Parent Accommodation of Irritability in Preschool-Aged Children: Between and Within-Person Associations

Irritability is a common, developmentally normative emotion in early childhood, yet it is also related to risk for psychopathology throughout the lifespan. Parent accommodation is a parenting behavior that may influence this risk but has primarily been examined alongside child anxiety and in clinical samples of older children. The present study sought to investigate between-person (i.e. global) and within-person (i.e. daily) associations between child irritability and parent accommodation of child irritability in a community sample of preschool-aged children.

Parents (92.6% mothers) of 3-5-year-old children (53.2% female) reported about their accommodation behavior and child irritability via questionnaires at baseline and via daily diary over a 16-day diary period.

As hypothesized, positive associations were identified between child irritability and parent accommodation both between- and within-person. Global child irritability was significantly associated with global parent accommodation. Multilevel modeling analyses demonstrated that irritability fluctuations were significantly associated with daily parent accommodation of irritability, even when accounting for global accommodation. Further, child irritability intensity fluctuations were significantly associated with daily parent accommodation of irritability above and beyond mean daily child irritability intensity.

The results contribute to the literature on parent accommodation by documenting both between- and within-person associations with child irritability in a community sample of preschool-aged children. These findings suggest that interventions that reduce parent accommodation to treat child anxiety could be expanded to address parent accommodation of irritability in preschool-aged children.