Children’s psychosocial functioning in is known to be influenced by parental emotion discussion in early childhood. However, the associations between parental emotion discussion and children’s...Show moreChildren’s psychosocial functioning in is known to be influenced by parental emotion discussion in early childhood. However, the associations between parental emotion discussion and children’s psychosocial functioning have mainly been studied in the typically hearing (TH) population of children. Little is known about this association in the deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) child population, who tend to be at risk of having lower psychosocial functioning. Our study investigated the impact of parental emotion discussion on three areas of DHH and TH children’s psychosocial functioning (externalizing behavior, peer problems, and prosocial behavior) with a cross-sectional study design using parent report data on 215 preschoolers aged 1–7.5 years (49.3% girls, 88 DHH). Contrary to what was previously reported in the literature, we found that DHH and TH children did not differ in psychosocial functioning, nor did their parents differ in their level of emotion discussion with their children. In line with previous research, our results indicated that more parental emotion discussion was related to less externalizing, and more prosocial behavior in their children, but no association was found between parental emotion discussion and peer problems in the children. Furthermore, the hearing status of the children did not affect the associations between parental emotion discussion and children’s psychosocial functioning in our study. Future studies should address the heterogeneity of the DHH population and their families, and clinical focus should be placed to optimize family based early intervention programs for DHH youth.Show less