Symposia
Parenting / Families
Kaila Falk, M.S.
Doctoral Candidate
Yeshiva University - Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
New York, New York
Kaila Falk, M.S.
Doctoral Candidate
Yeshiva University - Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
New York, New York
Ozlem Bekar, PhD
Supervising Psychologist
Northwell Health, Lenox Hill Hospital
New York, New York
Jessica Borelli, PhD
Associate Professor
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California
Jordan Bate, PhD
Assistant Professor
Yeshiva University, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Bronx, New York
COVID-19 has produced unprecedented restrictions, regulations, and challenges for people worldwide. Children are uniquely positioned as they are influenced both by the larger social implications of the disaster, and by their parents’ behaviors and responses to distress related to the event. Two cognitive and affective mechanisms that influence parenting behaviors include reflective functioning (RF), the ability to understand one’s own and others’ behaviors as an expression of mental states, as well as experiential avoidance (EA), one’s unwillingness to or distress towards witnessing negative emotions. During the onset of COVID-19 we assessed parents’ RF, EA, and communication, specifically the use of mental state talk (MST) language, to explore if these factors impact children’s psychosocial symptomatology during a time of intensified uncertainty and fear. 153 parents of children 6-12 years old completed an assessment battery approximately one month into the pandemic and one-year later, which included the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), Parental Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (PAAQ) and Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC), as well as open-ended questions about how they would communicate to their child in hypothetical situations. Narrative responses were rated with the Coding System for Mental State Talk (CS-MST). Results from the following statistical analyses will be presented. Parent RF, EA, and children’s symptomatology were all moderately correlated at baseline. Correlational analyses revealed MST was not associated with RF. There was a small negative correlation between EA and total MST, indicating that when parents reported greater unwillingness and inaction, MST was lower. Multiple regression analyses were used to test whether parents’ RF and EA predicted children’s symptomatology at baseline. The results indicated that RF and EA significantly contributed to the prediction of children’s total emotional and behavioral health and explained 22.9% of the variance (R2=.229; F(4,149)=10.79, p=.00). Finally, mediation models will be tested to determine whether MST mediates the relationship between parental characteristics (RF, EA) and children’s symptomatology (PSC) at one-year follow up. Discussion will focus on the protective/risk factors of such caregiver qualities and the potential for interventions that aim to increase parents’ cognitive and affective capabilities, to strengthen the parent-child relationship and buffer against the impact of crises like COVID-19 on children’s mental health.