Parental Sensitivity to Disruptive Child Behavior -
An Experimental Study to Explain Parents’ Engagement in Coercive Interactions
Research Master Child Development and Education Graduate School of Child Development and Education University of Amsterdam
Research Master Thesis Susanne Schulz (11098716)
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Patty Leijten
External evaluators: Prof. dr. Geertjan Overbeek, Dr. Joyce Weeland Date: 09. August 2017
Abstract
Background: Disruptive child behavior is strongly driven by coercive interactions in which parents and children reinforce dysfunctional behavior in each other. What happens in parents’ minds and bodies when they inadvertently engage in coercive interactions? This study
investigates cognitive (i.e., self-efficacy) and emotional (i.e., stress and arousal) pathways underlying parents’ responses to challenging parenting situations that elicit disruptive child behavior. Methods: We experimentally tested the impact of a challenging parenting situation on (1) parents’ self-efficacy, stress, and arousal, (2) parents’ subsequent use of proactive positive parenting strategies, and (3) children’s disruptive child behavior in reaction to these strategies. One hundred and ten parent-toddler-dyads (Mage=30.89 months) participated.
Parents reported on their self-efficacy and stress levels; skin conductance levels assessed arousal. Parents’ positive affect and use of direct (i.e., clear) instructions were observed indices of positive proactive parenting. Results: Parents in the challenging situation showed less self-efficacy and more stress and arousal than parents in the control condition. Lower levels of self-efficacy, but not stress or arousal, predicted less positive affect in parents. Further, the challenging situation increased parents’ use of direct instructions, leading to less disruptive child behavior. Conclusion: Parents’ cognitions, rather than their emotions, seem to underlie their non-verbal expressions of positive affect. Moreover, challenging situations may cause parents to use more proactive, but more controlling verbal instructions. Addressing parents’ cognitive responses to challenging situations may contribute to facilitate their
emotion regulation and help them to refrain from coercive interactions.
Keywords: disruptive behavior, cognitive reactivity, emotional reactivity, proactive positive parenting, coercion.
Parental Sensitivity to Disruptive Child Behavior –
An Experimental Study to Explain Parents’ Engagement in Coercive Interactions Disruptive behavior in early childhood, including oppositional and aggressive behavior, predicts debilitating mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood (e.g., Tremblay, 2000). Disruptive child behavior is strongly affected and maintained by coercive parent-child interactions in which parents and children continuously reinforce each other’s dysfunctional behavior (Patterson, 1982). Parents often engage in coercive interactions because they seem to be unable to respond effectively to their child’s disruptive behavior (e.g., Martin, 1981; Patterson, 2002). However, much remains unknown about the
mechanisms through which parents fail to respond effectively to disruptive child behavior. The current study investigates the extent to which parents’ cognitions (i.e., self-efficacy) and emotions (i.e., stress and physiological arousal) explain parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies (instead of coercive behaviors) in challenging parenting situations, and whether this in turn reduces disruptive child behavior.
Parents’ Engagement in Coercive Interactions
Parenting behavior not only shapes child behavior (Chamberlain & Patterson, 1995; Gardner, Shaw, Dishion, Burton, & Supplee, 2007; Gershoff, 2002), child behavior also shapes parenting behavior (Bell, 1968; Gardner, Sonuga-Barke, & Sayal, 1999; Scaramella & Leve, 2004). Disruptive children are more likely than less disruptive children to elicit
immediate negative reactions in parents, including adverse parenting strategies, such as giving in to the child’s demands or reacting with equally aggressive behavior (Verhoeven, Junger, van Aken, Deković, & van Aken, 2010). If children learn that their disruptive behaviors lead to the desired response, they may use these behaviors more frequently in subsequent
interactions (see Figure 1). Similarly, parents may use more adverse strategies in response to disruptive child behavior to avoid further escalations. This negative reinforcement of
disruptive child behavior and adverse parenting leads to a coercive cycle that is often difficult to break (Patterson, 2002; Shaw, Keenan, & Vondra, 1994; Smith et al., 2014).
Figure 1. Coercive Cycle of parent-child interactions (based on Patterson, 1982).
The use of proactive positive parenting helps parents to effectively manage disruptive child behavior and thus, to avoid engaging in coercive interactions (Gardner et al., 1999; Holden & West, 1989; Shelleby et al., 2012). Proactive positive parenting skills are anticipatory, rather than merely reactive, applied strategies. Thus, these strategies allow parents to prevent misbehavior, for example verbally by communicating precise expectations through clear direct commands (Eyberg & Robinson, 1982; Gardner et al., 2007), or
nonverbally by helping children to elicit positive emotions through positive affect (Denham, 1997; Eisenberg et al., 2005).
Parenting interventions aim to reduce disruptive child behavior by teaching parents proactive positive parenting skills. However, these interventions show small to medium effects at most (Van Aar, Leijten, Orobio de Castro, & Overbeek, 2017), and parents often fail to use the acquired skills outside of treatment settings (Lindhiem, Higa, Trentacosta,
Herschell, & Kolko, 2014). This suggests that acquiring positive proactive skills alone might not suffice to reduce parents’ coercive behaviors.
Since coercive interactions are highly detrimental for family functioning and child developmental processes, it is crucial to identify why it is difficult for parents to use proactive parenting strategies and consequently, why disruptive child behavior is maintained. This study proposes two mechanisms that help to explain why parents engage in coercive interactions: parents’ thoughts of self-efficacy (i.e., a cognitive pathway) and parents’ feelings of stress and arousal (i.e., an emotional pathway).
Parenting as a function of Parental “State” Cognitions and Emotions
State cognitions and emotions represent thoughts and feelings at a specific point in time (Watson & Pennebaker, 1989). For example, parents may have high self-confidence or rarely experience stress in their daily life, but still feel less competent or highly stressed during a specific difficult parenting situation.
Parental “state” cognitions. Using adequate parenting strategies in the face of challenging situations requires positive cognitions, such as self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977, 2006; Weaver, Shaw, Dishion, & Wilson, 2008). Parental self-efficacy describes how
competent parents perceive themselves in their parenting role (Teti & Gelfand, 1991). Parents with lower levels of self-efficacy are less likely to show perseverance and proactive positive parenting than parents with higher levels of self-efficacy (Dumka, Gonzales, Wheeler, & Millsap, 2010; Jones & Prinz, 2005; Mouton & Roskam, 2015). Experiencing challenging tasks, including disruptive child behaviors, can reduce parents’ self-efficacy and their ability to adequately react to the child’s behavior (Johnston & Mash, 1989; Leahy-Warren & McCarthy, 2011). In such situations, parents’ attempts to gain control often remain
unsuccessful which reduces their feelings of competence and motivation, but increases their feelings of self-doubt and amplifies avoidance or defense strategies (Bandura, 1977;
Jerusalem & Mittag, 1995). If parents start to doubt their parenting skills and knowledge, they are less likely to use these skills in subsequent situations. As such, parental self-efficacy may
be one mechanism through which difficult parenting situations diminish parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies.
Parental “state” emotions. Another mechanism that might hinder parents’ use of adequate parenting strategies are their emotional responses (i.e., stress and arousal) to challenging situations. Emotional episodes can be characterized by rapid, but intensive changes in state and constitute of different components such as subjective experiences, arousal or bodily symptoms, and action tendencies (Farb, Chapman, & Anderson, 2013; Scherer, 2005). When parents experience high levels of stress, they show more negative parenting practices (Conger et al., 1992; Crnic & Low, 2002; Pinderhughes, Dodge, Bates, Pettit, & Zelli, 2000). Particularly situations in which children are disruptive elicit high levels of stress in parents (Crnic & Low, 2002; Goldstein, Harvey, & Friedman-Weieneth, 2007). In these situations, parents have less (emotional) resources available as they are more likely to focus on their own personal distress rather than empathy and positive behaviors toward their child (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990, 1994; Leerkes, Su, Calkins, Supple, & O’Brien, 2016). As such, emotional responses may suppress parents’ use of proactive parenting strategies.
Associations between challenging parenting situations and parents’ stressful reactions mainly rely on retrospective self-reports. However, individual emotional components can function independently (Scherer, 2005). For example, parents may show physiological arousal without perceiving a situation as particularly stressful. This arousal can affect their ability to regulate their behavior and consequently, their use of proactive parenting. Self-reports provide insight into subjective feelings, but they do not allow to investigate physiological arousal. The current study, therefore, investigated two components of parents’ emotions: parents’ stress as subjective feelings and parents’ arousal as a physiological component.
Arousal refers to physiological activation and relates to the intensity, but not the valence (i.e., perceived as positive or negative) of an emotion (LeDoux, 2012; Moors, 2009).
Excessive or dysregulated arousal during challenging situations may impede parents’
decision-making, and thus, their ability to use proactive positive parenting strategies (Stratakis & Chrousos, 1995; Sturge-Apple, Skibo, Rogosch, Ignjatovic, & Heinzelman, 2011).
Emotional arousal can be non-invasively observed with changes in skin conductance levels (SCL; Stern, Ray, & Quigley, 2001; Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm, 1993). While some evidence indicates that parents who responded with higher levels of arousal to infant crying use less positive and more negative parenting strategies (Frodi & Lamb, 1980; Joosen, Mesman, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2013), other studies failed to detect associations between arousal and parenting strategies (Emery, McElwain, Groh, Haydon, & Roisman, 2014; Groh & Roisman, 2009). However, most of these studies investigated arousal in response to child behavior detached from challenging situations. The present study
overcomes this shortcoming by investigating parents’ arousal in challenging parenting situations that were expected to elicit disruptive child behavior.
Parental “State” Cognitions and Emotions as a function of Parental “Trait” Cognitions and Emotions
Not all parents are affected equally by disruptive child behavior. While some parents respond with low self-efficacy and high stress to challenging situations that elicit disruptive child behavior, other parents remain calm and positive (e.g., Leerkes et al., 2016). Individual differences in parental “trait” cognitions and emotions, which are relatively stable and persist over a longer period of time, may influence parental “state” cognitions and emotions in difficult parenting situations. Specifically, low levels of “trait” self-efficacy and high levels of “trait” stress may decrease parents’ abilities to remain high self-efficacious in response to disruptive child behavior (Ardelt & Eccles, 2001). These stressors in a parent’s life may render physiological emotion regulation difficult as both the stress related to the particular
situation as well as the constant feelings of stress require simultaneous attention (Sturge-Apple et al., 2011).
Not only parents’ self-perceived stress levels but also their physiological resting states (i.e., baseline arousal) play a role in parents’ ability to regulate their arousal during
challenging parenting situations (Appelhans & Luecken, 2006; Joosen, Mesman, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Pieper, et al., 2013). For example, parents who use negative parenting practices show higher levels of baseline arousal compared to low risk parents (Reijman et al., 2016). The current study investigates whether parental “trait” self-efficacy, stress, and baseline arousal enlarge the effect of a challenging parenting situation on parental “state” self-efficacy, stress, and arousal, respectively.
To summarize, parental self-efficacy, stress, and arousal may be strongly involved in the onset and maintenance of coercive parent-child interactions. Difficult parenting situations that elicit disruptive child behavior may decrease self-efficacy and increase stress as well as arousal. These cognitive and emotional responses may result in less proactive positive parenting which in turn sets the stage for a new coercive interaction by eliciting disruptive child behavior.
The Present Study
This project experimentally tested parents’ cognitive (i.e., self-efficacy) and emotional responses (i.e., stress and arousal) as mechanisms underlying the effects of a challenging situation on parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies. Further, we assessed whether changes in proactive positive parenting predict changes in child behavior. To investigate whether challenging situations affect some parents more than others, we tested whether parental trait self-efficacy, trait stress, and baseline arousal moderate the effects of a challenging parenting situation on parents’ state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal,
We formulated four hypotheses (see Figure 2). First, parents who experience a
challenging parenting situation that elicits disruptive child behavior show lower levels of self-efficacy (Hypothesis 1a) and higher levels of stress and arousal (Hypothesis 1b), compared to parents who do not experience a challenging situation. Second, parents with lower levels of trait self-efficacy (compared to higher levels of trait self-efficacy) respond to a challenging parenting situation with lower levels of state self-efficacy (Hypothesis 2a); parents with higher levels of trait stress and baseline arousal (compared to lower levels of trait stress and arousal) respond to a challenging parenting situation with higher levels of state stress and arousal, respectively (Hypothesis 2b). Third, a challenging parenting situation indirectly reduces parents’ proactive positive parenting, by decreasing their levels of state self-efficacy and increasing their levels of state stress and arousal (Hypothesis 3). Finally, children whose parents use less proactive positive parenting strategies show more disruptive behavior (i.e., are less compliant) than children whose parents use more proactive positive parenting strategies (Hypothesis 4).
This is the first study to test causal effects of disruptive child behavior on parents’ cognitions and emotions as well as their use of parenting strategies. The current paradigm includes both parents’ behavioral and physiological responses to disruptive child behavior and thus expands previous research that mainly relied on self-reports. Moreover, the study
provides insight into the mechanisms through which parents may fail to use proactive positive parenting strategies in difficult parenting situations. This might help to explain the often small impacts of parenting interventions on parents’ actual use of proactive positive parenting strategies and consequently, on disruptive child behavior. Thus, our study may inform
parenting interventions about the necessity to teach parents how to regulate their thoughts and emotions in addition to adequate parenting strategies to enable parents to successfully
implement these strategies in their daily management of disruptive child behavior. Methods
Participants
Participants were parents and their two-year-old toddlers (N = 110, Mage = 30.68
months; range = 24 – 36 months). They were recruited through a database of the University of Amsterdam, which includes families who responded to letters that invited new parents to participate in research studies. This age group was chosen because coercive parent-child interactions often develop when children make the transition from infancy to toddlerhood (Scaramella & Leve, 2004). Parents with a child in the right age group (N = 425) were contacted via e-mail and asked to complete an online questionnaire to assess their child’s initial levels of disruptive behavior. More than half of these families (n = 231, 54.35%) completed the questionnaire. Families with the highest scores on disruptive child behavior (score > 90; N = 138) were selected for participation because the goal of the study was to investigate parents’ responses to children’s disruptive behavior, and children with lower scores do not tend to show disruptive behavior. The selected children showed significantly
higher levels of disruptive behavior than average Dutch preschool children, t(171.09) = 8.39, p < .001 (Weeland, Van Aar, & Overbeek, 2017). The final sample consisted of 110 parent-toddler-dyads after excluding families who did not respond to our attempts to schedule a meeting (n = 13), or who cancelled their appointments and were not able to reschedule in time (n = 15). Sample characteristics are summarized in Table 1. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Amsterdam.
Table 1.
Sample Characteristics for the Experimental and Control Condition
Note. No significant differences (p < .05) were found between the two conditions.
Total sample
(N = 110) Experimental (n = 56) (n = 54) Control Drop-out (n = 28)
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Child gender (% female) 46.4 48.2 44.4 32.1 Child age (months) 30.89 30.76 3.76 31.03 4.07
Disruptive child behavior 112.03 14.45 110.72 15.14 113.39 13.84 117.89 16.75 Parent gender (% female) 84.5 87.5 81.5
Parent age (years) 36.16 4.21 36.46 3.99 35.85 4.44 Language spoken to child
Dutch English Turkish Italian German Other 80.9 7.3 1.8 1.8 1.8 6.4 78.6 8.9 0 1.8 1.8 8.9 83.3 5.6 3.7 1.9 1.9 3.7
Country born (Netherlands) 80.0 83.9 75.9 Family situation
Living together Single
Living apart/ in divorce
93.6 4.5 1.8 92.9 7.1 0 94.4 1.9 3.8
Parent highest education University
Higher vocational Intermediate vocational Secondary
Primary (or less)
63.6 24.5 4.5 1.8 0 64.3 25.0 3.6 1.8 0 63.0 24.1 5.6 1.9 0
Had received professional help for child behavior problems (% no)
Procedure
Parents were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a control condition. The experimental condition included a frustration manipulation (i.e., challenging parenting
situation), whereas the control condition included no frustration. The frustration situation was designed to elicit disruptive child behavior due to a double frustration: (1) Children were denied to play with the (visible) toys; and (2) children were denied their parents’ attention who needed to perform a different task. Participants were unaware of the specific aims of this research to prevent biased results. They were told that the study investigated parent-child interactions in different play situations. Prior to the experiment, parents provided informed consent for themselves and their children, and an experimenter assessed parents’ baseline arousal. All subsequent parent-child interactions were video-recorded and observed through a one-way mirror.
The experiment consisted of four tasks, each five minutes in length (see Figure 3). First, parents and children engaged in a free play situation with toys to make them feel
comfortable and provide equal starting conditions for all families. Second, in the experimental condition, the parent cleared up all toys into a transparent box before s/he started filling out a number of questionnaires, which consisted of more questions than the parent could manage to complete. In the control condition, the parent continued to play with the child and experienced no additional challenging situation. Third, the experimenter re-entered the room with a new set of motivating toys. While the child was encouraged to play with these toys, the parent completed a brief questionnaire regarding their feelings of self-efficacy and stress during the previous task. At the end of this questionnaire, the parent read the instructions for the
following task, in which s/he requested the child to clear up the new set of toys without providing any assistance. This task was designed to observe how parents’ responses to challenging situations would influence their proactive positive parenting, and subsequent
child compliance. The task finished as soon as the child had cleared up all toys or after a period of five minutes. Fourth, parent and child engaged in a pleasant free-play activity with a third set of toys. This task was designed to help them to recover from the challenging
situation.
Following the experiment, parents were debriefed about the specific purposes of this study, including the challenging parenting situation that they could have perceived as stressful.
Figure 3. Sequence of the experimental design, including assessments during the tasks: SE = self-efficacy, PPP = proactive positive parenting, DCB = disruptive child behavior.
Measures
Outcome variables.
Parental state self-efficacy. Following Task 2, parents in both conditions completed a brief questionnaire about their levels of self-efficacy during the task (Appendix A). It consists of six statements regarding parents’ thoughts of self-efficacy (e.g., “I managed the task well.”). Parents rated each statement on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = to a large extent). The self-efficacy scale showed good internal consistency (α = .87).
Parental state stress and arousal. Parental state emotions were assessed through self-reported stress and arousal. Following Task 2, parents in both conditions completed a brief questionnaire that assessed their levels of stress during the previous task (Appendix A). It consists of seven statements regarding parents’ feelings of stress (e.g., “I felt stressed.”).
Parents rated each statement on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = to a large extent). The stress scale showed good internal consistency (α = .88).
Parental arousal was assessed through parental skin conductance levels (SCL) during Task 2. Electrodermal activity was measured using two curved 20 x 16 mm Ag/AgCl
electrodes attached to the medial phalanges of the parents’ index and middle finger of their non-writing hand. SCL were recorded at a sampling rate of 50Hz with Versatile Stimulus Response Registration Program (Vsrrp98 v7.0; Technical Support Group of the Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam). The average scores were divided by baseline SCL scores to calculate difference scores in arousal.
Proactive positive parenting. Verbal proactive positive parenting was observed by coding parents’ use of direct commands to instruct children to clear up in Task 3. Parental use of direct commands has been shown to elicit higher levels of child compliance (e.g., Eyberg & Robinson, 1982). Direct commands (e.g., “Please put away your toys.”) clearly
communicate parental expectations and thus, make it easier for children to comply, whereas indirect commands such as questions (e.g., “Do you want to put away your toys?”) or vague suggestions (e.g., “Make the room nice and tidy.”) do not clearly request compliance and thus, make it more difficult for the child to understand parental expectations (McMahon &
Forehand, 2003; McNeil & Hembree-Kigin, 2010). A command was coded as direct if it was stated positive, direct, and requested one behavior at a time (Eyberg & Robinson, 1982). Direct command was analyzed as a binary variable, either direct (1) or not (0). Direct commands were assessed by three raters who were blind to the conditions. Interrater agreements using kappa coefficients were computed for 30% of the sample and showed acceptable agreement (κ = .87).
Non-verbal proactive positive parenting was observed by coding parents’ positive affect during Task 3. Positive affect has been shown to help parents to avoid negative
parenting strategies after highly stressful situations with their children (Miller, Kahle, Lopez, & Hastings, 2015). Percentages of positive affect were analyzed as the total number of present smiling expressions in five second intervals divided by the total number of intervals. Positive affect was assessed by three graduate student level raters who were blind to the conditions. Interrater agreements using interclass correlations (ICC) were computed for 30% of the sample and showed acceptable agreement (ICC = .80).
Child compliance. Child compliance was assessed in two ways: first, the child’s immediate compliance with the parent’s instruction to clear up, and second, the child’s persistence in maintaining the clean-up activity. Child immediate compliance implied that the child started to clear up within five seconds after the parent’s initial instruction. Child
persistent compliance implied that the clean-up task (i.e., time the child spends clearing up the toys) proceeded without off-task activities. Off-task activities described breaks of at least 10 seconds in which the child did not focus on clearing up (i.e., playing with the toys, walking away). Child compliance was analyzed as a combined score of immediate and persistent compliance (2 = both immediate and persistent compliance; 1 = either immediate or persistent compliance only; 0 = neither immediate nor persistent compliance). This approach had been frequently and reliably used to indicate compliant behavior in disruptive children (e.g.,
Brinkmeyer & Eyberg, 2003). Compliance was assessed by three graduate student level raters who were blind to the conditions. Interrater agreements using weighted kappa coefficients were computed for 30% of the sample and showed acceptable agreement (κ = .813).
Moderating variables.
Parental trait self-efficacy. The efficacy subscale of the Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC; Gibaud-Wallston & Wandersman, 1978) was used to assess parental trait self-efficacy. It consists of seven items, which address the extent to which parents feel competent in their parenting role (e.g., “If anyone can find the answer to what is troubling my
child, I am the one”). Parents rated their thoughts in the past three weeks on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree; 6 = strongly disagree). The scale showed adequate internal consistency in the present sample (α = .76).
Parental trait stress and baseline arousal. Self-reported stress and baseline arousal represented two dimensions of trait emotions. The stress subscale from the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) was used to assess parents’ feelings of stress. It consists of ten items, which address irritability and nervous tension (e.g., “I found it difficult to relax”). Parents rated their feelings in the last three weeks on a 4-point scale (1 = did not apply to me at all; 4 = applied to me very much, or most of the time). The scale demonstrated high internal consistency in the present sample (α = .91).
Prior to Task 1, parents’ skin conductance levels during their resting states were measured for 2-3 minutes to assess baseline arousal.
Covariate.
Daily positive parenting strategies. Parents’ positivity in daily interactions with their children was assessed with the positivity subscale of the pre-school revision of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ-Pr; Clerkin, Halperin, Marks, & Policaro, 2007). It consists of seven items (e.g., “You praise your child if he/she behaves well”) on a 5-point scale (1 = never; 5 = always). The scale demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α = .76).
Manipulation check.
Disruptive child behavior during the frustration task. The child’s level of disruptive behavior was coded in 10 second intervals during Task 2. Disruptive behaviors included nagging, crying, attempting to leave, being destructive or aggressive, or not following parents’ commands. Disruptive child behavior was scored as the total number of disruptive incidents. Two coders who were blind to the conditions rated children’s behavior. Interrater agreements were computed for 10% of the sample and showed perfect agreement (ICC = .99).
Analytic Strategy
Outcome variables. Six outcome variables were analyzed. Parental state self-efficacy, state stress, arousal, and positive affect were measured as continuous variables with higher scores indicating higher outcome levels. Parental use of direct commands was dichotomous with a score of 1 indicating a direct command. Child compliance was a three-level ordinal variable with higher scores indicating higher levels of compliance.
Preliminary analyses. Randomization tests were conducted on important
demographic variables (e.g., child gender, age, behavior scores) to ensure that families were randomly divided across the frustration and control condition. Correlations between all outcome variables were conducted to assess their associations and if necessary, take appropriate steps to account for strong associations. Correlations of r < .1 were considered negligible effects, of r >= .1 small effects, of r >= .3 medium effects, and of r >= .5 large effects (Cohen, 1988).
Main analyses. To test hypothesis 1, we planned to conduct three separate ANOVAs to test the causal effects of a challenging parenting situation on parental state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal, respectively. However, to account for a high correlation between self-efficacy and stress, we chose to conduct a MANOVA instead. The power to detect a medium effect with this analysis was 56.35%.
To test hypothesis 2, we conducted multivariate regression analyses to test whether parental trait self-efficacy, stress, and baseline arousal moderate the effects of the challenging parenting situation on parental state self-efficacy, stress, and emotional arousal, respectively. The power to detect a medium interaction effect was 39.15%.
To test hypothesis 3 and 4, we used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test, first, whether state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal mediate the effects of a challenging parenting situation on parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies and, second, whether these
parenting strategies in turn affect children’s compliance. The hypothesized full mediation model (see Figure 2) was compared to a partial mediation model that included direct effects of the challenging situation on direct commands and positive affect. The package Lavaan
(Rosseel, 2012) for the software program R 3.3.0 (R Core Team, 2016) was used to fit the proposed path models to the data. To estimate model parameters and evaluate the goodness of fit of the models, we used diagonally weighted least squares with robust variants. We handled missing values with listwise deletion. Since the two models were not nested and thus could not be compared using conventional difference tests, we used several fit indices to determine which model fit better: the chi-square test of model fit, the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1990), and the root mean squared error of approximation with its associated
confidence interval (RMSEA; Steiger & Lind, 1980). A significant chi-square value indicates a significant discrepancy between the model-implied covariance matrix and the observed covariance matrix. CFI values >= 0.95 indicate good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). RMSEA values <= 0.05 indicate close fit, values <= 0.08 indicate approximate fit, values <= 0.10 indicate mediocre fit, and values > 0.10 indicate poor fit. Where model modification was necessary, we used correlation residuals and modification indices (MIs). Correlation residuals > .10 and MIs above the critical value of the chi-square test were considered substantial. Explained variance of R2 >= .01 was considered small, R2 >= .06 was considered moderate,
and R2 >= .14 was considered large (Cohen, 1988). The overall power to reject the null model
based on the overall chi-squared test if the alternative model (i.e., just-identified model) is true in the population was 99%, and the power to detect the partial mediation effects if the mediation model is true in the population was 92%.
Figure 4. Hypothesized model to test the mediating effects of state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal. Squares represent observed variables; one-sided arrows represent direct effects between variables. Circles represent residual factors ζ.
Due to insufficient power, we could not conduct a multiple group mediation analysis (i.e., moderated mediation) that includes the moderating effects of trait self-efficacy, stress, and baseline arousal on the associations between a challenging parenting situation and state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal.
To better understand the specific effects of direct command and positive affect on child compliance, we conducted a separate ordinal logistic regression analysis using the package MASS for R (Ripley et al., 2017). The power to detect an odds ratio of 1.75 for the association between parents’ direct commands and child compliance was 73.6%.
Results Preliminary Analyses
First, missing items on the questionnaires (24 items from six parents) were replaced with the average response scores of the parent per subscale. Some data were omitted from the analyses because of violations to the study procedures: for state self-efficacy and stress
because an additional child was present during Task 2 (n = 1), for arousal because of equipment failures (n = 3), for trait self-efficacy and trait stress because parents did not complete the questionnaire (n = 3), for parental use of direct commands and child compliance because parents failed to give a command or because children started to clear up prior to the parents’ command (n = 4).
Second, mild outliers (> 1.5 SD) were detected for all variables, except baseline arousal, and were replaced by the highest non-outlying value of the distribution. Outcome variables per condition were not substantially skewed (< |2|) or kurtotic (< |3|).
Table 2 displays the correlations between all outcome variables. We calculated Pearson correlations for continuous variables, polyserial correlations for continuous and dichotomous or ordinal variables, and polychoric correlations for dichotomous or ordinal variables. State self-efficacy and state stress correlated strongly and significantly (r = −.58, p < .001), indicating that while they may reflect different constructs, they are also interrelated.
Table 2.
Correlations between Parent (1-5) and Child Outcomes (6).
Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
The manipulation was effective in increasing children’s disruptive child behavior (t(60.995) = 6.75, p < .001), which was a large effect (Cohen’s d = 1.27). Specifically,
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 1 State self-efficacy 25.82 3.87 2 State stress 12.08 4.13 −.582 *** 3 Arousal 1.57 0.31 −.111 .106 4 Instruction 0.20 0.40 −.038 .073 −.054 5 Positive affect 0.23 0.17 .083 .047 .066 .340 ** 6 Child Compliance 1.08 0.78 .079 −.054 .078 .274 * −.065
children in the frustration condition displayed on average approximately 14 times as many instances of disruptive behavior as children in the control condition.
We detected no major violations against the assumptions of the separate analyses. The histograms of residuals and normal Q-Q plots showed no substantial deviations from
normality. Despite some few minor outliers, residual plots showed little evidence against the assumption of homoscedasticity. Some variance inflation factors (VIF) were above 10, which may indicate multicollinearity. However, all correlations between the predictor variables were negligible. While Box’s test indicated no violation against MANOVA’s assumption of equal error covariance matrices in the population, Levene’s test indicated violations against the assumption of equal population variances for parents’ self-efficacy and stress. However, the results are expected to be robust based on the similar sample sizes across conditions (n = 56 and n = 54, respectively).
Main Analyses
Effect of the frustration on parents' state cognitions and emotions. As expected, the frustration task changed parents’ cognitions and emotions (Wilks Λ = .747, F(3, 102) = 11.52, p < .001). Specifically, univariate ANOVAs (Bonferroni-adjusted α = .017) revealed that the frustration task strongly reduced parental self-efficacy (F(1, 107) = 16.55, p < .001, d = 0.78), and strongly increased parents’ stress (F(1, 107) = 19.16, p < .001, d = 0.84) and arousal (F(1, 107) = 9.31, p = .003, d = 0.60; Figure 5).
Figure 5. The effects of the challenging situation on parents’ self-efficacy (A), stress (B), and arousal (C).
** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Moderation by parents’ trait cognitions and emotions. Consistent with our expectations, trait self-efficacy significantly moderated the association between the challenging situation and parents’ state self-efficacy. The self-efficacy model explained a large proportion of the variance in state self-efficacy (R2 = .28). The slope for the interaction
effect between condition and trait self-efficacy was moderate and statistically significant at the Bonferroni-adjusted significance level (b = −0.34, t(102) = −2.66, p = .009, η2 = .065).
The manipulation thus compromised state levels of self-efficacy particularly in parents who had lower levels of trait efficacy compared to parents who had higher levels of trait self-efficacy (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Interaction effect between state self-efficacy and trait self-efficacy. * p < .05.
Contrary to expectations, trait stress and baseline arousal did not moderate the effect of the challenging situation on parents’ state stress and arousal, respectively. The stress model explained a large proportion of the variance in state stress (R2 = .21), but the small interaction
effect between condition and trait stress was not statistically significant (b = 0.20, t(102) = 1.67, p = .098, η2 = .027). This indicates that parents’ stress levels in the frustration task did
not depend on their more general stress levels (Figure 7A). The arousal model explained a moderate proportion (10.18%) of the variance in arousal (R2 = .10). The small and
non-significant interaction effect between condition and baseline arousal (b = 0.02, t(102) = 1.49, p = .139, η2 = .021) indicated that parents’ levels of arousal during the frustration task did not
Figure 7. Interaction effects between state stress and trait stress (A) and arousal and baseline arousal (B).
Mediation by parents’ cognitions and emotions. To test the hypothesis that state self-efficacy, stress, and arousal mediate the effect of a challenging situation on parents’ use of positive affect and direct commands, we fit a series of path models to indicate which model described the data best. Table 3 shows global fit indices for all models. The partial mediation model (i.e., Model 3) provided the best fit to the data, suggesting that the challenging situation not only indirectly but also directly impacts parenting. In a first step, we tested the full
mediation model which failed to adequately describe how the frustration condition influenced parents’ proactive positive parenting through their cognitions and emotions. Therefore, we added a covariance between state self-efficacy and state stress to account for a high
correlation residual (−.51) between these two variables. This modified second model provided approximate fit based on some but not all fit indices. In a third step, we thus tested the partial mediation model with direct effects of the challenging situation on parents’ proactive
parenting strategies to assess whether the challenging situation directly influences parenting strategies. This model was superior to all previous models by providing good fit based on all fit indices. Finally, we added parents’ daily parenting practices as a predictor of their
proactive parenting practices to investigate whether parents’ cognitions and emotions influenced their proactive positive strategies above and beyond existing parenting skills. Parents’ daily parenting practices predicted neither parents’ direct commands (β = 0.07, p = .653), nor their positive affect (β = 0.15, p = .159) in Task 3. Since this model did not perform better than the previous model, we accepted the previous partial mediation model as final model (see Figure 8). This model explained a large proportion of the variance in parents’ proactive positive parenting (R2 = .18) and a small proportion of the variance in child
compliance (R2 = .07).
Table 3.
Fit Indices for all Models.
Model χ2 (df) p CFI RMSEA [90% CI]
Model 1: Full mediation 39.921 (13) <.001 0.546 0.143 [0.094, 0.195] Model 2: Full mediation (incl. covariate
between self-efficacy and stress) 19.598 (12) .075 0.872 0.079 [0.000, 0.140] Model 3: Partial mediation 11.121 (10) .348 0.981 0.033 [0.000, 0.116] Model 4: Partial mediation (incl. daily
Figure 8. Final model with standardized parameter estimates. χ2(10) = 11.12, p = .348, CFI =
0.981, RMSEA = 0.033. Squares represent observed variables; one-sided arrows direct effects between variables; double-sided arrows covariances. Circles represent residual factors ζ. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Table 4 provides an overview of all direct and indirect effects. Similar to the results of the MANOVA analysis, the effects of the challenging situation on parents’ self-efficacy, stress, and arousal were moderate and statistically significant. Consistent with our predictions, parents’ state self-efficacy significantly increased parents’ use of positive expressions. With every one unit increase in parents’ state self-efficacy, parents’ use of positive affect increased by 1.1 percent, controlling for all other variables. State self-efficacy mediated the effect of the challenging situation on parents’ positive affect, indicating that following the challenging condition, parents reduced their positive affect by 3.4 percent through their decreased levels of self-efficacy. This indirect effect approached significance (p = .052) but is practically negligible. Contrary to our expectations, parents in the frustration condition used significantly more, instead of fewer, direct commands (β = .41) than parents in the control condition.
Parents’ stress and arousal neither significantly influenced parents’ use of positive affect and direct commands, nor significantly mediated the effects of the challenging situation on parents’ use of proactive positive parenting.
Table 4.
Direct and Indirect Effects of Explanatory Variables on Outcome Variables.
Outcome variables
Self-efficacy (SE) Stress Arousal
Explanatory variable B 95% CI β B 95% CI β B 95% CI β
Condition 3.05*** 1.61, 4.48 0.40 −3.17*** −4.73, −1.60 −0.40 −0.19** −0.31, −0.07 −0.30
Direct command (DC) Positive affect (PA) Child compliance
B 95% CI β B 95% CI β B 95% CI β Condition −0.45 −1.24, 0.34 −0.14 −0.05 −0.13, 0.02 −0.16 - - - Condition SE 0.14 −0.06, 0.34 0.07 −0.03+ −0.00, 0.07 0.10 - - - Condition Stress 0.01 −0.21, 0.22 0.00 −0.02 −0.04, 0.01 −0.05 - - - Condition Arousal 0.09 −0.08, 0.25 0.04 −0.00 −0.02, 0.02 −0.00 - - - Condition DC - - - −0.23+ −0.48, 0.02 −0.11 Condition PA - - - −0.02 −0.05, 0.09 0.01 Self-efficacy 0.01 0.00, 0.02 0.25 0.01* 0.00, 0.02 0.25 - - - Stress −0.00 −0.07, 0.07 −0.01 0.01 −0.00, 0.01 - - - Arousal −0.45 −1.24, 0.34 −0.14 0.00 −0.11, 0.12 0.00 - - - Direct command - - - 0.27* 0.03, 0.51 0.27 Positive Affect - - - −0.29 −1.47, 0.88 −0.05
Note. B = unstandardized effect, β = standardized effect.
+p < .08. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Parents’ proactive positive parenting predicting child compliance. Confirming our hypothesis in part, parents’ use of direct commands, but not parents’ positive affect, predicted child compliance. Specifically, when parents used a direct command, children were 23% more likely to fully comply than partially or not at all (OR = 3.27, 95% CI [1.24, 9.17]). While children were more likely to comply after a direct command than after an indirect command, only few children did not comply following either a direct or indirect command (Figure 9).
However, when parents increased their positive affect by ten percent, children were only 3% more likely to fully comply (OR = 0.27, 95% CI [0.03, 2.18]). The model fit significantly better than an intercept-only model, (χ2(2, N = 106) = 6.19, p = .045), explaining a moderate
proportion of variance in child compliance (R2 = .06).
Figure 9. Child compliance following parents’ instruction.
Finally, sensitivity analyses including initially detected outliers and including adjusted values revealed no differences for any of the study outcomes.
Discussion
Disruptive child behavior can elicit negative parenting and result in coercive parent-child interactions. Much remains unknown about what determines parents’ use of effective strategies, as opposed to negative behavior, to manage disruptive child behavior and avoid coercive behaviors. The present study investigated whether parents’ cognitive (i.e., thoughts of self-efficacy) and emotional responses (i.e., feelings of stress and arousal) to a challenging situation that elicits disruptive child behavior explain parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies, as opposed to coercive parent-child interactions. Our results suggest that
specifically parents’ cognitive responses impact positive parenting behavior, particularly in parents whose trait cognitions make them most vulnerable to the adverse effects of
challenging situations.
Parents’ Cognitive and Emotional Pathways to Coercive Parent-child Interactions Consistent with our expectations, parents showed lower levels of self-efficacy and higher levels of perceived stress and physiological arousal during the challenging situation compared to the control situation. This is in line with ample research indicating that stressful situations, particularly those in which children are more disruptive, influence parents’
cognitive and emotional reactions (Crnic & Low, 2002; Goldstein et al., 2007; Leahy-Warren & McCarthy, 2011). As predicted, parents whose self-efficacy decreased in reaction to the challenging situation used less nonverbal proactive positive parenting (i.e., positive affect). Low parental self-efficacy is indeed often associated with low proactive positive parenting (e.g., Ardelt & Eccles, 2001; Mouton & Roskam, 2015). Specifically, disruptive child behavior might make parents feel less in control, which increases doubts in their abilities to use effective strategies (Jerusalem & Mittag, 1995). If parents are unable to regulate these negative cognitions, they might not only dwell on the difficult aspects of the challenging situation but also anticipate negative rather than positive outcomes. While parents who believe they can do well are more motivated to use effective strategies when they face challenges, parents who resign to their negative cognitions are less motivated to persevere in challenging situations and perform much lower (Bandura, 2006). Consequently, low self-efficacious thoughts might elicit anxiety as well as avoidance behaviors and thus, minimize parents’ ability and effort to use proactive positive strategies that may help them to avoid engaging in coercive interactions.
Particularly parents who seemed most vulnerable, as indicated by lower levels of trait self-efficacy, showed reduced state self-efficacy and subsequent positive affect in response to
the challenging situation. This finding was in line with our expectations and indicates that parents with low trait self-efficacy have difficulties to maintain self-efficacious thoughts when their children display disruptive behaviors. Parents with low trait self-efficacy might perceive disruptive child behavior as a situation which they cannot control. Consequently, they might engage in fewer attempts to gain control because they do not expect their continuous efforts to be successful (Bandura, 2006; Jones & Prinz, 2005). If parents do not persevere in the face of difficulty, they might experience continuous failures, which reinforce their negative
cognitions. Parents with high trait self-efficacy, on the contrary, might perceive disruptive child behavior as a challenge that increases their motivation and effort to overcome the obstacle. Thus, negative cognitions about their own parenting abilities explain at least in part why some parents fail to use proactive positive strategies in response to disruptive child behavior.
While parents’ self-efficacy influenced parents’ use of positive affect, it did not influence parents’ use of direct commands. This finding was unexpected and indicates that thoughts of self-efficacy might not affect all aspects of parenting behavior equally.
Specifically, it is possible that parents’ self-efficacy does not affect their proactive control strategies directly, but only indirectly through changes in goal-setting behaviors (Brody, Flor, & Gibson, 1999; Bandura, 1989). Parents with low self-efficacy might set lower goals for themselves, and possibly for their children, which elicits less effort and control to succeed.
Unlike parents’ cognitive reactions, parents’ emotional reactions to disruptive child behavior (i.e., feelings of stress and physiological arousal) did not influence their use of proactive positive strategies. This was surprising since we would expect that emotions predict parents’ subsequent behaviors based on their property to elicit action tendencies (Scherer, 2005). One possibility might be that parents’ emotions predict their subsequent behaviors only indirectly through parents’ cognitive processing of disruptive child behaviors (Leerkes et al.,
2016). Thus, how parents appraised their emotions in response to disruptive child behavior, rather than parents’ emotions per se, might influence parents’ use of strategies. This reasoning matches the strong association we found between emotions and cognitions. However, we could not investigate whether parents’ emotions changed their cognitions, because we assessed both constructs simultaneously.
Another possibility might be that parents’ stress and physiological reactivity are strongly bound to situational circumstances. We investigated parenting strategies in the clean-up task, which took place after the challenging situation. The clean-clean-up situation may represent a situation that parents newly appraise, relatively irrespective of their experiences in the previous task. Rather than their emotions from the challenging situation persisting onto the new situation, parents’ situational emotions during the clean-up task may influence their use of proactive positive parenting strategies. This explanation corresponds to the intensive, but rapid and relatively brief nature of emotional episodes (Farb et al., 2013; Scherer, 2005).
Moreover, this explanation is in line with our finding that parents’ trait levels of stress and baseline arousal did not affect their levels of stress and arousal during the challenging situation. If the effects of stress and arousal are bound to particular events, we would not expect that parents with higher levels of trait emotionality are more strongly affected by challenging situations than parents with lower levels of general stress and baseline arousal. However, we also have to note that most parents in our sample were highly educated and living together with a partner. These parents might not be exposed to stressors that greatly influence daily-life functioning, such as unemployment, economic struggles, or being a single parent (Conger et al., 1992; Whitesell, Teti, Crosby, & Kim, 2015). Particularly these long-term stressors might predict less proactive positive parenting and thus, display a risk of developing coercive parent-child interactions. Thus, we were unable to investigate how parents with more severe trait stress levels react to mild stressors in a laboratory setting.
However, one finding might be relevant. Although we did not analyze moderation effects for each condition separately, visual representations of the moderation effects suggest that parents with high levels of trait stress perceive playing with their children (i.e., control condition) as stressful as the challenging situation (see Figure 7A). Therefore, future studies may
investigate whether the impact of severe trait stress levels depends on how challenging the situation is.
In our study, neither parents’ cognitions nor their emotions explained parents’ use of verbal proactive positive strategies (i.e., direct commands). However, parents’ use of direct commands was directly shaped by the challenging situation: Parents were more likely to use direct commands to elicit child compliance when they had experienced the challenging compared to the control situation. This finding was contrary to our prediction that the challenging situation would reduce parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies. It might be that parents who previously experienced disruptive child behavior exercise more control over their children, granting them less autonomy than parents in the control condition (Verhoeven et al., 2010). These parents might have already used multiple commands in the challenging situation to keep control over their child’s disruptive behavior and continued to use them in the new situation. In contrast, parents in the control condition who experienced mainly positive child behaviors in the previous situation might have granted their children more autonomy and continued to use these less confrontational indirect strategies by
providing their children with choices rather than commands (e.g., “Shall we clear up?”). The practice of using more stringent parenting behaviors in response to challenging situations is in line with our finding that parents who experienced a challenging situation expressed less positive affect towards their child as a function of decreased self-efficacy.
Consistent with our expectations, parents’ use of verbal positive proactive strategies (i.e., direct commands) predicted reductions in disruptive child behavior and thus, the
avoidance of coercive interactions. This is in line with findings that children are less disruptive when parents use proactive control strategies (Chamberlain & Patterson, 1995; Martin, 1981). However, contrary to our expectations, disruptive child behavior was not predicted by nonverbal positive proactive strategies (i.e., positive affect). One explanation may be that verbal strategies are more effective than nonverbal strategies for managing situational child behavior and thus, for avoiding coercive interactions. Verbal strategies may communicate more clearly what the parent expects from the child in a certain situation, whereas nonverbal strategies serve as support to enforce parents’ expectations. Nonverbal proactive positive strategies might further contribute to reduce disruptive child behavior in the long term, by helping children to effectively regulate their emotions and increasing emotional well-being (Eisenberg et al., 2005; Karazsia & Wildman, 2009).
Limitations and Future Directions
This study has some limitations. First, the challenging situation was not only stressful for children but arguably also for their parents: They were forced to terminate the pleasant playing situation and complete questionnaires while the child was not entertained. Thus, while our manipulation check showed that the situation indeed evoked disruptive behavior in
children, we cannot rule out the possibility that changes in parent-child dynamics other than disruptive child behavior alone changed parents’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. However, since disruptive behaviors are rarely detached from challenging situations for both the parent and the child, and because parent-child interactions are always bidirectional, the investigation of parental responses to challenging situations that elicit disruptive child behavior provides higher ecological validity.
Second, this study investigated parents’ use of proactive positive parenting strategies as a means to avoid coercive parent-child interactions, but it did not investigate parents’ engagement in coercive interactions directly. Fewer proactive positive parenting strategies
alone may not fully capture the complexity of coercive interactions. For example, parents who used proactive strategies (i.e., direct commands) in our study might have still used negative strategies, such as negative affect, to exercise control over their children. Therefore, parents’ combined use of proactive positive and negative strategies might better explain why children remain disruptive. While our brief clean-up task may not be particularly suitable to observe negative parenting strategies, future studies may employ follow-up tasks that elicit more frustration, for example denying the child visible candy or constraining the child in a high chair while the parent has to accomplish another task. In such tasks, children become more disruptive, and thus, parents are more likely to show coercive behaviors.
Third, we observed immediate child compliance as an indicator of child
disruptiveness. While this is a frequently used approach, children’s initial noncompliance towards clearing up the toys might not merely reflect their opposition against their parents’ demands, but also the children’s age-appropriate striving for autonomy. Measuring children’s immediate compliance might not allow children to act autonomous, including to request reasoning for the parents’ demand, but only assesses whether children obey. We partly overcame this potential limitation by using a measure that combines immediate compliance with persistent compliance, to test whether children maintain their oppositional behaviors. Future studies may further counter this potential obstacle by employing tasks that promote less autonomy, such as taking the toys away from the child rather than requesting the child to clear up the toys.
Despite these limitations, this study is among the first to provide insight into the specific cognitive and emotional pathways that explain why it can be difficult for parents to use proactive positive strategies in the light of disruptive child behavior. In addition, our study highlights the importance of distinguishing between different aspects of proactive positive parenting, to understand which strategies are affected less or more by parents’ cognitive and
emotional responses to disruptive child behavior. Although cognitions and emotions are related, our findings further suggest that they are in fact meaningful different, which supports the relevance of investigating their impacts both combined and separately.
To better understand the role of parents’ emotional reactivity in parent-child
interactions, future research may investigate how emotional responses affect more immediate situational parenting behaviors, by examining dyadic interactions during challenging
situations. Such an approach further requires situational measures of parents’ stress levels. With regard to parents’ arousal, skin conductance responses are a powerful tool to measure immediate reactions to a particular event (e.g., Wood, Ver Hoef, & Knight, 2014). Further, to better understand how parents’ cognitions impact their behaviors, future research may
investigate whether parents’ success or failure during the challenging situation (i.e., successful or unsuccessful termination of disruptive child behavior) determine their
cognitions and subsequent parenting behaviors. Since previous experiences of success shape self-efficacy, parents who successfully terminate their child’s disruptive behavior in a challenging situation might feel more self-efficacious and thus, use more proactive positive parenting strategies in subsequent interactions.
The role of cognitions in parents’ reactions to disruptive child behavior might explain to some extent why parenting interventions tend to yield only small effects on disruptive child behavior. If parents’ use of proactive positive parenting depends only in part on their acquired skills, and for an important part on situational conditions such as parents’ self-efficacy, then teaching parenting skills alone will not guarantee that parents use these skills in their daily life. The results of this study indicate that parenting interventions may need to focus more strongly on maintaining parents’ self-efficacious thoughts in challenging situations. Elevated levels of self-efficacy help parents to stay positive and thus, might help them to regulate their own as well as their children’s emotions. Initial evidence indicates that brief interventions that
manipulate parents’ thoughts of self-efficacy indeed increase parents’ use of proactive
positive parenting strategies and reduce disruptive child behavior (Mouton & Roskam, 2015). Further research can use this knowledge to develop intervention components that teach parents to regulate their thoughts during challenging situations.
Conclusion
Parents’ sensitivity to disruptive child behavior in challenging situations explains their use of proactive positive parenting strategies. Specifically, parents’ cognitive (i.e., low
thoughts of self-efficacy), and not their emotional responses (i.e., feelings of stress and arousal), to challenging situations explain parents’ display of positivity towards the child. Parents with lower trait levels of self-efficacy seem to be most vulnerable to the detrimental effects of challenging situations. Hence, helping parents to regulate and maintain positive cognitions in the face of challenging situations may be a fundamental step to reduce coercive parent-child interactions.
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