4 - (SYM 113) Examining Day-to-day Associations Between Parent Emotion Socialization/regulation and Adolescent Emotional-behavioral Functioning Among Adolescents with ADHD

Parent emotion socialization (ES) and emotion regulation (ER) are robust predictors of adolescent social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. The majority of this research has relied on global retrospective report or lab-based paradigm tasks. This study sought to utilize ecological momentary assessment to examine the daily relations between parent ES (i.e., parent responses to adolescent negative affect) and ER strategies with adolescent emotional-behavioral functioning.

Participants were 20 adolescents (14 males; 85% White; 10% Hispanic/Latine) and a primary caregiver (Mage = 45.35 years; 75% mothers) who participated in a group-based telehealth intervention study. Participants were asked to complete online daily ratings for two weeks; parents completed an average of 11.40 ratings (range=5-14) and adolescents completed an average of 9.38 ratings (range=0-14). Parents reported on their own ES practices and ER strategies, and their adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Adolescents reported on their own ER strategies, positive and negative affect, and family conflict. Analyses controlled for adolescent gender, medication status, and family income.

Parent daily use of supportive ES practices significantly related to adolescent daily externalizing and internalizing behaviors, positive and negative affect, and expressive suppression. Similarly, parent daily use of nonsupportive ES practices were significantly related to adolescent daily externalizing and internalizing behaviors, negative affect, expressive suppression, and family conflict. Additionally, parent daily use of cognitive reappraisal strategies was associated with adolescent externalizing behaviors, positive affect, and negative affect. Parent daily use of expressive suppression was unrelated to all adolescent emotional-behavioral outcomes.

Surprisingly, parent daily use of ER strategies was not related to adolescent daily use of ER strategies; this may result from us measuring cognitive ER strategies rather than behavioral strategies, which can be modeled. However, parent cognitive reappraisal was related to adolescent externalizing behaviors and affectivity. Parent ES practices were related to adolescent expressive suppression, in addition to externalizing and internalizing behaviors, affectivity, and family conflict. We will discuss the clinical implications of these findings, and explore if these associations change following completion of an intervention targeting ER in adolescents and parents.