(PS7-46) Parent-Child Communication About School Shootings and Child Behavior Problems

Abstract Text: Exposure to threats to safety in schools, including shootings in schools, is a rising concern for families in the United States. Currently there is a lack of evidence-based resources or interventions for parents to support their children’s wellbeing during the ever-increasing threats to their safety in schools. Warm and supportive parenting may be one important resource for children, as it has been shown to be associated with a host of positive emotional and behavioral outcomes for children, and this may be in part through the promotion of open dialogue. Further, ineffective communication of distressing topics may exacerbate stress and behavioral issues in children.

We investigated these parenting and communication processes in the context of exposure to school safety threats in order to probe potential mechanisms to target in the development of parenting interventions, with the goal of reducing child behavioral and emotional symptoms. Seventy-three parents of children ages 6-17 reported on their communication with their child about school safety, parenting behaviors, child behavior problems, and their child’s exposure to levels of school-related threats. Exposure to threats ranged from distal, such as exposure to mass shootings through the media, to more proximal exposure, such as a school shooting affecting their own child or a close other.

Positive parent communication about school safety was significantly associated with warm parenting (r =.28), and lower child behavior problems (r = -.27). We examined if warm parenting was indirectly related to child behavior problems through positive parental communication about threats to children’s safety at school; this indirect effect was significant (95% CI [-0.69, - 0.01]. To further investigate this mediation model in the context of family exposure to school shootings, a moderated mediation model was tested to investigate this effect at varying levels of exposure-specific child distress. We found that parents’ positive communication mediated the relationship between warm parenting and child behavior problems only at average (95% CI [-0.69, -0.02]) and higher levels (95% CI [-1.2, -0.06]) of children’s distress in response to their highest exposure to school safety threats.

The results highlight that despite children being distressed about their exposure to school gun violence, caregivers can help support child resilience (i.e., reduced presence of behavioral problems) by providing warm parenting and positive communication about the event. Moreover, these findings may be informative for the development of parent-based resources that promote both warm parenting and positive communication about the threat to children’s safety at school, especially for children with higher capacity for emotional distress.