(PS12-38) Parental Flooding Predicts Unsupportive Parenting in Mothers and Fathers of Young Children with High Irritability

Background: Parental flooding (PF), or the tendency to become overwhelmed by the intensity and unpredictability of aversive child behaviors, is frequently experienced by parents of children with high anger, irritability, and emotional lability (Lorber et al., 2016). Prior studies have linked high levels of PF to more frequent use of ineffective discipline responses (e.g., overly harsh or permissive) in the context of child emotional outbursts (Del Vecchio et al., 2016). Such discipline responses may become negatively reinforced and overlearned with repeated child misbehavior over time (Mence et al., 2014). This is especially problematic for caregivers of children with elevated irritability, as ineffective parenting can exacerbate the child’s symptoms and lead to future psychopathology (McKee et al., 2007; McLeod et al., 2007). The aims of the present study were to better understand the impact of PF on parent responses to negative emotions in young children with clinically-significant irritability. 

Methods: Data were obtained via an online study in which n=43 mother-father parent dyads of children ages 3-5.9 provided self-report data on PF (Parental Flooding Scale; Del Vecchio et al., 2016), coping with their children’s negative emotions (CCNES; Fabes et al., 1990), and child irritability (MAP-DB Temper Loss scale; Wakschlag et al., 2014). Following prior empirical work on the psychometric properties of the MAP-DB, participants were classified into “clinically significant irritability” and “non-clinical irritability” groups based on a sum score of 3 on two MAP-DB items (“becomes frustrated easily”, and “breaks or destroy things during a temper tantrum, fall-out, or meltdown”; Wiggins et al., 2018). 

Results: Multiple linear regression analyses showed that, after controlling for child irritability, maternal flooding was predictive of unsupportive parenting in the high irritability group, but not the low irritability group (𝛽=0.97, t= 2.40, p=.023; 𝛽=0.34, t= 0.36, p=0.73, respectively). Similarly, when controlling for child irritability, paternal fooding was predictive of unsupportive parenting in the high irritability group, but not the low irritability group (𝛽=1.06, t= 4.96, p< .001; 𝛽=0.32, t= 0.57, p=0.58, respectively).

Conclusion: Results indicate that, at clinical-risk levels of child irritability, PF predicts unsupportive parenting (i.e., punitive reactions and minimization responses to aversive child emotions) over and above child’s externalizing behaviors. These findings suggest that clinical interventions which target parent psychological factors such as PF may prove especially effective for treating young children with irritability. Of note, child irritability was indexed via mother and father subjective reports on the MAP-DB, which limited our ability to single out the objective effects of child irritability on parent behaviors. Future research should aim to address this confound by including a clinician or third-party report of child irritability. In summary, this work highlights the importance of parent psychological and behavioral factors in the conceptualization and treatment of child externalizing problems.