Jo Carlowe Hello, welcome to the Papers Podcast series for the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, or ACAMH for short. I’m Jo Carlowe, a Freelance Journalist with a specialism in psychology. In this series, we speak to authors of papers published in one of ACAMH’s three journals. These are the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, commonly known as JCPP, the Child and Adolescent Mental Health, known as CAMH, and JCPP Advances. Today, I’m interviewing Professor Goda Kaniušonytė, of the Institute of Psychology, Mykolas Romeris University, Vilnius, Lithuania, and Professor Brett Laursen, of the Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, USA. Goda and Brett are authors of the paper, “Maternal Disapproval of Friends In Response to Child Conduct Problems Damages the Peer Status of Pre and Early Adolescence,” published in the JCPP. This paper will be the focus of today’s podcast. If you’re a fan of our Papers Podcast series, please subscribe on your preferred streaming platform, let us know how we did, with a rating or review, and do share with friends and colleagues. All listeners to this and, indeed, any of the ACAMH podcasts, are eligible for a free CPD certificate. Do please visit acamhlearn.org for details of this, together with information on how you can access hundreds of hours of free talks, lectures, interviews, all of which you can also get free CPD certificates for. The URL is www.a-c-a-m-h-l-e-a-r-n.org. Goda and Brett, thanks for joining me. Can you start with an introduction about who you are, and what you do? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė So, as you introduced, I’m a Professor at Mykolas Romeris University. My main research focuses on adolescents, peer relations and relationship with parents. Me and my group are working with this, or related to the mental psychology topics, for almost a decade. Jo Carlowe Okay, and, Brett. Professor Brett Laursen Brett Laursen, at Florida Atlantic University. I’m the Editor of – or Co-editor of the Handbook on Peer Interactions, Relationships and Groups and, also, the former Editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Development, and the incoming Editor of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. I’ve been doing research on peer relationships for my entire career, and I also look at parent-child relationships and the interplay between the two. We’ve been focusing, Goda and I, on these results from big longitudinal studies that we’ve been conducting, jointly, between the two of us, where the children in Lithuania and children in Florida have been conducting the – completing the same surveys, for a series of years, several times a year, and the project we’re about to talk about is from one small part of the study. Jo Carlowe Great, thank you very much. So, we’re going to focus on that today, which is your JCPP paper, “Maternal Disapproval of Friends In Response to Child Conduct Problems Damages the Peer Status of Pre and Early Adolescence.” Can you start with an overview of the paper? What did you look at, and why? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė So, we looked at how maternal efforts to intervene with problematic peer relations, by prohibiting friendships or activities with friends, are interrelated with subsequent status among peers, and eventually conduct behavioural problems. So, specifically, mothers who responded to behaviour problems with expression of disapproval of friends, inadvertently damaged the child’s relations with peers, alienating classmates. Jo Carlowe Brett, was there something you wanted to add? Professor Brett Laursen We found this vicious circle where mothers responded to children’s behaviour problems with increasing prohibition, and the prohibition drove down a child’s relations with their peers, had them acting out more, which led to more maternal disapproval, and so on. So, there isn’t a start or a stop to this process, it – mothers respond to children’s behaviour with disapproval, and the disapproval ends up producing more child misbehaviour, and so on it goes. Jo Carlowe Hmmm, it’s fascinating. We’ll dig a bit more into the findings shortly, but before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about the methodology used for the study? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė So, as Brett already mentioned, this was a part of the big project, big longitudinal study, which we conducted both in Lithuania and in Florida, and kids responded to the same questions here and there, but this particular project is based only on Lithuanian data. So, in Lithuania we conducted this longitudinal study in one mid-sized town, in – where all schools from this town was invited to participate in the study, so we have the community sample. Then after, of course, acquiring parental consents, we assessed students three times during one academic year, so autumn, winter and fall, beginning, middle, and end of the school year. Students filled the questionnaires on tablets. First, they had to nominate the classmates on number of qualities, who is liked, who are disliked, who’s popular, and then they filled the – they answered questions about themselves, and then about their relationship with mothers. So, we had both self-reports and peer reports about this more or less same qualities. Jo Carlowe One of the terms that you use in the paper, you talk about “low peer status,” I just wondered what that looks and feels like, from the child’s perspective. Professor Brett Laursen And so when we talk about “peer status,” and we talk about the way that the group views the child, or the child’s position in the group, and there’s a number of ways to look at peer status. One is, how much the group in general likes or dislikes a child, we’re using these liking and disliking measures as an index of status. We’re not measuring popularity, so it’s important to say that when we talk about popularity, we literally talk about someone who has dominance in the group, we measure that by literally asking, “Who’s popular?” And who’s popular is not necessarily all that closely tied to who’s liked and who’s disliked. So, let’s be clear that what we’re me – not measuring is popularity, what we’re mish – measuring is liking and disliking. We have two measures of that, so what we call “acceptance” is how many people in the group say that they like the child. Everybody gets a score for how many others in the group nominated them as someone they liked, and everybody gets a score for disliking, how many in the group say that they don’t like a child. Our status measures are indices of, essentially, affect that the group directs towards the child, how many others can say that they have positive feelings toward the child, and how many have negative feelings toward the child? Jo Carlowe And do children have awareness of how they’re ranked? Professor Brett Laursen Oh, yes, children were keenly aware of their status in the group, and they know and everybody else has a pretty good sense for how much a child is liked or disliked by other members of the group. So, it’s not necessarily a measure of friendship, that friendship is a reciprocal measure, you and I are friends, and you’ll – you may only have one friend or many friends, this is an index of the group’s view towards the child. Jo Carlowe So, I’m wondering what types of things were mothers doing to show their disapproval, and how did this impact their children? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė Kids responded about their mother’s disapproval with self-report, so they answered the questions about the mother’s behaviour, and it’s the behaviour, like, expressing their disliking for certain friends, or friend group, trying to forbid seeing certain kids, or make obstacles for friends maybe to meet, criticising friends and friend’s behaviour, and maybe pushing – putting their opinions who their kids should be friends with instead. Jo Carlowe Okay, so, let’s look more specifically at the findings now, what are the key findings from the paper that you would like to highlight? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė So, I think the most important is the role of mothers, and that such behaviour, in response to already existing behavioural problems, can, in fact, increase such behaviour even more, and the process of it is through the social standing among the peers. Professor Brett Laursen I would add to that by saying, a few years ago there was a very small study that found that maternal disapproval was tied to problem behaviours. And it caused people to, kind of, scratch their heads, it was a small study and we weren’t sure what to do with it, what it meant. And this was, kind of, the leaping off point for our study, because, first of all, we wanted to see if it really was the case, that maternal disapproval was really causing children to act badly, and then, more importantly, why? How does that work? So, we were first able to replicate the finding that maternal disapproval does lead to subsequent greater behaviour problems, and we were able to tie that to decreases in peer status. And both maternal disapproval was tied to less liking by the peer group, which was then tied to greater behaviour problems. But even more, maternal disapproval was tied to greater peer rejection, which was tied to behaviour problems, so the – of the two peer status variables, the link to rejection was much stronger than the link to acceptance. Which is important because it suggests that the peer group really doesn’t like the fact that mothers are meddling. It’s not that it, kind of, means that people are a little bit more ambivalent about you, there’s some active rejection going on when – of the child when a peer group finds out that moms are prohibiting peer affiliates. Jo Carlowe Can we dig a bit more into the why? ‘Cause what you’re talking about from the paper, this is parents’ well-meaning attempts to steer their children away from peers that they perceived as delinquent in some way, a bad influence, and you’re saying it proved counterproductive and, in fact, it exacerbated conduct problems in their own children. So, I’m trying to, sort of, get to the bottom of the why, why did this type of parental interference prove so counterproductive? Professor Brett Laursen Before I turn this over to Goda, let me take this opportunity to say that we are in no way, shape or form blaming parents for their behaviour. What parents are doing here is perfectly understandable, completely what one would expect a parent to do, it makes perfectly good sense that parents would do this, it’s just that it has counterproductive effects. And so, we don’t think that parents are in – are somehow doing something malevolent or bad here, it’s just that these well-intentioned behaviours are really counterproductive, and alternative solutions are more appropriate. So, having said that, let’s dive into what’s happening, but I want to make sure we say right up front that that we don’t think that parents are behaving in ways that are meaningfully maladaptive. This is an unintentional byproduct of a well-intentioned behaviour. Goda, you want to jump in? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė Yeah, so we have several interpretations. So, one maybe is related to social capital and, like, losing friends decreases the social capital, and then, yeah, of course, kids might act out because of that, or then, when losing friends, kids might be more susceptible to peer influence, just to keep the friends that they still have. Maybe it’s not the best behaving friends, or they want to make friends with the new friends that – and there’s only a few options left. Maybe Brett, you wanted to elaborate. Professor Brett Laursen I mean, that’s perfectly – that explains one step in the link, and, of course, the other step is, why does lower status lead to more behaviour problems? A two-step problem, one is, why does status go down when mothers meddle? And the other is, why does lower status lead to greater behaviour problems? On the first front, as Goda essentially successfully summarised, that part of the problem is how peers interpret the meddling, and part of the problem is the potential consequences of that meddling. If you lose friends, that’s bad, but it also is a loss of face. When we’re talking about children in middle school, at this age, there’s a shift in their perceptions of who’s in charge of my friends. Children are used to the idea that their parents might manage their peer relationships, but middle schoolers start to resist that idea, and once you start to resist it, that means everybody else is starting to resist it, and so others are viewing – everybody in the peer group is starting to view this choice as “My – I get to pick my friends.” And if you are seen as somebody whose mom still picks your friends, that’s immature, that’s uncool, that’s also a headache. Who wants to try to negotiate with somebody whose mom is deciding what they get to do over the weekend? Jo Carlowe For sure, and, just to clarify, middle school refers to exactly which ages? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė Our study included the kids, like, ranging from nine to 14 but, yeah, it’s most ten – ten, 12. Jo Carlowe Given your findings, what advice do you have for parents who disapprove of their children’s friends? Professor Brett Laursen The first point I would make is that you don’t want to get in a position where it’s you versus friends, because by the time we’re talking about the early adolescent years, this is not a battle that parents are necessarily going to win. Young adolescents spend most of their time in the peer group, peers are increasingly important at this age and, in fact, if not now, then in another year or two, most children will report that they’re closer to their friends than they are to their parents. And so putting yourself in a position where you have to – where it’s me versus your friends is not necessarily going to be a winning proposition for most parents. And then I’ll make one more point that’s important, the people who influence us the most are the people with whom we are closest. And so, if you’re going to start a lot of fights with your child, if there’s going to be a lot of negativity on your relationship with your child, they’re going to start to tune you out, and you’re not going to carry any, kind of, influence with them in terms of making important decisions. So, it’s critical during these years that parents do what they can to maintain close, supportive relationships with their children. Now, I’m not saying, at all, that they should just approve of everything, that’s – that, kind of, laissez-faire parenting is not, at all, what we’re advocating. It’s perfectly reasonable for parents to set boundaries, to set limits, to communicate, “I’m doing this because I care. This is why, when you demonstrate autonomy, we give you more. When you violate those expectations, we give you less,” all that’s very good behaviour, but increases in negativity and increases in conflict are just going to tune the child out. And that’s part of the problem with disapproving of friends is, on the one hand, you pit yourself against the friends and, on the other hand, you’re just generating conflict that you’re not going to win. And so, it’s important to, essentially, take a step back, and think about the relationship ramifications of what you’re doing, and figuring out ways to maintain positive relationships, because the only way they’re going to pay any attention to what you have to say is if they come to you and ask you for advice. Unsolicited advice, doesn’t matter what age it is, unsolicited advice is rarely welcomed, even less often followed. And so, you – what you want to do is you want to have a close enough relationship with your child that they’re going to come to you with problems and questions about how to solve things. You can take proactive steps. If you’re not happy with the friends that your child has, you can create structured opportunities for them to affiliate with people that you think might be pos – more positive influences. You can get them membership to clubs and activities where there’s other adult supervision going on, and you can do these kinds of other ways of trying to structure peer interactions, not trying to exclude the ones you don’t like, but, rather, trying to include those that you think might be positive influences over your child. Jo Carlowe What are the implications of your findings for CAMH professionals? Professor Brett Laursen I’m going to start with one point, and then I’ll see if Goda has something she wants to chime in. We didn’t talk very much about how the – about the fact that children with low peer status end up having a lot of behaviour problems. We focused on parent behaviours that seem to drive down status, and parent behaviours that seem to create these behaviour problems. But why does low status create difficulties for child behaviour? There’s a number of question – a number of answers to this, but, first of all, think about the child in the peer group, the children in peer groups, they need friends and they don’t want to be at the very bottom of the order. They don’t want to be excluded from the peer group. So, on the one hand, children who are rejected, who are disliked by many others, have a very difficult time making friends. The harder it is for you to make friends, the more likely you are to make friends with someone who’s not going to be necessarily a good influence on you, because children in middle school, or in the middle school age, will do anything in order to avoid being friendless. And so, because they don’t want to be friendless, they’re going to make friends with whoever they can, and children who have low status end up making friends with other children with low status, and that often involves children with behaviour problems. And so, that’s one reason why it’s so important that parents don’t do anything to drive their status down because it essentially forces them to pick among – to pick friends among those that, essentially, they wouldn’t – their parents wouldn’t say, “That’s who I want to be your friends.” The other problem is that in a peer group, the other thing that you never want to have happen is you never want to be tossed out of the peer group. You never want to be left out or left behind and, once again, as your peer status goes down, you’re less likely to be invited to parties, you’re less likely to be included in activities, all these sorts of things cause trouble in the peer group. What does this have to do with behaviour problems? And the answer is that if you’re hanging around with children who already have problems, if you don’t have any friends, if you’re left out of the peer group, this is stressful, this is challenging. Remember, this is an age period in which the peer group is ascendant, is primary in terms of importance, and so we’re talking about an a – a period in time in which you really don’t want to be left behind. And we get a lot of acting out as a consequence for children who are behaving badly, also for children who are rejected, we get a lot of affiliating with other kids who have behaviour problems as a consequence, and we get a lot of internalising problems, depression and anxiety. And so, to circle back to your question, professionals need to be really tuned into what’s happening in the peer group. We want to make this about parents, but we overlook the fact that this is a very challenging age for youth, because we tossed them into these circumstances, these school environments that are dominated by peers, and then we promptly forget that we’ve tossed them into an environment that’s dominated by peers, and sometimes then we do things that make it very hard for them to navigate the world. And so, helping children navigate this challenging peer environment is going to help mitigate a lot of the behaviour problems that professionals are going to encounter. Jo Carlowe Are you planning any follow-up research, or is there anything else in the pipeline that you would like to share with us? Professor Goda Kaniušonytė Well, of course, we have a lot of ideas. We are looking where if this maternal behaviour can actually disrupt the friendship, not, like, drive the peer status down, but, like, actually end an existing friendship. And the other thing, we started asking our participants about their relationship with fathers, and fathers’ prohibitive behaviour, so maybe we will be able to answer that question, as well. Professor Brett Laursen We have a hint that mothers may be – that some mothers, at least, may be successful in their efforts to disrupt friendships. We’re not ready to go out on a limb on that yet, but there – our preliminary peak suggests that if that’s their goal, they may be successful. Jo Carlowe Thank you both. Finally, what are your take home messages for our listeners? Professor Brett Laursen I would say the take home message is that parents need to be sensitive to the knock-on effects of their interactions with their children, and by that, I mean, downstream effects that arise from what is seemingly well-intentioned, innocuous behaviours. If we forget that the child has to navigate in a world full of peers, and we’re only thinking about what we think would be best, we might do things that have consequences for how the child interacts with others that we haven’t, at all, thought about. You could make all kinds of silly examples, but if you made your hat – child wear a, you know, a pink hat to school, they might get ridiculed, and you wouldn’t want to do that. And, similarly, though, you – we might do other things that might bring reactions from the peer group, and unintended consequences that we haven’t thought through completely. And I think that’s my – my take home message is that it’s quite easy for adults to forget how challenging this age period is and how absolutely essential getting along with age mates is, because we passed through it and are now thinking about other things. Their children are not through that yet and they, like, everyone, is trying to figure out a way to successfully manoeuvre through what’s a brand new environment. An environment in which everybody’s equal and there’s no adult, essentially, monitoring what everybody’s doing when you’re hanging around with your age mates. Professor Goda Kaniušonytė Adding to that, maybe I would like to stress the already, what Brett mentioned earlier, that the importance of fostering close a warmth and trusting relationship with the children is really important. Jo Carlowe Brilliant, that sounds so important. For more details, please visit acamhlearn.org. The URL is www.a-c-a-m-h-l-e-a-r-n.org, and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred streaming platform, let us know if you enjoy the podcast, with a rating or review, and do share with friends and colleagues.