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
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often not included in social interactions. This is mainly because non-autistic people frequently misunderstand them and because of this do not...Show moreChildren with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often not included in social interactions. This is mainly because non-autistic people frequently misunderstand them and because of this do not accept, or even reject and dismiss them (Cage et al., 2018). This can make social participation for children with ASD unpleasant and stressful, even though social participation is vital for their development (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Kawachi & Berkman, 2001). To date, only a few studies have examined the impact of limited access to school participation on the psychosocial development of school-aged children with ASD. Furthermore, one may wonder whether certain factors, e.g., individual, family, or school factors, could influence the relation between social participation and psychosocial functioning in children with ASD. To address this gap of knowledge, this study examined the relation between social participation and psychosocial functioning of Dutch children with ASD aged between 4 and 16 years. Furthermore, this study explored whether and to what extent children’s individual characteristics such as IQ, their family characteristics such as parent self-efficacy, and the school characteristics, such as the social environment of the school, could moderate this relation. Two hundred parents of children with ASD from different areas of the Netherlands filled in questionnaires to report about their children’s socioemotional development through the online platform NAR (Dutch Autism Register). The results showed that the more children with ASD participated in social interactions, the fewer psychosocial problems they had. Higher parent self-efficacy predicted fewer psychosocial problems in children with ASD. However, no moderating effects were found. The current study highlights the importance of promoting social participation at school for children with ASD. It also highlights the importance of providing support to the parents of children with ASD and increasing these parents’ self-confidence in supporting their child with ASD.Show less