The role of maternal reminiscing in children's self-regulation development among families with child welfare involvement: A longitudinal and experimental evaluation.

Abstract

This study leverages a randomized clinical trial to test whether intervention-related changes in cognitive and socioemotional parenting behaviors during mother-child reminiscing support children's self-regulation (emotion regulation [ER] and executive function [EF]) in middle childhood among families with and without maltreatment exposure. At baseline (T1), 248 children (36-86 months; 50.4% male; 39.7% Black, 25.9% White, 34.5% Latinx/other) and their mothers were enrolled. Half of maltreated families were randomized to Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET) to enhance maternal reminiscing. Dyads were assessed postintervention and longitudinally 5 years later. RET had a significant indirect effect on child ER at the 5-year follow-up through postintervention maternal elaboration (ß = 0.10, SE = 0.04, p = .008). Findings highlight the importance of maternal reminiscing for child self-regulation.