Bedtime Routines of Young Children, Parenting Stress, and Bedtime Resistance: Mediation Models.

This study examined if inconsistent bedtime routines are a mechanism through which high levels of parenting stress are related to bedtime resistant behaviors. Bedtime resistant behavior is a common problem in young children. Although previous studies have linked parenting stress to problematic behaviors at bedtime, understanding how and why that may be has been subject to limited empirical investigation. Caregivers (N = 118) of a child age 2-5 were recruited on Amazon's mechanical turk. There was a significant indirect effect of parenting stress on bedtime resistance through bedtime routines as well as a significant indirect effect of bedtime routines on bedtime resistant behavior through parenting stress. These findings suggest that there is a bidirectional relationship between inconsistent routines and parenting stress. Clinically, these results suggest that implementing a consistent routine at bedtime may improve both parent (less stress) and child (less bedtime resistance) functioning.

"What Next?": Toward telebehavioral health sustainability in couple and family therapy.

As a response to the COVID-19 global crisis, many in the couple/marital and family therapy (CMFT) professional community quickly met the challenge of providing services to clients via telebehavioral health (TBH) services. As this public health emergency endures, family therapists must continue to engage in TBH practice professionally and ethically. The rapid adoption of TBH with minimal training and experience during this public health emergency can result in crises for both individual therapists as well as for the profession in implementing electronic record-keeping, conducting virtual sessions, and communicating online with various clinical populations. The risk of insufficient training and supervision create a challenge to new and experienced family therapists. This article summarizes the work done by the profession thus far to respond to this public health emergency and presents a roadmap of recommendations for navigating those challenges into the future and offers ideas about how to sustain quality TBH practice.

Development and Validation of the Pediatric Diabetes Routines Questionnaire for Adolescents.

This study describes the development and psychometric evaluation of an adolescent self-report version of the Pediatric Diabetes Routines Questionnaire (PDRQ:A), a measure of diabetes-specific routines for youth with type 1 diabetes, and further validation of the parent-version (PDRQ:P) in an adolescent sample. Participants included 120 parent-adolescent dyads (ages 12-17) and an additional 24 parents who completed measures of diabetes-specific adolescent routines, general adolescent routines, diabetes self-care, and family support of youth diabetes care. The PDRQ:P/A demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and parent-child agreement, and adequate validity coefficients. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a one-factor model. Promising results were obtained. The PDRQ:P/A is a clinically feasible parent- and self-report measure that can provide valuable information regarding how frequently adolescents engage in their diabetes management tasks in a consistent manner. Addition of an adolescent report format will enhance the utility of the measure for clinical and research use.

Training direct care staff to increase positive interactions with individuals with developmental disabilities.

This study tested the effects of direct training on direct care staff's initiation of positive interactions with individuals with developmental disabilities who resided in an intermediate care facility. Participants included four direct care staff and their residents. Direct training included real-time prompts delivered via a one-way radio, and data were collected for immediate and sustained increases in rates of direct care staff's positive interactions. Additionally, this study evaluated the link between increased rates of positive interactions and concomitant decreases in residents' challenging behaviors. A multiple baseline design across participants was used and results indicated that all direct care staff increased their rates of positive interactions during direct training. Moreover, all but one participant continued to engage residents in positive interactions at levels above the criterion during the maintenance phase and follow-up phases. The direct care staff member who did not initially meet the criterion improved to adequate levels following one brief performance feedback session. With regard to residents' challenging behaviors, across phases, residents engaged in low levels of challenging behaviors making those results difficult to evaluate. However, improvements in residents' rate of positive interactions were noted.

A unified model exploring parenting practices as mediators of marital conflict and children's adjustment.

We examined positive and negative parenting practices and psychological control as mediators of the relations between constructive and destructive marital conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing problems in a unified model. Married mothers of 121 children between the ages of 6 and 12 completed questionnaires measuring marital conflict, parenting practices, and child adjustment. Analyses revealed significant direct paths from destructive marital conflict to negative parenting practices, psychological control, and both children's internalizing and externalizing behavior. In addition, psychological control was found to partially mediate relations between destructive marital conflict and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior.