The Role of Parent Self-Regulation in Youth Type 1 Diabetes Management.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Youth with strong self-regulation (SR), or the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, engage in more effective type 1 diabetes (T1D) management. However, while parent support and engagement are critical to ensuring positive youth T1D outcomes, it is rarely considered that parents' SR may also influence youth T1D management. If this is the case, novel interventions to improve parents' SR or ensure adequate support for parents with SR challenges offer great potential to improve family functioning and youth T1D management. RECENT FINDINGS: Theoretical and preliminary empirical evidence suggests that parental SR impacts family processes that support youth T1D treatment regimen adherence. Furthermore, parent and youth SR likely interact, with high parent SR enhancing the positive effects of high youth SR or compensating for low youth SR. Continued research is needed to better understand the ways in which parent SR matters to youth T1D management and identify how to support improvements in T1D management among families of parents with low SR.