Emotion socialization practices in non-biological parents of children with FASD.
Non-biological parents of kids with FASD coach emotions less when they are older or carry trauma history.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Kautz-Turnbull et al. (2025) asked non-biological parents of kids with FASD how they talk about feelings. They used surveys to link caregiver age and past trauma to the ways parents coach or shut down emotions.
The team looked at two main styles: emotion coaching (helping the child name and cope) and emotion dismissing (telling the child to get over it).
What they found
Older caregivers and those with more trauma used less coaching and more dismissing. These same parents also rated their kids as more disruptive.
Parents blended both styles; no one used only one. Trauma history, not just age, shaped how often they validated feelings.
How this fits with other research
Lim et al. (2021) found caregiver stigma shrinks social time for autistic teens. Like Carson, parent mindset predicted child social life, but stigma rather than trauma was the key.
Bitsika et al. (2017) showed child self-injury drives parent stress in autism. Carson flips the lens: parent history drives parenting style in FASD. Both warn that caregiver factors loop back to child behavior.
Laposa et al. (2017) cut stress for Black and Hispanic ASD caregivers by adding peer mentors. Their RCT proves coaching parents works; Carson implies older or trauma-exposed FASD parents may need that support most.
Why it matters
If you coach foster, adoptive, or kinship families of kids with FASD, screen for caregiver trauma and age. Add simple emotion-labeling scripts for parents who tend to dismiss. A brief peer mentor or trauma-informed module could boost the emotion coaching these older caregivers give, easing the ‘disruptive’ cycle they report.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) represent highly prevalent neurodevelopmental and physical differences associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. People with FASD have difficulty with emotion regulation and are often living with non-biological parents. Caregiver emotion socialization practices have been robustly associated with child emotion regulation development in other populations. Yet no research to date has examined the impact of caregiver factors such as age, relationship to child, and trauma on emotion socialization practices in children with FASD. This research is especially important in non-biological parents given complex parenting challenges they may face. METHODS: Eighty-seven children with FASD aged 4-12 and their primary caregivers (all non-biological parents) completed interview, observation, and caregiver-report measures of emotion socialization, caregiver emotion experience, and child emotion regulation and behavior. Emotion socialization included emotion coaching (approaching and encouraging emotion) and emotion dismissing (minimizing and discouraging emotion). Correlational and path analyses were used to understand relationships among caregiver factors and study variables. RESULTS: Correlations indicated greater emotion coaching was associated with greater emotion dismissing (p = .009). Older caregivers reported less emotion coaching (p < .001), while caregivers with greater adverse childhood experiences reported greater frequency of child disruptive behavior (p = .01). CONCLUSION: Emotion coaching was associated was positively associated with emotion dismissing, suggesting caregivers use a combination of both. Results suggest age and childhood trauma may be important factors in caregiver emotion socialization practices, while caregiver type was less important in this sample. This emphasizes the challenges faced by non-biological parents of children with FASD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2025 · doi:10.1080/17405629.2016.1266248