related potential (ERP) measures, and the other examining frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA).

Rating Scales for Behavioral Health Screening System Within Pediatric Primary Care.

Barriers to conducting standardized behavioral health screening within pediatric primary care settings include engaging youth and families, limited time available for this activity, and difficulties related to obtaining behavioral health consultation and treatment from specialists. Child and adolescent psychiatrists may assist pediatric primary care practices with engaging youth and families around screening by assisting with identifying rating scales that have good psychometric characteristics across multiple languages and are validated in diverse samples and available within the public domain. Additionally, they may partner with pediatric primary care professionals to assist with optimizing screening workflows and linkage to specialized services.

A Trauma-Informed, Family-Centered, Virtual Home Visiting Program for Young Children: One-Year Outcomes.

Military-connected families face many challenges associated with military life transitions, including deployment separations. We report on a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of Families OverComing Under Stress-Early Childhood (FOCUS-EC) delivered through an in-home, virtual telehealth platform. FOCUS-EC is a trauma-informed, family-centered preventive intervention designed to promote family resilience and well-being.

Using web-based technology to improve depression screening in primary care settings.

Background: Given the high rates at which patients present with behavioural health (BH) concerns in primary care (PC), this setting has become the de facto mental health system. As a result, screening for depression and other BH conditions in PC has become a critical target for improving patient outcomes. However, integration of screening into busy PC workflows can be challenging due to barriers such as limited time and resources.

Psychopathology Symptoms are Associated with Prenatal Health Practices in Pregnant Women with Heavy Smoking Levels.

Purpose: Smoking during pregnancy may be linked to other problematic prenatal health behaviors in women. We examined interrelationships among prenatal smoking, prenatal health behaviors and mental health. The objective of this study was to examine factors that may contribute to variations in prenatal health practices among women who smoke during pregnancy.

Parental Wartime Deployment and Socioemotional Adjustment in Early Childhood: The Critical Role of Military Parents' Perceived Threat During Deployment.

Infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children have unique developmental needs that render them vulnerable to challenges associated with parental military service. We used a sample of military-connected families with 3-6-year-old children (N = 104) to examine associations among children's socioemotional development and fathers' trauma-related deployment experiences, including perceived threat during deployment and exposure to combat and the aftermath of battle. Of these potential stressors, only paternal perceived threat during deployment was significantly associated with measures of mother-reported child adjustment.

Parental emotion and emotion regulation: A critical target of study for research and intervention to promote child emotion socialization.

Parents' behaviors-particularly their emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs)-drive children's emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). We propose that a major next step in the effort to promote healthy emotional development is to improve the field's understanding of the most proximal contributor to parent ESBs: parents' own experience and regulation of emotions in the context of caregiving. As an initial step, this paper integrates Eisenberg and colleagues' model of emotion socialization with theoretical and empirical work on parental emotion.

Maternal emotion, motivation, and regulation during real-world parenting challenges.

Parenting is emotionally evocative, and parental emotions have implications for parenting behavior. We used experience sampling methodology to capture mothers' experiences and emotions in the context of real-world, day-to-day parenting challenges. Mothers (N = 55) of 14- to 24-month-olds participated in 4 phone interviews per day for 6 days in which they reported on their momentary emotions, motivational states (i.

Angry responses to infant challenges: parent, marital, and child genetic factors associated with harsh parenting.

This study examined genetic and environmental influences on harsh parenting of adopted 9-month-olds (N = 503), with an emphasis on positive child-, parent-, and family-level characteristics. Evocative gene-environment correlation (rGE) was examined by testing the effect of both positive and negative indices of birth parent temperament on adoptive parents' harsh parenting. Adoptive fathers' harsh parenting was inversely related to birth mother positive temperament, indicating evocative rGE, as well as to marital quality.

Measurement and associations of pregnancy risk factors with genetic influences, postnatal environmental influences, and toddler behavior.

This study demonstrates the unique contributions of perinatal risk and genetic and environmental influences on child behavior using data from 561 domestic US adoption triads (birth mothers, adopted child, and adoptive parents). Findings show distinct patterns of associations among genetic (birth mother psychopathology), prenatal (six maternal reported aggregate scores characterizing total obstetric complications, perinatal internalizing symptoms, pregnancy complications, exposure to toxins, substance use, and neonatal complications), and postnatal influences (adoptive parent 18-month internalizing symptoms and over-reactive parenting) and toddler behavior problems (CBCL subscales at 27 months). Findings highlight multiple pathways for toddler's behavioral development, including genetic, pregnancy, and postnatal main effects.

Individual differences in cortisol responses to fear and frustration during middle childhood.

The purpose of this study was to examine individual differences in the activation and regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in prepubertal children after exposure to two different stress modalities and to evaluate the utility of an individual differences approach to the examination of HPA axis functioning. After a 30-min controlled baseline period, 73 7-year-olds (40 boys and 33 girls) were randomly assigned to a validity check condition or one of two experimental tasks designed to elicit fear or frustration. This was followed by a 60-min controlled regulation phase.

Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis functioning in reactive and proactive aggression in children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) reactivity and proactive and reactive aggression in pre-pubertal children. After a 30-min controlled base line period, 73 7-year-old children (40 males and 33 females) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental tasks designed to elicit fear (N = 33) or frustration (N = 32), or a validity check condition (N = 8). This was followed by a 60-min controlled regulation phase.