Young children’s emotional stress reactions during the COVID-19 outbreak and their associations with parental emotion regulation and parental playfulness

Abstract

Children's emotional adjustment during stressogenic events is highly dependent on their parents' emotional state. The present study explored young children's emotional adjustment during the COVID19 outbreak as it relates to their exposure to stress, and their parents' emotion regulation and playfulness. A sample of 351 Israeli parents of children aged 2-7 years completed online questionnaires. The most frequent stress symptoms in children were nervousness, agitation, and aggression, separation fears and clinging. Parental difficulties in emotion regulation, and the level of exposure to stressogenic situations were both significantly associated with children's stress reactions. Parental emotion regulation fully mediated the relationship between exposure to stress and children's stress reactions. Parental playfulness was only inversely related to children's stress reaction in fathers. These findings underscore the importance of parental emotion skills for children's emotional adjustment during stressful times.

Digital Literacy as a Condition for Positive Experience of the COVID-19 Lockdown for Families With Preschool Children

“…Children of preschool age need a direct partner, their communication can be mediated by joint activities with other children, it is then that an occasion arises and a semantic field appears necessary for communication. These data generally match with the estimates of other researchers, made, in particular, on the material of a survey of families in the United States [19]. In general, we share the opinion that if during the lockdown period there is an increase in the time of communication between children and peers through digital technologies, then this was necessarily facilitated by the active organizational role of an adult.…”

“…One of the objectives of this study was to determine the typical patterns of behavior of children and adults in the family, which ensured a positive experience of the COVID-19 lockdown. According to the conclusions made in the works of authors from Turkey and Israel devoted to the problem of the psychological climate in families during time had the ability of parents to organize joint play activities with children [18,19]. Our data confirm this position, and also indicate that it is especially important for parents during this period to be ready to help children in their studies, accompanying children with preschool tasks completion.…”

Students’s Academic Level Stress During Online Learning in Physical Education

“…The level of academic stress in students has increased with online learning during the Covid 19 pandemic (Shorer & Leibovich, 2020). The dissemination of learning during a pandemic through digital portals will require access to laptops/computers and gadgets for students (Polizzi, 2020).…”

“…The state of students at moderate to severe stress levels can hinder learning (Amin, 2018). Increasing the amount of academic stress will decrease academic ability, which will impact the student achievement index (Shorer & Leibovich, 2020). Other studies have shown that students evaluated during the pandemic period exhibit significantly higher anxiety, depression, and stress than students during regular times (Wang, Zhao, & Maia, 2020 (Shorer & Leibovich, 2020) was used in this study to measure students' stress levels.…”

Exploring Paternal Mentalization Among Fathers of Toddlers Through a Clay-Sculpting Task

“…It is very difficult to assess the exact effect these events may have had on the interviews and findings, as the fathers were not asked directly about this topic. Further investigation into the effects of national life-threatening situations on paternal mentalization may be of special relevance due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications on parent–child interactions (e.g., Shorer and Leibovich, 2020 ).…”