Child Sensitivity to Parent Praise Varies by Parent Mental Health

• In Event: The Influence of Caregiver Talk on Young Children's Persistence

Abstract

Parent praise is a powerful force that shapes child behavior (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002). Parent praise for effort is positively associated with children’s persistence (Lucca et al., 2019). Parent training programs, the gold standard for the treatment of behavioral problems in children, nearly all include instruction in praise to increase child compliance (Brestan & Eyberg, 1998). However, not all children respond the same to parental praise, and little is known about what shapes individual differences in sensitivity to praise. In the current study, we examine how parent stress and mental health, two factors that can influence the way parents provide feedback to children (Lovejoy et al., 2000), relate to children’s sensitivity to praise.

We use a novel intensive repeated measures design to investigate fluctuations in parent praise and child persistence within a family (Leonard et al., 2022). We employed an ecologically valid task that 3-year-olds are just learning to do independently: brushing their teeth. Parents submitted videos of their child brushing their teeth nightly over 16 days, and parent praise and child brushing time were coded from these videos. Parents completed daily surveys about their stress level, and these values were averaged to create a single daily stress value for each family. Praise sensitivity was estimated by extracting standardized betas from person-specific linear models predicting brushing time with parent praise, controlling for the day of the study. Parents also self-reported family history of anxiety and depression. The final sample included 59 children ages 36-47 months.

Greater average parent stress throughout the study was negatively associated with child praise sensitivity (b = -0.270, P = .038). History of maternal anxiety (N = 24) and depression (N = 11) were both associated with lower praise sensitivity (anxiety: t(41.62) = 4.12, P < .001; depression: t(21.98) = 4.81, P < .001). Parent stress and history of mental illness were not associated with the total amount of praise provided during the study or the child’s average brushing length (Ps > 0.05). Thus, it is not the case that children of parents with lower stress and no history of depression and anxiety received more praise overall, or brushed longer overall, but rather that these children were more sensitive to the praise that they did receive.

In sum, we find that parent stress and mental health may influence or predict how children respond to their parents’ praise. Anxious or depressed parents may provide less consistent or less contingent feedback to their children, and thus children may learn not to rely on this feedback. Furthermore, parents and children may share sensitivity to positive information for either genetic or environmental reasons. This work may help inform personalized parenting interventions to effectively shape child behavior, especially for families most at risk.

Authors

• Cassidy McDermott, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Christina Beavers, Seattle University

• Julia Anne Leonard, Yale University

• Allyson P Mackey, University of Pennsylvania