PARENT/CHILD CONFLICT--LESSONS IN EMOTION AND MORALITY

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Conflict between a young child and her parents is both frequent and normative during the toddler and preschool years. Despite this, however, parent-child conflict has received relatively little attention by researchers, and thus the role that this early conflict might play in a child's socioemotional development is not well understood. Therefore, the goal of the current research is to examine how differences in the frequency and nature of early conflict (e.&, the presence of negotiation) during the latter half of the toddler period relate to a child's subsequent socioemotional and sociomoral development at age 3. 60 toddlers and their mothers will take part in a six-month longitudinal study. At the first assessment period, when the child is 30 months, the mother and child will participate in a series of structured laboratory task designed to provide opportunities for conflict in the dyad and in a 1 & 1/2 hour unstructured home observation. Transcripts will be made from the laboratory session and home visit and all episodes of conflict will be identified and coded for certain elements (e.g., negotiation, discussion of emotion and rules, resolution, and conflict theme). At the first assessment period, when the child is 36 months, the child will participate in a battery of measures designed to asess emotional understanding, social competence, perceptions of family relationships, and early conscience development. To clarify the relation between this early conflict and subsequent socioemotional functioning, conflict frequency scores and the coded elements of conflict at 30 months will be used to predict scores on the socioemotional outcome measures when the child is 36 months.