The data from this study indicate that children with BMIs > 85th percentile, as well as with BMIs in the high reference range are more likely than children whose BMI is < 50th percentile to continue to gain weight and reach overweight status by adolescence. Pediatricians can be confident in counseling parents to begin to address the at-risk child's eating and activity patterns rather than delaying in hopes that overweight and the patterns that support it will resolve themselves in due course. Identifying children at risk for adolescent obesity provides physicians with an opportunity for earlier intervention with the goal of limiting the progression of abnormal weight gain that results in the development of obesity-related morbidity.

The relations between 4 sources of family stress (marital dissatisfaction, home chaos, parental depressive symptoms, and job role dissatisfaction) and the emotion socialization practice of mothers' and fathers' responses to children's negative emotions were examined. Participants included 101 couples with 7-year-old children. Dyadic analyses were conducted using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model and relations were tested in terms of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Results suggest that measures of family stress relate to supportive and nonsupportive parental responses, though many of these relations differ by parent gender. The results are discussed in terms of the 3 theoretical hypotheses, all of which are supported to some degree depending on the family stressor examined. Keywords emotion socialization; family stress; parental responses to children's negative emotions; parent genderCoping with a negative emotion, such as sadness, anger, or fear, is a more developmentally difficult task for children than coping with a positive emotion (Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002). Until children have learned how to cope with and regulate their negative feelings, it is important for parents to assist children in handling these experiences. In their responses to their children's negative emotions, parents are providing valuable information to their children about Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jackie A. Nelson, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402. janelso3@uncg.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Fam Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript appropriate emotional displays and successful coping strategies. Parent responses to children's negative emotions have been described as one of the most important methods of direct emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998).Parents vary in the ways they respond to negative emotions, and their responses can be described as either supportive or nonsupportive (Eisenberg et al., 1998;Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002). Supportive responses by parents invite children to explore their feelings by encouraging the child to express emotions or helping the child understand and cope with an emotion-eliciting situation. Nonsupportive responses, such minimizing the child's emotional experience, punishing the child, or becoming distressed by the child's display, send messages to the child that the display of negative emotions is not appropriate or acceptable. Supportive parental responses to children's negative emotions have been found to be related to aspects of emotional and social competence including children's emotion understanding and friendship quality (McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007). By contrast, parental nonsupportive or suppressive responses have been linked to stored negative affect in the child and disorgan...

Associations between maternal sensitivity to infant distress and non-distress and infant socialemotional adjustment were examined in a subset of dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 376). Mothers reported on infant temperament at 1 and 6 months postpartum, and maternal sensitivity to distress and non-distress were observed at 6 months. Child behavior problems, social competence, and affect dysregulation were measured at 24 and 36 months. Maternal sensitivity to distress but not to non-distress was related to fewer behavioral problems and higher social competence. In addition, for temperamentally reactive infants, maternal sensitivity to distress was associated with less affect dysregulation. Sensitivity to non-distress only prevented affect dysregulation if sensitivity to distress was also high.There is considerable evidence that infants develop healthy relationships, behaviors, and socialemotional skills in the context of early sensitive interactions with their mothers (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters & Wall, 1978; van den Boom, 1994 van den Boom, , 1995. Sensitive responses to infant distress may be of more developmental significance in relation to social-emotional outcomes than sensitivity to non-distress. How parents respond to children's negative emotions may teach infants valuable lessons about their own emotional states and what they can expect from social partners. Two studies support the primacy of sensitivity to negative emotions over and above other dimensions of maternal sensitivity in relation to infant-mother attachment security (Del Carmen, Pederson, Huffman & Bryan, 1993;McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006). It is still not known, however, whether sensitivity to infant distress predicts other aspects of early socialemotional adjustment independent of sensitivity to non-distress. Furthermore, the possibility that maternal sensitivity to infant distress is particularly important to the adaptive development of temperamentally reactive infants who are prone to more frequent and intense negative emotions remains to be examined. Thus the goals of the present study were to: 1) examine the associations between maternal sensitivity both to infant distress and to non-distress and indices of early social-emotional development (behavior problems, social competence, and affect dysregulation); and 2) determine if these associations vary based on infant temperament. The Meaning and Measurement of Maternal SensitivityMaternal sensitivity refers to the quality with which mothers respond to their infants' cues in a timely and appropriate manner. Sensitive mothers respond to cues reasonably quickly, establishing a clear contingency between their infants' cues and their responses. Moreover, their responses are well matched to their infants' cues, the developmental level of their infant, and the demands of the current context. In most published studies, single scores representing global ratings of sensitivity in response to diverse infant cues are used as indices of the quality of maternal responsivene...

Trajectories of emotion regulation processes were examined in a community sample of 269 children across the ages of 4 to 7 using hierarchical linear modeling. Maternal depressive symptomatology (Symptom Checklist-90) and children's physiological reactivity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) and vagal regulation (ΔRSA) were explored as predictors of individual differences in trajectories of emotion regulation and negativity (mother-reported Emotion Regulation Checklist; A. M. Shields & D. Cicchetti, 1997). In addition, the authors explored whether children's physiological regulation would moderate the effect of maternal depressive symptomatology on children's emotion regulation trajectories. Results indicated that over time, emotion regulation increased whereas negativity decreased, though considerable individual variability in the pattern of change was observed. Greater maternal depressive symptomatology was associated with less steep emotion regulation trajectories. There was a significant Maternal Depressive Symptomatology × Baseline RSA × Age interaction predicting emotion regulation trajectories. Overall, it appears that the development of emotion regulation over time is compromised when mothers report greater depressive symptomatology. There is also evidence that children's capacity for physiological regulation can buffer some of the adverse consequences associated with maternal depressive symptomatology.Keywords emotion regulation and reactivity; maternal depressive symptomatology; respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)The ability to regulate one's emotions is a critical achievement attained during childhood that has important implications for many dimensions of children's development (Calkins & Howse, 2004;Eisenberg et al., 2001;Sroufe, 1996). Research suggests that deficits in emotion Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alysia Y. Blandon, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC 27402. E-mail: ayblando@uncg.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 July 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript regulation and higher levels of negativity in emotional expression are linked to greater levels of behavior problems, difficulties with peers, and later psychopathology (Calkins, Gill, Johnson, & Smith, 1999;Eisenberg et al., 2001;Keenan, 2000;Shipman, Schneider, & Brown, 2004). Conversely, a greater capacity for emotion regulation has been linked to better academic achievement (Gumora & Arsenio, 2002;Howse, Calkins, Anastopoulos, Keane, & Shelton, 2003) and social skills . Overall, research indicates that the greatest risk for poor psychosocial outcomes occurs when children are highly reactive in emotionally arousing situations, tend to be negative rather than positive in their expressiveness, and have not developed adaptive strategies for managing their emotions (Calkins, Smith, Gill, & Johnson, 1998;Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 20...

Vagal tone (measured via respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and vagal withdrawal (measured by decreases in RSA) have been identified as physiological measures of self-regulation, but little is known how they may relate to the regulation of cognitive activity as measured through executive function (EF) tasks. We expected that baseline measures of vagal tone, thought to be an indicator of attention, would correlate with EF performance. We also predicted that vagal withdrawal would allow for the reorientation of attention that is needed to succeed on EF tasks, but too much withdrawal would be detrimental. RSA measured at baseline was indeed related to EF performance in 220 3.5-year-old children, and those who exhibited a moderate decrease in RSA during the EF tasks outperformed children whose RSA decreased by too little or too much. These findings implicate vagal tone withdrawal as a psychophysiological measure of higher cognitive processes, most likely substantiated through increases in the levels of focused attention.

There is relatively little research on the role of teacher expectations in the early school years or on the importance of teacher expectations as a predictor of future academic achievement. The current study investigated these issues in the reading and mathematic domains for young children. Data from nearly 1,000 children and families at first, third, and fifth grades were included. Child sex and social skills emerged as consistent predictors of teacher expectations of reading and, to a lesser extent, math ability. In predicting actual future academic achievement, results showed that teacher expectations were differentially related to achievement in reading and math. There was no evidence that teacher expectations accumulate but some evidence that they remain durable over time for math achievement. Additionally, teacher expectations were more strongly related to later achievement for groups of children who may be considered to be at risk.

Predictors of maternal sensitivity to infant distress were examined among 259 primiparous mothers. The Adult Attachment Interview, self-reports of personality and emotional functioning, and measures of physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses to videotapes of crying infants were administered prenatally. Maternal sensitivity was observed during three distress-eliciting tasks when infants were 6 months old. Coherence of mind was directly associated with higher maternal sensitivity to distress. Mothers’ heightened emotional risk was indirectly associated with lower sensitivity via mothers’ self-focused and negative processing of infant cry cues. Likewise, high physiological arousal accompanied by poor physiological regulation in response to infant crying was indirectly associated with lower maternal sensitivity to distress through mothers’ self-focused and negative processing of infant cry cues.

The association between parenting stress and child externalizing behavior, and the mediating role of parenting, has yielded inconsistent findings; however, the literature has typically been cross-sectional and unidirectional. In the current study the authors examined the longitudinal transactions among parenting stress, perceived negative parental reactions, and child externalizing at 4, 5, 7, and 10 years old. Models examining parent effects (parenting stress to child behavior), child effects (externalizing to parental reactions and stress), indirect effects of parental reactions, and the transactional associations among all variables, were compared. The transactional model best fit the data, and longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting stress and externalizing behavior. The mediating role of parental reactions was not supported; however, indirect effects suggest that parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behavior. The complex associations among parent and child variables indicate the importance of interventions to improve the parent–child relationship and reducing parenting stress.