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. 2025 Jun 19.
doi: 10.1007/s10578-025-01856-w. Online ahead of print.

Daily Parental Responses To Disruptive Child Behavior: A Multilevel Latent Profile Analysis

Merlin Nieterau  1   2 , G J Melendez-Torres  3 , Geertjan Overbeek  4 , Daniel S Shaw  5 , Patty Leijten  4
Affiliations

Daily Parental Responses To Disruptive Child Behavior: A Multilevel Latent Profile Analysis

Merlin Nieterau et al. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. .

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to identify patterns of daily disruptive child behavior and parental responses to this behavior, as well as investigate the occurrence of these patterns over 14 days. We examined daily parental reports on disruptive child behavior, harsh parental responses, and giving in to children's demands from 156 families (Mchild age = 5.88; 47% girls) collected over 14 days (2,067 assessments). Using multilevel latent profile analyses, we identified four behavioral patterns. Most families alternated between days with less and days with more disruptive behavior and harshness. Giving in to children's demands was rare in all families. Our findings indicate that in most families with elevated disruptive child behavior, behavioral patterns vary across days, with disruptive behavior and parental harshness, but not giving in to children's demands, co-varying. Our findings also indicate how day-to-day stability varies between families.

Keywords: Daily Diary; Externalizing behavior; Harsh parenting; Multilevel Latent Profile Analysis (MLPA); Parent-child interaction.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval: The study procedures were approved by the Internal Review Board of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the University of Amsterdam (#2019-CDE-11055). Consent: Active informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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