The transactional relationship between parenting and emotion regulation in children with or without developmental delays.
For preschoolers with delays, mom scaffolding today predicts better emotion control two years later.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lifshitz et al. (2014) watched moms and preschoolers at home three times over two years. Half the kids had developmental delays; half were typically developing.
Each visit, researchers scored how much the mother scaffolded—gave hints, broke tasks into steps, stayed calm. They also rated the child’s emotion regulation—how fast the child cooled down after getting upset.
What they found
Only the delay group showed a back-and-forth effect: more mom scaffolding at age three predicted better child emotion control at age five, and better child control at four predicted more mom scaffolding at five.
Kids with delays started out more upset and got less help than typical peers, but when moms did scaffold, it paid off later.
How this fits with other research
Capio et al. (2013) saw the flip side—dads who took over tasks had kids who grew more dysregulated. Together, the papers show parent style direction matters: moms who scaffold help, dads who intrude hurt.
Barak-Levy et al. (2015) later found similar two-way links in preschoolers with autism. The pattern repeats across diagnoses: parent supports now, child regulates later.
Hamama et al. (2021) moved the idea into school—teachers who used emotion dialogues gave the same boost special-ed kids once got only from moms. Scaffolding works no matter who gives it.
Why it matters
If you serve preschoolers with delays, train parents to scaffold, not solve. Model breaking the cookie task into steps, labeling feelings, and waiting for the child to try first. The child’s next meltdown may be shorter, and the parent will naturally scaffold more as the child improves.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →During play, prompt parents to wait, give hints, and label emotions instead of fixing the problem for the child.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Researchers have identified numerous internal and external factors that contribute to individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) abilities. To extend these findings, we examined the longitudinal effects of a significant external predictor (parenting) on children's ER abilities in the context of an internal predictor (intellectual functioning). We used cross-lagged panel modeling to investigate the transactional relationship between parenting and ER in children with or without developmental delays (DD) across three time points in early and middle childhood (age 3, 5, and 8). Participants were 225 families in the Collaborative Family Study, a longitudinal study of young children with or without DD. Child ER ability and maternal scaffolding skills were coded from mother-child interactions at ages 3, 5, and 8. Compared to children with typical development (TD), children with DD were significantly more dysregulated at all time points, and their mothers exhibited fewer scaffolding behaviors in early childhood. In addition, cross-lagged panel models revealed a significant bidirectional relationship between maternal scaffolding and ER from ages 3 to 5 in the DD group but not the TD group. These findings suggest that scaffolding may be a crucial parenting skill to target in the early treatment of children with ER difficulties.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.07.048