Maneuvering through Life with Positivity: Estimating the Effects of Foster Youth's Appraisal on Coping Styles

Youth in foster care tend to experience a disproportional number of adverse life experiences and demonstrate high rates of emotional and behavioral difficulties. According to the transactional model of stress and coping, how youth appraise their experiences influences the type of coping strategies they use in response to adversity, and these relations are key components to understanding later adjustment. However, few studies have examined potential effects of appraisal on coping for youth in foster care. Furthermore, it is not well understood if or how such interaction may vary across age. To address this gap, this study examined potential age moderation of contemporaneous primary, threat-based appraisal effects on coping in a large sample of 490 youth in foster care (48% female, ages 8 to 18) using a series of statistical models which were capable of detecting very general forms of effect moderation. Results indicated that primary appraisal positively predicted direct and prosocial coping, and negatively predicted asocial coping. The linear effects of appraisal on coping did not vary based on age of the youth. The findings suggest that primary appraisals of life events for youth in foster care does have a unique influence on certain coping styles, suggesting perhaps new directions for research on youth exposed to multiple adversities. To promote wider use of the non-parametric time-varying effect model in R, the analysis syntax is also included in the appendix.

General Parenting and Hispanic Mothers' Feeding Practices and Styles

Previous research has shown that general parenting styles, general parenting dimensions, maternal feeding styles, and maternal feeding practices all show specific relationships with the weight status of young children. This study examined the relationships between general parenting and maternal feeding styles/practices in a sample of 187 Hispanic mothers with low incomes. As part of a larger study, mothers of preschool children were recruited through Head Start programs and completed validated questionnaires assessing their general parenting, feeding styles, and feeding practices. Results identified numerous associations between general parenting dimensions and specific feeding practices: i.e., maternal nurturance was positively associated with healthy eating guidance and feeding responsiveness; inconsistency was positively associated with restriction for weight and promotion of overconsumption; follow through on discipline was positively associated with monitoring, healthy eating guidance, and feeding responsiveness; and family organization was positively associated with monitoring and healthy eating guidance. General parenting styles were associated with feeding practices as well, with authoritative mothers showing the highest levels of healthy eating guidance and authoritarian mothers showing the lowest levels of monitoring. There were no significant associations between mothers' general parenting styles and mothers' feeding styles. Implications of these findings for the prevention of childhood obesity are considered.

The Impact of Maltreatment on Internalizing Symptoms for Foster Youth: an Examination of Spirituality and Appraisals as Moderators

Research shows that exposure to child maltreatment increases the risk of internalizing symptoms for youth, and that youth in foster care are at a particularly high risk of symptoms. However, not all youth who experience maltreatment evidence maladjustment, making the link between exposure and mental health outcomes unclear and creating a need to examine what factors buffer against symptomatology. A sample of youth in foster care was used to provide a new examination of the relation between child maltreatment exposure and internalizing symptoms, to test the possible moderating effects of both appraisals and spirituality, and examine differences between children and adolescents. Participants were 486 youth in foster care (M age = 13; 204 children; 282 adolescents). Youth completed self-report measures through the SPARK project (Studying Pathways to Adjustment and Resilience in Kids). Although appraisals and spirituality were not significant moderators, significant main effects emerged. For children, regression analyses showed that maltreatment exposure and lower scores on spiritual prosocial attitudes accounted for the majority of the 21% of the variance in internalizing symptoms. For adolescents 28% of the variance in internalizing symptoms was accounted for by greater maltreatment exposure, lower scores on spiritual prosocial attitudes, higher scores on relationship with a God/Higher Power, and more negative appraisals of stressful life events. The current study provides support for cognitive-based interventions for adolescents aimed at increasing appraisal flexibility and suggests that both children and adolescents could benefit from the development of prosocial attitudes often tied to spirituality but could be reinforced in additional settings.

Children’s challenge and threat appraisals vary by discrete emotion, age, and gender

Three decades of research have examined children’s challenge and threat appraisals, yet unresolved issues remain. This study provides new insight about three central, open questions in this field: How do challenge and threat appraisals relate to events eliciting discrete negative emotions? How do challenge appraisals develop across childhood, and are there gender differences across development? In this cross-sectional study, 172 children (three age groups: 3–5 years, 6–8 years, and 9–11 years) and 89 young adults (ages 17–26) described sad, scary, and anger-provoking autobiographical experiences and were asked whether the event was something they could handle (a challenge appraisal) or whether it was just too much (a threat appraisal). Challenge appraisals were associated with anger-eliciting events more often than with sad or scary events. In line with predictions, challenge appraisals steadily increased across age groups. In early childhood, girls made more challenge appraisals than boys, but young adult men made more challenge appraisals than young adult women. Findings highlight the importance of understanding the developmental progression of appraising difficult events and experiences as a challenge rather than a threat, and provide new information about the etiology of adaptive appraisal processes in early life.

The role of poly-victimization in predicting differences in foster youths' appraisals

The present article examines the role of poly-victimization (i.e., number of categories of maltreatment experiences and total maltreatment exposure) in predicting differences in appraisals for 272 youth in foster care (ages 8-21). Poly-victimization was hypothesized to be predictive of negative appraisal valence (i.e., interpreting the impact of a stressful life event as being bad/negative) and appraisal rigidity (i.e., interpreting the impact of life events as being consistently positive or negative across different events) above and beyond any single category of maltreatment. Results show a high prevalence of poly-victimization, such that those youth who experience only one form of maltreatment (e.g., physical, sexual, psychological, or neglect) are among the minority of maltreated youth. Additionally, results show that total maltreatment exposure, accounting for not only different categories of maltreatment but also different types or forms of maltreatment within those broader categories, is the most predictive of negative appraisal valence, above and beyond single categories of maltreatment and number of categories of maltreatment experienced. Contrary to the study's hypothesis, neither total exposure nor number of maltreatment categories experienced is significantly predictive of appraisal rigidity above and beyond single categories. Correlations also show that less rigid or more flexible appraisals are associated with more maltreatment experiences than are rigid appraisals. The current study highlights the importance of examining maltreatment from a poly-victimization perspective and begins to explain why some youth have more negative appraisals than others.

Early family system types predict children’s emotional attention biases at school age

The family environment shapes children’s social information processing and emotion regulation. Yet, the long-term effects of early family systems have rarely been studied. This study investigated how family system types predict children’s attentional biases toward facial expressions at the age of 10 years. The participants were 79 children from Cohesive, Disengaged, Enmeshed, and Authoritarian family types based on marital and parental relationship trajectories from pregnancy to the age of 12 months. A dot-probe task was used to assess children’s emotional attention biases toward threatening (angry) and affiliative (happy) faces at the early (500 ms) and late (1250 ms) stages of processing. Situational priming was applied to activate children’s sense of danger or safety. Results showed that children from Cohesive families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, whereas children from Enmeshed families had a late-stage bias toward threat. Children from Disengaged families had an early-stage attentional bias toward threat, but showed in addition a late-stage bias away from emotional faces (i.e., both angry and happy). Children from Authoritarian families, in turn, showed a late-stage attentional bias toward emotional faces. Situational priming did not moderate the effects of family system types on children’s attentional biases. The findings confirm the influence of early family systems on the attentional biases, suggesting differences in the emotion regulation strategies children have developed to adapt to their family environments.

Parental Concerns Influencing Decisions to Seek Medical Care for a Child's Short Stature

AIMS

To examine parental concerns about child growth and factors that drive parents' decisions whether to intervene medically with their child's height.

METHODS

Parents of 9- to 14-year-old pediatric primary care patients of various heights, oversampled for those with short stature, participated in exploratory focus groups and nominal group technique sessions. Growth concerns expressed by the groups were incorporated into a survey, completed by 1,820 parents, and rated for their degree of impact on medical decision-making. Ordinal logistic regression modeled concern scores against parent traits. Explanatory focus groups clarified the survey results.

RESULTS

Research team consensus and factor analysis organized the 22 distinct concerns expressed by the parent groups into 7 categories. Categories rated as having the greatest influence on parental decision-making involved: treatment efficacy and side effects, child health and psychosocial function. Level of concern was highly associated with parental education and parenting style.

CONCLUSION

Psychosocial issues are influential, but parental decision-making is most impacted by concerns about treatment and child health. By discussing the real risks and benefits of hormone treatment and addressing parents' perceptions of what is needed for physical and psychosocial health, clinicians can be highly effective educators to assure that treatment is used only as medically indicated.

Probing the depths of informant discrepancies: contextual influences on divergence and convergence

This study examined how a contextual approach to child assessment can clarify the meaning of informant discrepancies by focusing on children's social experiences and their if…then reactions to them. In a sample of 123 children (M(age) = 13.30) referred to a summer program for children with behavior problems, parent-teacher agreement for syndromal measures of aggression and withdrawal was modest. Agreement remained low when informants assessed children's reactions to specific peer and adult events. The similarity of these events increased consistency within informants but had no effect on agreement between parents and teachers. In contrast, similarity in the pattern of social events children encountered at home and school predicted informant agreement for syndromal aggression and for aggression to aversive events. Our results underscore the robustness of informant discrepancies and illustrate how they can be studied as part of the larger mosaic of person-environment interactions.

Brief report: parenting styles and obesity in Mexican American children: a longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE

To assess longitudinally the relations between four parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, uninvolved, and indulgent) and child weight status in Mexican American families.

METHODS

Sixty-nine low-income Mexican American mothers and their 4- to 8-year-old children participated in a 4-year longitudinal study. Mothers completed demographic and parenting measures. Children's body weight and height were assessed annually. Body mass index was calculated to determine weight status.

RESULTS

At baseline, 65% of children were found to be normal weight, 14% were overweight, and 21% were obese. Analyses examined how parenting styles at baseline predicted child's weight status 3 years later, controlling for initial weight status. Children of indulgent mothers were more likely to become overweight 3 years later than children of authoritative or authoritarian mothers.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides longitudinal evidence for the role of indulgent parenting in predicting overweight in Mexican American children. Possible mediating factors that may account for this relationship (e.g., dietary patterns, physical activity patterns, and children's self-regulation) are considered.