Last week, Erin Karahuta (graduate student) presented her research at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Sciences in Chicago. For her presentation, Erin analyzed data from a large, national study. This analysis examined how children’s own characteristics are related to the kind of discipline used by parents. She found that preschoolers who are more likely to take their parents’ lead during a neutral play session, as compared children who respond negatively to parents, are less likely to be spanked by their parents a year later, and are more likely to have parents who use talk and reasoning as a form of discipline. Therefore, these findings emphasize the importance of not only thinking about how parenting relates to children’s outcomes, but also the importance of how children’s own behaviors relate to specific kinds of parenting.
