Italian Children's Accounts of the Lockdown: Insights and Perspectives

COVID-19 lockdown-imposed restrictions emerged as a risk to children's well-being. However, the extant literature often ignored children's experiences, emotions, struggles, hopes, and expectations. Based on a large sample of Italian students (N = 906; mean age = 9.4 years, 48.8% female), we drew data from a post-lockdown school re-entry program where students completed narrative activities in 2020. These narratives underwent quantitative content analysis according to gender and school level. Overall, children reported mixed feelings about the lockdown; they felt safe at home but also experienced fear and missed their friends, school, and freedom. Screen-time, technology and friendships helped, but children struggled to make sense of the events. Our findings show how children attempted to make sense of the lockdown experience and may provide key information for the development of community coping programs to help children facing crises in the future.

Children's Emotions after Exposure to News: Investigating Chat Conversations with Peers as a Coping Strategy

Hardly any research has been conducted regarding coping strategies that children can use in response to negative news, although they are frequently exposed to and emotionally affected by such news. Chat conversations with peers about the news could be a coping strategy for children in this regard. To investigate this, children (N = 307; 46.3% girls; M_age = 10.51; SD_age = 0.98; range 8–13 years old) participated in a preregistered experiment in which their emotions were measured before and after exposure to a news video on a smartphone and also after a postexposure activity (i.e., chatting about the news as an experimental condition versus chatting about something else or solving a puzzle as control conditions). The results showed that the decrease in negative emotions and the increase in positive emotions were weaker for children who chatted about the news than for those in the control conditions. Thus, seeking social support in online chat conversations did not have the anticipated effect—and might even have an adverse effect.

Upper Extremity Function, Peer Relationships, and Pain Interference: Evaluating the Biopsychosocial Model in a Pediatric Hand Surgery Population Using PROMIS

PURPOSE

The relationship between biopsychosocial factors and patient-reported function is less clear in pediatric than in adult hand surgery patients. Our primary hypothesis was that pain interference (PI) and peer relationships (PR) would demonstrate association with upper extremity function. Secondarily, we hypothesized that the magnitude of this effect would increase with age.

METHODS

Patients aged 5 to 17 years presenting to a tertiary academic clinic between October 2017 and January 2019 were included. The parent/guardian was administered the following instruments after indicating they, rather than the patient, were answering the questions on a tablet computer: Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Upper Extremity (UE) Parent Proxy (PP) Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) v2.0, PROMIS PI PP CAT v2.0, and the PROMIS PR PP CAT v2.0. Ceiling/floor effects and Spearman correlations were calculated. Multivariable Tobit modeling was performed to determine whether biopsychosocial factors and upper extremity function were associated. Multivariable regression coefficients were compared between age cohorts using a separate multivariable model to evaluate the interaction between age and other predictors.

RESULTS

Of 139 included participants, the mean age was 11.7 ± 3.7 years and 50% were female. For patients 11 years of age or younger, UE was weakly correlated with PI (coefficient, -0.34; 95% confidence interval, -0.56 to -0.08) and was not correlated with PR. For patients older than 11 years, UE had moderate correlation with PI (coefficient, -0.60; 95% confidence interval, -0.72 to -0.45) and was not correlated with PR. Multivariable analysis demonstrated a significant negative association between PI and UE, with a significantly larger magnitude of effect for patients older than 11 years of age.

CONCLUSIONS

The biopsychosocial model applies to pediatric hand surgery patients. The association between greater pain interference and worse patient-reported upper extremity function, as assessed using parent proxy instruments, was significantly stronger for patients older than 11 years than those 11 years old or younger.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE

This study suggests that the biopsychosocial model applies to pediatric hand patients.

Family functioning, moods, and binge eating among urban adolescents

This study builds upon prior research on associations between moods, family functioning, and binge eating, using ecological momentary assessment to examine moderating effects of family functioning on associations between moods and binge eating. This study was conducted among a nonclinical sample of urban adolescents. Family functioning was assessed using five constructs adopted from the FACES-IV measure: 'family cohesion,' 'family flexibility' 'family communication,' 'family satisfaction,' and 'family balance.' Mood data was gathered using 13 items from a daily affect scale. Binge eating was assessed using two subscales from the Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale-binge eating associated with 'embarrassment' (BE1), and binge eating associated with a sense of 'loss of control' (BE2). A multilevel modeling approach was employed to examine how associations between momentary moods and binge eating behaviors were moderated by family functioning. Results indicated that measures of negative affect, stress/frustration, and tiredness/boredom were significantly and positively associated with two measures of binge eating (BE1 and BE2; p values ≤ 0.05), and that multiple factors of family functioning buffered the positive predictive effects of moods on binge eating. Findings indicate the importance of inclusion of family functioning in the development of eating behavior interventions for adolescents.

Bridge Over Troubled Water: Perspective Connections between Coping and Play in Children

We propose that children's play and coping strategies are connected. However, this connection has often been overlooked in the literature. To prove our hypothesis, the principal developmental functions of play are reviewed and compared with the different stages of the coping process. Our results show that coping and play are essential elements in child development, and indicate the presence of several overlapping areas where play and coping intersect. In spite of this, their interrelationship has seldom been examined. We explore the possible reasons for this omission with reference to the different natures of play and coping constructs, and also to the definitive psychometric and cognitive characteristics of most common coping measurement instruments. We conclude by proposing that play should be considered an elective form of coping in most aspects of children's lives. We also propose that methods to measure coping in children should be improved and a more analogical approach should be adopted toward play to enable accurate recognition of coping.

Psycho-educational preparation of children for anaesthesia: A review of intervention methods

OBJECTIVE

To systematically review the different methods available for the psycho-educational preparation of children for anaesthesia induction.

METHODS

Articles were searched in Academic Search Premier, OvidSP, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. Inclusion criteria were psychological and educational preparation of children for anaesthesia and anxiety reduction. The titles of papers and abstracts were reviewed and full copies of selected papers were scrutinized.

RESULTS

Forty-four empirical studies were identified. Twenty-one articles described preoperative preparation programmes, twelve examined the effects of distractive techniques and eleven reported the effect of parental presence during anaesthesia's induction. Some general characteristics of the different interventions are discussed together with some key psychological and educational factors mediating anxiety in children undergoing anaesthesia.

CONCLUSION

The effectiveness of interventions were linked to several factors. Psychological and contextual aspects are discussed. Psycho-educational activities should be better described when reporting their effectiveness in children's preparation for an anaesthesia.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Patient and family characteristics together with organizational and systemic aspects are described in order to guide the choice of the most appropriate preparation method for diverse health care setting.

Review: The development of coping across childhood and adolescence: An integrative review and critique of research

Despite consensus that development shapes every aspect of coping, studies of age differences in coping have proven difficult to integrate, primarily because they examine largely unselected age groups, and utilize overlapping coping categories. A developmental framework was used to organize 58 studies of coping involving over 250 age comparisons or correlations with age. The framework was based on (1) conceptualizations of coping as regulation to suggest ages at which coping should show developmental shifts (Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2009), and (2) notions of hierarchical families to clarify which coping categories should be distinguished at each age (Skinner, Edge, Altman, & Sherwood, 2003). Developmental patterns in coping (e.g., problem-solving, distraction, support-seeking, escape) were scrutinized with a focus on common age shifts. Two kinds of age trends were discerned, one reflecting increases in coping capacities, as seen in support-seeking (from reliance on adults to more self-reliance), problem-solving (from instrumental action to planful problem-solving), and distraction (adding cognitive to behavioural strategies); and one reflecting improvements in the deployment of different coping strategies according to which ones are most effective in dealing with specific kinds of stressors. Results were used to formulate guidelines for future research on the development of coping.

Cultural variations in developing a sense of knowing your own mind: A comparison between British and Japanese children

We often have a feeling that we know ourselves much better than others know us, coupled with a feeling that our minds are not transparent to other people. In this article we begin to explore cultural variations in the development of this feeling. Children in Britain and Japan aged 7, 9 and 11 years judged how well they and how well their parent/teacher knew about aspects of the child’s mind (e.g., dreams, feeling sick, feeling hungry). Compared with British children, Japanese children credited adults with relatively large amounts of knowledge about themselves and this was most notable in the youngest group. Differences in patterns of judgements between the two nations could arise from differences in the cultural influences on the rate of development.