Child adjustment and parent functioning: Considering the role of child-driven effects.

Based on 13,694 mother-child dyads from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Kindergarten Study (ECLS-K; Rock & Pollack, 2002; Tourangeau, Nord, Lê, Sorongon, & Najarian, 2009), this study is an examination of the bidirectional relations between parental and child functioning from kindergarten through 3rd grade. Results from the cross-lagged models demonstrated that child-driven effects co-occurred with parental effects, and that these effects were comparable in size. At the same time, however, results from the latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed idiosyncratic patterns of parent and child functioning. Compared with children in the least optimal functioning profiles, those in the average and above-average profiles elicited greater improvement in parents' functioning over time. Although children characterized by poor academic performance at kindergarten appeared to precede parents characterized by harsh parenting at 3rd grade, there was a threshold in the evolving strength of the overall child-driven effects. Taken together, the results from this study underscore the importance of considering reciprocal processes in the parent-child dynamic while also underscoring individual differences in these processes across the early- to middle-childhood years. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).