(PS10-C55) Parental Tolerance of Child Distress During Severe Temper Tantrums

Harsh parental discipline predicts the exacerbation of emotional symptoms in children and development of conduct and hyperactivity problems. Contributing factors to the adoption of such harsh parental practices are not well-understood. Distress tolerance, the ability to sustain goal-directed behaviors during actual or perceived psychological distress, is a promising candidate for further investigation. Low parental tolerance of child distress is associated with increased sleeping difficulties in infants. Likewise, amongst children with anxiety, parents with a low tolerance of child distress exhibit less supportive parental emotional styles, harsher discipline, and are more likely to react to signs of distress in their children than parents of non-anxious youth. Accordingly, determining the basis of low parental tolerance of child distress is critical in supporting parents to reduce ineffective parenting practices associated with behavioral problems. Emotional flooding, when another’s negative emotional response is experienced as overwhelming and disorganizing, has been proposed as the critical factor leading to maladaptive parenting behaviors in response to disruptive behavior. Parents experiencing flooding brought on by their toddler’s disruptive behaviors may use punitive or lax punishment as a means of quickly alleviating their emotional distress rather than focusing on their child’s needs. Parents of children with severe temper outbursts, one of the primary reasons for child mental health referrals and hospitalizations, are a likely candidate for the presentation of emotional flooding leading to the use of ineffective parenting strategies. However, although flooding has been distinguished from feelings of anger, other emotional states and cognitive deficits may contribute to this emotional response. Low parental reflective functioning, the ability to comprehend a child's behavior as a reflection of a mental state, is associated with shorter participation in soothing an inconsolable crying infant, consistent with parenting habits associated with flooding. Confirming the presence of emotional flooding in parents of children with temper tantrums and determining its relationship to reflective functioning is crucial to determine the etiology of this behavior and support parents of children with temper tantrums. We assessed a sample of 100 parents of children ages 3-5.9 years old and 50 of their partners/spouses with a battery of questionnaires assessing general distress tolerance, tolerance of their child’s distress, emotional flooding, anger, parental reflective functioning, and anxiety/depressive symptoms. Using a preliminary sample (n=89), significant associations were found between (1) low parent-reported parental tolerance of child distress and number of p</span>arent-reported child temper tantrums (p=.007, R² = .616), (2) parent-reported parental tolerance of child distress and parental flooding (p=.001, R² = .659), (3) parental flooding and use of punitive punishment (p=.038, R² = .621), and (4) parental flooding and parental pre-mentalizing modes of functioning, the attribution of vindictiveness to a child’s behavior and incapacity to hold the child’s mental state in mind (p=.007, R² = .669).