For successful social adjustment, it is important for children to be able to deal with negative social feedback and to regulate emotions triggered by this type of feedback. In middle childhood,...Show moreFor successful social adjustment, it is important for children to be able to deal with negative social feedback and to regulate emotions triggered by this type of feedback. In middle childhood, children are spending a growing amount of time with their peers which makes that social skills are becoming more important. The current study is focused on examining the relationship between sensitive parenting and self-control in the context of social evaluation during middle childhood, and examining whether household chaos could be found as a moderating factor in this relationship. The current study was performed within the longitudinal twin study of the Leiden Consortium Individual Development and consisted of a sub-sample of 215 participants (7-9 years old). Self-control was measured in a well-validated experimental task (the Social Network Aggression Task), parental sensitivity was measured with a parent-child interaction task (the Etch-a-Sketch) and household chaos was measured by a parent report questionnaire (the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale). No relationship was found between sensitive parenting and self-control in the context of social evaluation. Also household chaos was not found as a moderating factor. This study contributes to a better understanding of what factors influence this less studied type of self-control, suggesting that besides parental influences additional factors such as peer influences may play a bigger role on self-control in a social context in middle childhood.Show less
