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Emotional distress experienced by mothers increases young children's risk of externalizing problems through suboptimal parenting and child self-regulation. An integrative structural equation model tested hypotheses that mothers’ parenting (i.e., low levels of inductive discipline and maternal warmth) would mediate adverse effects of early maternal distress on child effortful control, which in turn would mediate effects of maternal parenting on child externalizing behavior. This longitudinal study spanning ages 3, 6, and 10 included 241 children, mothers, and a subset of teachers. The hypothesized model was partially supported. Elevated maternal distress was associated with less inductive discipline and maternal warmth, which in turn were associated with less effortful control at age 3 but not at age 6. Inductive discipline and maternal warmth mediated adverse effects of maternal distress on children's effortful control. Less effortful control at ages 3 and 6 predicted smaller relative decreases in externalizing behavior at 6 and 10, respectively. Effortful control mediated effects of inductive discipline, but not maternal warmth, on externalizing behavior. Findings suggest elevated maternal distress increases children's risk of externalizing problems by compromising early parenting and child self-regulation.

Thought problems and attention problems are common in childhood and are important for later-emerging psychological disorders, yet less is known about the early childhood predictors underpinning such problems. We examined whether early childhood theory of mind (ToM) and effortful control (EC) constitute predictors for preadolescent thought and attention problems. We longitudinally tracked 214 children’s ToM and EC, assessed with behavioral tasks, at ages 3 and 6, along with their thought and attention problems at ages 6 and 10, assessed using maternal report. Findings show that poorer ToM at age 6 predicted more severe development of thought problems emerging between ages 6 and 10, and poorer EC at age 6 predicted more attention problems at age 10. These findings reveal the developmental links between ToM, EC, thought problems, and attention problems, offering implications for developmental-psychopathology accounts and highlighting the importance of early childhood predictors on developing thought and attention problems’ symptomology.

Preventing problem behavior requires an understanding of earlier factors that are amenable to intervention. The main goals of our prospective longitudinal study were to trace trajectories of child externalizing behavior between ages 3 and 10 years, and to identify patterns of developmentally significant child and parenting risk factors that differentiated pathways of problem behavior. Participants were 218 3-year-old boys and girls who were reassessed following the transition to kindergarten (age 5–6 years) and during the late school-age years (age 10). Mothers contributed ratings of children's externalizing behavior at all three time points. Children's self-regulation abilities and theory of mind were assessed during a laboratory visit, and parenting risk (frequent corporal punishment and low maternal warmth) was assessed using interview-based and questionnaire measures. Four developmental trajectories of externalizing behavior yielded the best balance of parsimony and fit with our longitudinal data and latent class growth analysis. Most young children followed a pathway marked by relatively low levels of symptoms that continued to decrease across the school-age years. Atypical trajectories marked chronically high, increasing, and decreasing levels of externalizing problems across early and middle childhood. Three-year-old children with low levels of effortful control were far more likely to show the chronic pattern of elevated externalizing problems than changing or low patterns. Early parental corporal punishment and maternal warmth, respectively, differentiated preschoolers who showed increasing and decreasing patterns of problem behavior compared to the majority of children. The fact that children's poor effortful regulation skills predicted chronic early onset problems reinforces the need for early childhood screening and intervention services.

Examined associations between effortful control temperament and externalizing problems in 220 3-year-old boys and girls, controlling for co-occurring cognitive and social risk factors. We also considered possible additive and/or interactive contributions of child dispositional anger and psychosocial adversity, and whether relations between effortful control and early externalizing problems were moderated by child gender. Individual differences in children's effortful control abilities, assessed using behavioral and parent rating measures, were negatively associated with child externalizing problems reported by mothers, fathers, and preschool teachers. These associations were not overshadowed by other cognitive or social risk factors, or by other relevant child temperament traits such as proneness to irritability. Further analyses revealed that associations between externalizing problem behavior and effortful control were specific to components of child problem behavior indexing impulsive-inattentive symptoms. Thus, children's effortful control skills were important correlates of children's early disruptive behavior, a finding that may provide insight into the developmental origins of chronic behavioral maladjustment.This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1MH57489) to Sheryl Olson and Arnold Sameroff. We are very grateful to the children, parents, teachers, and preschool administrators who participated, and to the many individuals who gave us invaluable help with data collection and coding, especially Gail Benninghoff, Meribeth Gandy Pezda, Lisa Alvarez, Sara Miceli, and Felicia Kleinberg. We also thank the administrators of the University of Michigan Children's Center for their generous assistance, Grazyna Kochanska for allowing us to use her behavioral battery of effortful control tasks, Kathy Murray for helping us with numerous details concerning the behavioral battery, and Mary Rothbart, Jack Bates, Patricia Kerig, and Thomas Power for allowing us to use their parent self-report measures.

This study aimed to examine independent and interactive contributions of parenting behaviors (e.g., physical punishment, inductive discipline, warm responsiveness) and child effortful control on child externalizing problems during early and middle childhood. Participants were 241 children (123girls) of middle-income families in the U.S. who were primarily European Americans (91%) and at risk for school-age problem behaviors. Data were collected at ages 3, 6, and 10 using multiple methods, informants, and contexts. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated both independent and interactive influences of parenting behaviors and child effortful control on children’s externalizing behaviors. Importantly, effortful control buffered the negative influence of physical punishment, but not other parenting behaviors, such that physical punishment was associated with external behaviors at 6 years only for children with poorer effortful control abilities. The results highlight both parental discipline strategies and child effortful control as promising targets for early identification and prevention of future problem behaviors. Summary: Parenting and child effortful control have long been topics of research on child development. However, relatively little is known about the long-term effects of early parenting in the context of effortful control and the possibility that those processes may differ across different dimensions of parenting (i.e., warm responsiveness, inductive discipline, and physical punishment) Therefore, this study aimed to examine independent and interactive contributions of parenting behaviors and child effortful control on child externalizing problems during early and middle childhood. Participants were 241 children (123girls) of middle-income families who were at risk for school-age problem behaviors. Data were collected using multiple methods, informants, and contexts. Specifically, child effortful control at 3 years was measured using multiple tasks, and parenting at 3 years was assessed via maternal report during home interview. Teachers contributed ratings of child externalizing behaviors at 3, 6, and 10 years. Results indicated both independent and interactive influences of parenting behaviors and child effortful control on children’s externalizing behaviors. Importantly, effortful control buffered the negative influence of physical punishment, but not other parenting behaviors, such that physical punishment was associated with external behaviors at 6 years only for children with poorer effortful control abilities. Moreover, parents’ use of physical punishment at age 3 showed a long-lasting association with children’s problem behaviors at ages 6 and 10 years. The findings suggest that children with more advanced effortful control may be less susceptible to long-term detrimental contribution of physical punishment, although by no means they are protected from harmful effects of punitive discipline. This study provides more sophisticated explanations on the influence of early parenting and child effortful control on externalizing behaviors spanning early to middle childhood. The results also highlight different parental discipline strategies and child effortful controls as promising targets for early identification and prevention of children’s future problem behaviors in childhood.

Although internalizing problems are the most common forms of psychological distress among adolescents and young adults, they have precursors in multiple risk domains established during childhood. This study examined cascading risk pathways leading to depression and anxiety symptoms in emerging adulthood by integrating broad contextual (i.e., multiple contextual risks), parental (i.e., negative parenting), and child (i.e., internalizing behaviors) characteristics in early and middle childhood. We also compared common and differential pathways to depression and anxiety symptoms depending on the conceptualization of symptom outcomes (traditional symptom dimension vs. bifactor dimensional model). Participants were 235 children (109 girls) and their families. Data were collected at 3, 6, 10, and 19 years of child age, using multiple informants and contexts. Results from a symptom dimension approach indicated mediation pathways from early childhood risk factors to depression and anxiety symptoms in emerging adulthood, suggesting common and distinct risk processes between the two disorders. Results from a bifactor modeling approach indicated several indirect pathways leading to a general internalizing latent factor, but not to symptom-specific (i.e., depression, anxiety) latent factors. Our findings highlighted comparative analytic approaches to examining transactional processes associated with later internalizing symptoms and shed light on issues of early identification and prevention.

Identifying Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) constructs in early childhood is essential for understanding etiological pathways of psychopathology. Our central goal was to identify early emotion knowledge and self-regulation difficulties across different RDoC domains and examine how they relate to typical versus atypical symptom trajectories between ages 3 and 10. Particularly, we assessed potential contributions of children's gender, executive control, delay of gratification, and regulation of frustration, emotion recognition, and emotion understanding at age 3 to co-occurring patterns of internalizing and externalizing across development. A total of 238 3-year-old boys and girls were assessed using behavioral tasks and parent reports and reassessed at ages 5 and 10 years. Results indicated that very few children developed “pure” internalizing or externalizing symptoms relative to various levels of co-occurring symptoms across development. Four classes of co-occurring internalizing and externalizing problems were identified: low, low-moderate, rising, and severe-decreasing trajectories. Three-year-old children with poor executive control but high emotion understanding were far more likely to show severe-decreasing than low/low-moderate class co-occurring internalizing and externalizing symptom patterns. Child gender and poor executive control differentiated children in rising versus low trajectories. Implications for early intervention targeting self-regulation of executive control are discussed.

Parent–child dyadic rigidity and negative affect contribute to children's higher levels of externalizing problems. The present longitudinal study examined whether the opposite constructs of dyadic flexibility and positive affect predicted lower levels of externalizing behavior problems across the early childhood period. Mother–child (N = 163) and father–child (n = 94) dyads engaged in a challenging block design task at home when children were 3 years old. Dynamic systems methods were used to derive dyadic positive affect and three indicators of dyadic flexibility (range, dispersion, and transitions) from observational coding. We hypothesized that the interaction between dyadic flexibility and positive affect would predict lower levels of externalizing problems at age 5.5 years as rated by mothers and teachers, controlling for stability in externalizing problems, task time, child gender, and the child's effortful control. The hypothesis was supported in predicting teacher ratings of child externalizing from both mother–child and father–child interactions. There were also differential main effects for mothers and fathers: mother–child flexibility was detrimental and father–child flexibility was beneficial for child outcomes. Results support the inclusion of adaptive and dynamic parent–child coregulation processes in the study of children's early disruptive behavior.

Supportive maternal and paternal caregiving have been found to be associated with children’s effortful control abilities. However, many studies did not assess both maternal and paternal parenting in the same analytic model, making it difficult to parse out the unique contributions of mothers versus fathers. Thus, we aimed to simultaneously assess the role of parent gender in associations between observations of supportive caregiving in the preschool years and observations of children’s effortful control abilities in the early school-age years. At approximately age 3 years, children ( N  = 113) participated in videotaped father–child and mother–child interactions, as well as a battery of effortful control tasks. At approximately age 6 years, children participated in another battery of effortful control tasks. Covariates included parental education, child age, child preschool-age effortful control, and child gender. Structural equation modeling revealed that maternal and paternal supportive caregiving behaviors in the preschool years were independently associated with children’s school-age effortful control abilities. In sum, we found that supportive caregiving in the preschool years was associated with children’s early school-age effortful control abilities, regardless of parent gender. Findings have implications for the development of interventions aimed at improving children’s effortful control abilities through improvements in both paternal and maternal parenting. Highlights Mothers and fathers engaged in similar types of supportive caregiving behaviors in early childhood. Observed supportive caregiving was associated with children’s effortful control skills 3 years later. Associations between supportive caregiving and children’s effortful control were significant for both mothers and fathers.