The Impact of Food Allergy on Parenting and Autonomy in Young Children

食物过敏对幼儿养育和自主能力的影响

• 批准号: 7666272
• 负责人: LYNNDA Marie DAHLQUIST
• 金额: $ 6.89万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7666272
• 关键词: 5 year old; Adolescence; Adult; Affect; Age; Allergens; Allergic; Allergic Reaction; Anxiety; Area; Attitude; Behavior; Child; Child Development; Childhood; Development; Diagnosis; Disease; Eating; Emotions; Environment; Exposure to; Family; Food; Food Hypersensitivity; Growth and Development function; Health; Home environment; Interview; Learning; Life; Mediating; Medical; Monitor; Mothers; Nursery Schools; Outcome; Parent-Child Relations; Parenting behavior; Parents; Pattern; Play; Population; Populations at Risk; Problem Solving; Process; Questionnaires; Reporting; Risk; Role; Safety; Sampling; Social Development; Social skills development; Structure; Surveys; Testing; aged; daily functioning; early childhood; food allergen; intervention program; parental influence; peer; prevent; psychologic; psychosocial; skills; social; social skills

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Important changes in autonomy and social skills take place in early childhood through the child's increasing independence and interaction with the environment. Parents play a crucial role in facilitating autonomy development by providing young children opportunities for independent activities and by helping them learn new skills and develop confidence in their ability to independently solve problems and regulate their emotions. Overly protective, controlling, or restrictive parenting interferes with autonomy development. Parents who are anxious and/or perceive their child to be vulnerable are at risk for more protective parenting. Food allergy is a very common, potentially life-threatening disease that is typically diagnosed in the first two years of life. In order to prevent exposure to food allergens that could cause a life-threatening allergic reaction, parents must be vigilant about everything that their child eats and as a result, often severely restrict the child's activities outside the home. Food allergy also increases the likelihood of parental anxiety because of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the child's exposure to allergens outside the home and the potential catastrophic consequences of such exposure. Elevated parental anxiety has been shown to be associated with more controlling and intrusive parenting. Moreover, because so many aspects of the food allergic child's daily life must be monitored and controlled, controlling and intrusive parenting may come to predominate the ways in which parents interact with their children and possibly interfere with the independent exploration necessary for autonomy development. Thus, food allergy presents an opportunity to study naturally-occurring disruptions in developmentally relevant aspects of the lives of young children -- exposure to new environments, opportunities to socialize with peers, parental anxiety, and autonomy-promoting parenting practices. Using questionnaires, structured interviews, and structured observations of parent-child interactions, the proposed study compares 60, 3- to 5-year-old children with food allergy and their mothers with a comparison sample of healthy peers and their mothers in order to test 1) whether children with food allergy and their families have more restricted daily activities outside the home, fewer interactions with peers, and demonstrate less autonomy than healthy children; and 2) whether mothers of food allergic children report greater anxiety and show more protective parenting attitudes and behaviors during interactions that are unrelated to food than mothers of healthy children. Theoretically relevant relations among parental anxiety, protective parenting, and child autonomy in preschool aged children will be examined. Regardless of the child's illness status, parental anxiety is expected to be related to protective parenting and to child autonomy, with protective parenting mediating the relation between anxiety and child autonomy. The results are expected to identify areas of possible developmental risk in an understudied and growing population, children with food allergy as well as enhance understanding of parenting influences on child development in general. By studying a population at risk for restricted social activities and for the development of overprotective parenting, the psychological processes involved in autonomy development and in parental overprotection will be better understood. Ultimately, the results have implications for the development of intervention programs for parents of children with food allergy and other health conditions who may be at risk for negative psychosocial outcomes.

描述（由申请人提供）：自主性和社交技能的重要变化发生在儿童早期，通过儿童日益增长的独立性和与环境的互动。父母在促进自主发展方面发挥着至关重要的作用，为幼儿提供独立活动的机会，帮助他们学习新技能，培养他们独立解决问题和调节情绪的能力的信心。过度保护、控制或限制的父母会干扰自主性的发展。焦虑和/或认为孩子易受伤害的父母更有可能采取保护性的养育方式。食物过敏是一种非常常见的、可能危及生命的疾病，通常在出生后的头两年被诊断出来。为了防止接触到可能导致危及生命的过敏反应的食物过敏原，父母必须对孩子吃的每样东西都保持警惕，因此，经常严格限制孩子在室外的活动。食物过敏也增加了父母焦虑的可能性，因为孩子在家庭之外接触过敏原的不可预测性和不可控制性，以及这种接触的潜在灾难性后果。研究表明，父母焦虑加剧与控制欲更强、侵入性更强的育儿方式有关。此外，由于食物过敏儿童日常生活的许多方面都必须受到监测和控制，控制和侵入式的养育方式可能会主导父母与孩子互动的方式，并可能干扰自主发展所必需的独立探索。因此，食物过敏提供了一个研究幼儿生活中与发展相关方面自然发生的中断的机会——暴露于新环境，与同龄人交往的机会，父母的焦虑，以及促进自主的育儿实践。采用问卷调查、结构化访谈和亲子互动的结构化观察，本研究将60名3- 5岁的食物过敏儿童及其母亲与健康的同龄人及其母亲进行比较，以测试1)与健康儿童相比，食物过敏儿童及其家庭是否在家庭外的日常活动中受到更多限制，与同龄人的互动更少，表现出更少的自主性；2)食物过敏儿童的母亲是否比健康儿童的母亲在与食物无关的互动中表现出更大的焦虑和更多的保护性育儿态度和行为。从理论上考察父母焦虑、保护性养育与学龄前儿童自主之间的相关关系。无论孩子的疾病状况如何，父母焦虑都与保护性养育和儿童自主性有关，保护性养育在焦虑和儿童自主性之间起中介作用。研究结果有望在研究不足且不断增长的人口中确定可能存在发育风险的领域，包括食物过敏儿童，并增强对养育对儿童发育的总体影响的理解。通过研究受限制的社会活动和过度保护的父母发展的风险人群，将更好地理解涉及自主发展和父母过度保护的心理过程。最终，研究结果对有食物过敏和其他健康状况的孩子的父母的干预计划的发展有启示，这些孩子可能有负面的社会心理结果的风险。