Longitudinal Relationship between Children’s Emotion Dysregulation and Parent’s Negative Experience of the COVID-19 Lockdown in France

Abstract

"Introduction: At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lockdown was implemented in France, leading to profound changes in families’ life. Studies showed emotional and behavioral difficulties in children and adults during this period. However, few research has focused on the longitudinal interactions between children’s emotion regulation and parental emotional experience of the lockdown. Aim: This study aimed to examine the longitudinal bidirectional relationships between children’s emotion regulation and parental emotional experience of the lockdown. Method: One hundred and twenty parents of children aged 5 to 12 answered two online questionnaires, at the start of the first lockdown (Time 1), and one month later (Time 2). Emotional dysregulation in children and parental emotional experience of the lockdown were assessed. Results: The results of the autoregressive cross-lagged analyses revealed that children’s emotion regulation at Time 1 predicted lockdown-related parental emotional experience at Time 2, whereas lockdown-related parental emotional experience at Time 1 didn’t predict children’s emotion regulation at Time 2. Conclusion: This study suggested that parents of children with greater emotion regulation difficulties have had a worse emotional experience of the lockdown, without affecting the emotional regulation of children. Clinical implications and protective factors are discussed."