Abstract
Parenting is crucial for emotion regulation in children. Much less is known, however, concerning the association between parenting and emotion regulation in children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), who are known to have poor emotion regulation. The current study aimed to examine how parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation related either unidirectionally or bidirectionally to one another over time and to investigate whether the associations were different in ODD and non-ODD groups. Data were collected each year for three consecutive years from a sample of 256 parents of children with ODD and 265 parents of children without ODD in China. The results from the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) suggested that the directionality of the link between parental responsiveness and child emotion regulation differs according to ODD status. The non-ODD group demonstrated a unidirectional link between early emotion regulation and subsequent parental responsiveness, consistent with the “child effect”. However, in the ODD group, the link between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation was transactional, in line with social coercion theory. Multiple-group comparisons found that increased parental responsiveness was more strongly associated with improved child emotion regulation in the ODD group only. The research established a dynamic and longitudinal relationship between parental responsiveness and emotion regulation and suggested that intensive interventions should aim to improve parental responsiveness to children with ODD.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Xiuyun Lin, Stephen P. Hinshaw, Qinglu Wu, and Ting He. Analysis was performed by Ting He, Wenrui Zhang, and Yingying Tang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ting He and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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He, T., Zhang, W., Tang, Y. et al. Unidirectional or Bidirectional? Relation between Parental Responsiveness and Emotion Regulation in Children with and without Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 51, 1163–1177 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01051-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-023-01051-2