Parental facilitation of children's preparatory play behavior in a stressful situation

Parental behavior has often been cited as a crucial factor in children's ability to cope with stress. However, there has been little study of ways parents help their children adjust to stressful life events. In the present study, 34 parents and children (ages 4–9) were observed preparing for a stressful life event (elective surgery). Parents were asked to prepare their children for the upcoming stress and were given stress-related hospital equipment to use with their child. Specific hypotheses were selected to study the relationships of five parent helping behaviors to children's active preparatory play with stress-relevant materials. Children's preparatory play alone and with an examiner were also observed to test for effects of children on their parents' helping behavior. As expected, parent helping behaviors were significantly related to children's active preparatory play. With the exception of highly directive behavior, however, the relationship of parent helping behavior to child play was dependent on the child's age. This study suggests the importance of further investigating parental involvement in studying the process of children's coping with stress.