J Child Fam Stud (2013) 22:869878 DOI 10.

1007/s10826-012-9646-5

ORIGINAL PAPER

Emotional Bonds with Parents, Emotion Regulation, and SchoolRelated Behavior Problems Among Elementary School Truants
HeeYoung Kim Timothy Page

Published online: 10 August 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Among juvenile status offenses, truancy represents the largest share of juvenile court caseloads. As a marker of risk, truancy is important because of its associations with school disengagement, drop-out, and developmental trajectories that include various forms of delinquency and anti-social behavior. Better understanding of the developmental circumstances and needs of truant children may point the way to more effective intervention strategies. Much accumulated research has shown strong associations between the emergence of juvenile delinquency and qualities of caregiving in parentchild relationships. Child-parent attachment in particular has been identied as an important developmental foundation of the child-parent relationship. We used a multi-informant approach to examine associations between childrens selfreported perceptions of attachment security (using the Security Scales), their emotion regulation (reported by parents on the Emotion Regulation Checklist), and schoolrelated behavior problems (as reported by teachers with the Child Behavior Checklist), among 74 elementary schoolaged truant children (mean age 9 years). Children and families were recruited through a truancy intervention program in a state in the deep South in the U.S. Data were analyzed via hierarchical multiple regression. Parents reports of their childrens emotion regulation predicted behavior problems as reported by teachers. Childrens own reports of their emotional bonds with parents were
H. Kim Eulji University, Sungnam-si, Gyeonggi-do 461-713, South Korea T. Page (&) Louisiana State University School of Social Work, 321 H.P. Long Fieldhouse, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA e-mail: tpage2@lsu.edu

somewhat less predictive of emotion regulation and behavior problems. Implications for truancy intervention programs for high-risk elementary school children include more focused attention to the importance of childrens developing capacities for emotion regulation and the childparent bond. Keywords Truancy Emotion regulation Emotional bonds

Introduction Truancy is commonly dened as excessive unexcused absences (Schultz 1987). Clinically, truancy has been categorized as a kind of conduct disordered behavior along the same lines as stealing, lying, destructiveness, and cheating (American Psychiatric Association 1998). As an early childhood risk, school truancy is identied as part of a developmenal pathway to more serious, later criminal careers (Loeber and Farrington 1998a, b, Loeber and Farrington 2000. Chronic non-attendant school children often miss opportunities to follow their school curricula, show low academic achievement, and lose interest in school. Consequently, these children are at risk for engagement in delinquent behaviors such as school drop-out, substance abuse, gang involvement, and criminal activities (Cullingford 1999; Balfanz et al. 2008; Garry 1996; Hallfors et al. 2002; Huizinga et al. 2000). School truancy, therefore, should be considered an important marker of a childs social adjustment and, specically, risk for behavior problems. Although accurate nationwide data are not available because of the absence of statutory requirements for documentation of truancy in school systems, the following

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statistics document the seriousness of the issue. The most recent Juvenile Court Statistics report that petitioned status offense caseloads increased 31 % between 1995 and 2007 (Puzzanchera et al. 2010). Among total status offense cases, the largest portion of caseloads dealt with truancy, and truancy cases had the largest increase among petitioned status offenses, 54 %, between 1995 and 2007. Many police departments report that most daytime crimes such as vandalism, shoplifting, and grafti are committed by students who are out of school during regular school hours (Garry 1996). A police program in North Miami Beach provides support for the relationship between truancy and daytime crimes. After implementation of police truancy interventions, such as picking up truant children on the street during school hours, the city crime rates decreased by 22 % for vehicle burglaries and 19 % for residential burglaries and criminal mischief (Berger and Wind 2000). Research has established relationships between various family and environmental factors and school adjustment, including truancy. When parents participate in their childrens education, such as assisting with homework, monitoring grades, achievement scores and courses, and attending Parent Teacher Association (PTA), the probability of truancy decreases (Epstein and Sheldon 2002). Poor parental discipline and low quality of the parentchild relationship have been identied as strong predictors of delinquency, including truancy (Cullingford 1999; McNeal and Ralph 1999; Rosenfeld et al. 2000). Environmental stressors, particularly poverty, pose a signicant risk to parental capacities for emotional availability and responsiveness toward their children (Knitzer and Perry 2009), and poverty has been shown to present a signicant risk for truancy (see, e.g., Zhang et al. 2010). The mechanism behind this association may well be parental impairments in emotional availability and responsiveness, brought about through the daily stresses associated with poverty. Research investigating associations between specic areas of parentchild relationships and truancy, from a developmental perspective, however, remains scarce. School-Related Behavior Problems and Parental Factors: Child-Parent Attachment Child-parent attachment in particular has been identied as a major developmental component of the child-parent relationship (Shaw and Bell 1993). In the perspective of attachment theory, secure attachments are associated with greater social competence and self-regulatory ability in school settings (Cole et al. 1996; Granot and Mayseless 2001; Moss et al. 1998). Children with secure attachments tend to develop internalized cognitive representations characterized by generally positive expectations regarding helpfulness and support in social relationships (Wilson 2001). Bowlby (1973, 1982)

termed these representations internal working models. These models allow individuals to anticipate the future and make plans concerning future events or situations involving relational transactions. Securely attached children tend to establish models of the self as valued and competent and of caregivers as available and responsive (Bretherton and Munholland 2008). These internal representations are carried forward as the child matures, into new social circumstances involving teachers and peers. Numerous empirical ndings indicate that a childs secure attachment to parents has profound effects on various developmental domains, particularly peer relationships (Kerns et al. 1996) and socialization (Richters and Waters 1991). Conversely, insecure attachment has been identied as a risk factor for externalizing behavior problems (Coughlin and Vuchinich 1996; Dekovic et al. 2003; Greenberg et al. 1993; Ingram and Ritter 2000; Leifer et al. 2002; Moss et al. 1998) and teen pregnancy (Rogers and Lee 1992). Among the most important developmental achievements facilitated by the attachment relationship is the capacity for emotion regulation. Attachment and Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation is a capacity within the individual that redirects, controls, modulates, and modies emotional arousal to enable him or her to function adaptively in emotionally challenging situations (Cassidy 1994). A childs rst year of life is fundamental to developing the ability to regulate emotions (Eisenberg and Fabes 1992). According to Fox (1994) and Saarni (1990), emotional regulatory capacities become more integrated and complex during the preschool and elementary school years. Schoolaged children are increasingly able to be aware of their internal experience and emotional expression. Eisenberg and colleagues have conducted extensive studies of emotion regulation and childrens school behavior (Eisenberg et al. 1997, 1995, 1996). Childrens behavior in school is predicted by individual differences in managing their emotion (Eisenberg et al. 1997). Children who have low regulation of their emotion and are high in emotional intensityparticularly negative emotionare likely to engage in externalizing behaviors such as aggression and antisocial behaviors (Eisenberg et al. 1995, 1997). Contreras and Kerns (2000) proposed that parental availability and responsiveness to the childs distress signals are related to the development of adaptive emotion regulation skills in children. As one of the functions of the attachment system, securely attached children are able to use the parent effectively to help them regulate their positive and negative emotions (Cassidy 1994; Contreras and Kerns 2000). In such circumstances children are provided assurance that sharing/expressing both positive and

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negative emotions, in moderation, is acceptable. The child increasingly applies this expectation to relationships with others, which further promotes abilities to tolerate and regulate emotion in socially acceptable ways (GuttmannSteinmetz and Crowell 2006). On the other hand, when a caregiver is inconsistently responsive to a childs distress, and/or has lower tolerance of or effectiveness in managing the childs affect, the child is unlikely to learn how to manage negative emotion and may develop a strategy of heightening emotion to maintain the attention of the caregiver. When children generalize the negative emotionality of their parental relationships to relationships with others, they frequently encounter similar relational problems (Guttmann-Steinmetz and Crowell 2006). Children who have secure attachments with their caregivers appear to have better behavioral management skills in the school setting (Granot and Mayseless 2001) and are more motivated to achieve in school (Moss and St-Laurent 2001). Attachment security to caregivers may thus be an important protective factor against the risks of behavioral problems related to school truancy. As far as we know, ours is the rst study to examine relationships among childrens perceptions of attachment security, emotion regulation, and behavior problems observed at school in a sample of elementary school-aged truant children. In so doing, this work expands the study of important dimensions of child development to a population of previously understudied children. While many complex factors in a childs social ecology are likely to be ultimately responsible for the emergence of the problem of school truancy, our focus on these selected components of the experience of children and families reects their relevance to the expansion of developmental knowledge and, ultimately, intervention. Four hypotheses were proposed: (1) Elementary schoolaged truant children who report high quality child-parent emotional bonds (an indicator of attachment security) will be likely to have high levels of emotion regulation; (2) Elementary school-aged truant children who report high quality child-parent emotional bonds will be less likely to have behavior problems at school; (3) Elementary schoolaged truant children with high levels of emotion regulation will be less likely to have behavior problems at school; (4) Elementary school-aged truant children with both high child-parent emotional bonds and high emotion regulation will be the least likely to have behavior problems at school.

Method Participants Participating children for this purposive sample were recruited through the Truancy Assessment and Service

Centers (TASC) program, located in a state in the deep South in the U.S. The TASC program is designed to provide early identication, assessment, and intervention to prevent continued unauthorized school absences of children in grades K through ve, in the public school system. The majority of children referred to TASC are from lower socioeconomic households and racial or ethnic minority groups, which reects the demographic composition of the student population: Eighty-three percent of all students in the public school system from which this studys sample was drawn are African-American and 81 % qualify for free or reduced meals. Teachers and principals refer children for truancy at the fth unexcused absence. In the TASC Program, children who are likely to continue having truancy problems (as identied with the Risk Indicators Survey, discussed below) are placed in a high-risk group, and children who are unlikely to continue having truancy problems are placed in a low- risk group. For the lowrisk group of children, TASC staff send an ofcial letter which explains the state school attendance law and sanctions, and continue to monitor the childrens attendance to ensure that truancy does not continue. For the high-risk group of children, TASC staff hold parent conferences called the Informal Family Service Plan Agreement (IFSPA), and provide case management and monitoring for compliance. In addition to the IFSPA meeting, a truancy court is held every other week for children and their families who show resistance to the intervention process. A total of 969 students were referred to the local TASC program during the 2006 and 2007 academic school year. Just under half of these children (n = 457) were identied as high-risk. The study sample was selected from the high-risk group of children involved with the local TASC program, to better understand the experience of children with well-established patterns of truancy. Due to resource limitations, 93 children and their parents (20 % of the high risk group) were contacted for this study, in the order in which the referral was received, beginning with the start of the academic year. Of the 93 students, 74 parentsone parent reporter per childagreed to participate and completed measurements. (Parents included 70 mothers, 1 father, 2 grandmothers, and 1 legal guardian.) All but one of these 74 children was African American (98.6 %). There were 46 (62.2 %) males and 28 (37.8 %) females with a mean age of 9.11 years (SD = 1.67, range 7 to 13 years). The modal age was eight (n = 24) and the age group with fewest children was thirteen (n = 1). More than half of the children (n = 43, 58.1 %) were in grades three to ve. The Risk Indicators Survey (RIS I) Not all children referred for school absence have the same level of need in services. In order to identify truant children

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who face high developmentally related risks (e.g., social and/or behavioral problems, academic failure), TASC program staff complete assessments of referred children using demographic and academic information and a checklist of risk indicators completed by teachers, the Risk Indicators Survey I (RIS I). The 55-item RIS I was developed by the TASC Program as an ecologicallybased, clinically-informed risk assessment. Teachers and staff pooled impressions of relevant risk indicators for children in 12 dimensions representing emotional, social, and academic problems and parental characteristics (emotional responsiveness, manipulation, deance, aggression, hyperactivity, risk taking behaviors, attentionseeking, developmental issues, social isolation, poor motivation, unstable home life, and parental attitudes). Each item is answered by a yesno response (rated as 1 or 0), and each dimension is measured by the sum of selected items. For example, two items, argues with authority gures and uses obscene language or gestures measure the rst dimension, Deant (possible range of scores is 0-2). In addition to the scores for the 12 dimensions, the survey also measures truancy risk as a unidimensional construct composed of the scores for all 12 dimensions. Total scores can range from 0 to 55, with higher scores indicating higher levels of continuing truancy risk. In the current study, the RIS I total score had an internal consistency of .84 (Cronbachs alpha). Convergent validity for the RIS I has been supported by the current study, where signicant correlations with parents reports of emotion regulation and teacher ratings on the CBCL were found (see Table 2). Procedures Data collection involving children and parents was administered in two settings, IFSPA meetings and truancy court. The rst author received referrals of parents and children directly from the local TASC staff, and attended IFSPA meetings and truancy court hearings, where she introduced herself to parents and children. At that time, she read the informed consent letter, explaining that the purpose of the study was to better understand how schools and families can improve students school engagement. She invited them to participate, answering any questions they had. Participants completed questionnaires at that time. Teacher surveys were placed in teachers mailboxes at school, and the rst author collected the completed forms the week after the survey distribution. As a token of appreciation and incentive, teachers who completed the survey were sent a gift of ten dollars, reecting the fact that seven teachers had to complete surveys for two children, and that the collection of these data depended on their willingness to return the questionnaires 1 week later.

Measures Child-Parent Emotional Bonds The Security Scales (SS) (Kerns, et al. 1996) The Security Scales is a childs self-report measure of parentchild relationships that is based on attachment theory. The purpose of this scale is to assess childrens perceptions of a particular attachment relationshipattachments to mother and father are assessed separatelyfor children eight to 14 years of age. It contains 15 items that measure a childs belief that a parent is responsive and available, open to communication and a reliable source of help and comfort when needed. Students respond using 4-point scales (from least true to most true). Items are structured using a some kidsother kids format. For example, for the statement Some kids nd it easy to trust their mom (dad) BUT other kids are not sure if they can trust their mom (dad), children rst indicate which leg of the statement is more true of them, then they choose whether the phrase is really true or sort of true. The two legs of the statements with two levels each are combined to form one continuous 4-point scale that reects gradations of positive to negative characteristics about the relationship. Ratings are summed across the 15 items to form a perceived attachment security score ranging from 15 to 60, with higher scores indicating a more secure relationship. Several studies have now evaluated the reliability and validity of the Security Scale. The security scale has demonstrated adequate internal consistency of .74 or higher (Kerns et al. 1996; Kerns et al. 2000; Lieberman et al. 1999; Verschueren and Marcoen 2002). In the current study, the internal consistency coefcient of the SS was .64. Previous studies have not involved groups of high-risk children such as our participants, which may account for this difference. Convergent validity of the SS has been supported by the current study, which found correlations with the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment-Revised subscales (Gullone and Robinson 2005): Trust (r = .50); Communication (r = .44); and Alienation (r = -.37). Childs Emotion Regulation Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) (Shields and Cicchetti 1997) The ERC is a scale that examines childrens self-regulation as perceived by either their parents or teachers; we used parent reports. It contains 24 items that assess perceptions of childrens typical methods of managing emotional experiences, both positive and negative aspects of emotion regulation, and requires approximately 10 min for completion. The ERC is composed of two subscales: Lability/Negativity and Emotion Regulation. Lability/Negativity includes 15 items that assess lack of

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exibility, mood lability, and dysregulated negative affect (e.g., is prone to angry outbursts). Emotion Regulation consists of 8 items measuring emotional expression, empathy, and emotional self-awareness (e.g., can say when s/he is feeling sad, angry or mad, fearful or afraid). Respondents rate items using a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (almost always) to 4 (never). In the Shields and Cicchetti study (1997), the results of factor analysis on the ERC data from 223 maltreated and impoverished children (612 years old) were reported. Internal consistency coefcients were .96 for Lability/ Negativity and .83 for Emotion Regulation. In addition, a composite score (ERC) also was generated, as a single emotion regulation criterion measure, with a reliability coefcient of .89. In the current study, the internal consistency coefcients (Cronbachs alpha) obtained for these scales were as follows: For the 15-item Lability/Negativity, .81, for the 8-item Emotion Regulation scale, .58, and for the composite ERC, .61. For this study, only the Lability/ Negativity sub-scale and the composite ERC were used. The Lability/Negativity scale was used as an index of emotion dysregulation and the ERC, which combines items for regulation and dysregulation, was used as an index of positive regulation (negative items are reverse-scored). Behavior Problems at School Child Behavior Checklist-Teachers Report Form (CBCLTRF) (Achenbach 1991) The CBCL-TRF is one of the most widely used and well-validated measures of behavioral and emotional difculties as well as competencies in children of ages 618 years. The CBCL-TRF includes 118 items, and broadly assesses two categories of behaviors, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, as well as eight problem subscales (withdrawn, somatic complaints, anxious/depressed, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, delinquent behavior, and aggressive behavior), and three competence scales (activities, social, and school). Teachers respond using a 3-point scale of 0 (not true), 1 (somewhat or sometimes true), and 2 (very true). Three externalizing subscales of the CBCL-TRF (social problems, rule-breaking behavior, and aggressive behavior) were initially examined as measures of school-related behavior problems in the current study. The possible ranges for these scales are 022, 024, and 040, respectively, with higher scores reecting more problem behaviors. The clinical borderline for these scales is given with a range of T scores, 6569, for both females and males. The mean T scores for rule-breaking behavior and aggressive behavior were within the clinical range (T = 68 and 65 for male children, T = 68 and 67 for female children, respectively), while the mean T scores for social problems were slightly

lower than the clinical cut-off (T = 62 for male children and T = 61 for female children). Obtained internal consistencies (Cronbachs alpha) for social problems, rulebreaking behaviors, and aggressive behavior were .76, .82, and .96, respectively. Data Analysis Following the presentation of descriptive data for study variables, zero-order bi-variate correlations are presented to illustrate inter-relationships among them. Hierarchical multiple regressions were tested in order to determine whether childrens perceived attachment security (SS) and emotion regulation scores (ERC) signicantly predicted childrens behavior problem scores on the CBCL-TRF. Interaction effects (SS 9 Lability/Negativity and SS 9 ERC) were tested separately for moderating effects of emotion regulation on the prediction of behavior problems from the SS. Child gender and age were included as control variables, based on ndings from the child behavior literature (Eisenberg et al. 1999, 2000).

Results Descriptive statistics for the major variables are presented in Table 1. The values for skewness and kurtosis indicated that the distributions of variables are normal. Relationships Among Observed Variables Observed variables in this study were initially examined with zero-order correlations (see Table 2). The security scale was associated, negatively, with aggressive behavior only (r = -.27, p \ .05). The measures of emotion dysregulation, behavior problems, and the RIS were signicantly intercorrelated. Multivariate Analyses of Behavior Problems Data were entered in 3 blocks to predict behavior problems at school: Gender and age were included in block 1 as demographic controls; Block 2 included the SS and either Lability/Negativity or the ERC. Interaction terms for security scale 9 lability/negativity or security scale 9 ERC were entered in a third block. Two of the three CBCL scales (rule-breaking and aggressive behavior) were predicted by Lability/Negativity (ndings not presented). ERC was signicantly associated with aggressive behavior only. The only signicant interaction term was of SS x ERC in relation to aggressive behavior. This model is therefore presented in Table 3. Both the security scale and

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874 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for attachment, emotion regulation, and school-related behavior problem variables (N = 74)
Variable M SD Range Skewness Kurtosis n of items 15 a 1. Security scale .64 2. ERC lability/ negativity 3. ERC composite 32.43 67.62 8.02 10.60 1848 4191 .12 -.003 -.75 -.36 15 24 .81 .80 4. Aggressive behavior 5. Social problems 6. Rule breaking behavior 7. RIS I 12.32 3.47 6.03 11.62 3.41 4.48 037 014 018 .62 .96 .76 -.92 .33 .01 20 11 10 .96 .76 .82 * p \ .05, ** p \ .01 1.00 -.14 .16 -.27* -.12 -.12 -.19

J Child Fam Stud (2013) 22:869878 Table 2 Intercorrelations among observed variables
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6

1.00 -.66** .32** .24* .40** .33** 1.00 -.28* -27* -25* -.37** 1.00 .80** .81** .44** 1.00 .65** .30** 1.00 .44**

Security scale (child report) ERC lability/ negativity ERC composite (parent report) Aggressive behavior Social problems Rule breaking behavior

44.16

6.50

2854

-.69

-.02

CBCL (teacher report)

ERC in blocks 2 & 3 were signicant predictors of childrens aggressive behavior problems. The overall model in block 3 was statistically signicant at the .01 level, explaining 19 % of the variance in aggressive behavior. Effect sizes for the main effects were in the medium range (Cohens f2). Figure 1 illustrates the signicant interaction effect of the security scale and ERC (created using median splits; b = 2.39, p \ .05). Children with low emotion regulation, as measured with the ERC, had widely divergent scores for aggressive behavior problems, depending on their self-reported emotional security with parents (SS). Those with low security scale scores (below the median score of 45) had the highest scores for aggressive behavior. The lowest scores for aggressive behavior were found for children with both high ERC and SS scores.

Discussion The ndings of initial bi-variate correlational analyses are mostly consistent with previous studies as follows: Children who reported higher levels of security were less likely to be aggressive. Children who had poorer emotion regulation were more likely to have behavior problems (aggression, social problems, rule-breaking behavior) and have higher truancy-related risks. Truancy risk was signicantly associated with all three dimensions of behavior problems. The ndings from the multivariate analyses indicate that childrens emotional regulatory capacity is a signicant predictor of aggressive behavior at school. Childrens emotional bonds with their parents also predicted aggressive behavior problems. The signicant interaction

of SS and ERC in predicting aggressive behavior indicates that the children at highest risk for aggressive behavior problems are those with both low emotional security and poor emotion regulation, and children at lowest risk are those with both high security and high emotion regulation. We expected that emotion regulation and school-related behavior problems would be negatively associated. The ndings supported this prediction; multivariate analysis found that childrens emotional dysregulation was a signicant predictor of behavior problems. These ndings are also consistent with previous studies that have indicated negative relationships between emotion regulation and aggressive behaviors (Batum and Yagmurlu 2007; Eisenberg et al. 2000, 2001; Graziano et al. 2007). Contrary to expectations, and unlike previous studies (Contreras et al. 2000; Kerns et al. 2007, 2000), childparent emotional bonds (attachment security) were not signicantly associated with childrens emotion regulation in the current study, as indicated in zero-order correlations. The signicant association of the interaction of the Security Scales and the Emotion Regulation composite with childrens aggression, however, indicates moderating inuences involving emotional security and emotion regulation. Children with low scores on both of these measures were at much greater risk for problems with aggression. While previous studies examining childrens attachment security have shown that secure children tend to have better adjustments at school (Granot and Mayseless 2001), results from the present study are somewhat mixed, with a signicant association of the Security Scales with one measure, aggressive behavior, and no association of security scales and our measure of truancy-related risk. There are several possible reasons for discrepancies between our ndings and those of previous studies. To our knowledge, this is the rst study that examines the inuence of childrens perception of attachment security and emotion regulation together on childrens school-related

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J Child Fam Stud (2013) 22:869878 Table 3 Hierarchical regression analysis predicting aggressive behavior with CBCL-TRF (N = 74; df for nal model 1, 68) Variable Model 1 B Gender Age SS ERC SS x ERC R2(adj.) F for change in R2 * p \ .05; ** p \ .01 .01 .44 .13 2.66* -2.63 .20 SE (B) 2.83 .83 b -.11 .03 Model 2 B -1.01 -.31 -.41 -.27 SE (B) 2.75 .81 .21 .13 b -.04 -.04 -.23* -.24* Model 3 B -1.35 -.22 -3.07 -2.06 .04 SE (B) 2.69 .79 1.28 .87 .02 b -.06 -.03 -1.71* -1.88* -2.39* .19 3.12**

875

f2

.15 .14 .09

Fig. 1 Interaction effect of security scale 9 ERC predicting aggressive behavior

behavior problems with a middle childhood-aged sample. A second consideration is the participation of a previously unstudied sample, African-American high-risk children, with these instruments. Most attachment studies have been done with European-American children in normative circumstances. The use of school truancy-related risk as our primary selection criterion may also have truncated the degree of variation we could expect to nd among our major measures. A nal plausible explanation for these discrepant ndings may be the fact that we utilized self-report assessments for the measure of childrens emotional bonds. Previous attachment security studies have been done predominantly with observational measures for young children (i.e., the Strange Situation) and coded interviews for adults (i.e., the Adult Attachment Interview). Self-report measures for middle childhood children have only recently been developed. Even though this studys ndings are somewhat equivocal, the results do provide evidence that future study with these instruments is warranted.

Some past research demonstrates that gender in middle childhood is signicantly related to negative emotionality (Contreras et al. 2000) and externalizing problem behaviors, in that girls tend to be higher in reports of emotion regulation and lower in reports of externalizing problem behavior (Eisenberg et al. 1999, 2000). With respect to gender differences, it was expected that female children would display better emotion regulation and fewer schoolrelated behavior problems than male children. Instead, no associations were found between childrens gender and either emotion regulation or behavior problems. It may be that the major difference between ours and other studies is the sample characteristics, ours being of lower SES, primarily African-American children, and identied in middle-childhood as truant from school. Batum and Yagmurlu (2007), however, also reported similar results of non-signicant gender differences on emotion regulation (Kerns et al. 2007) and externalizing behaviors. In contrast to the current study sample, the Batum and Yagmurlu (2007) study consisted of a normative sample of second grade public and private school children of higher socioeconomic status. This similar nding from different populations suggests a complexity of processes underlying the development of emotion regulation and aggression deserving of more study. This study has several strengths, beginning with the sample characteristics of age, ethnicity, and functional characteristics. The sample consisted of predominantly African American children at high-risk, as indicated by repeated school truancy (i.e., [5 unexcused absences). Childrens perceptions of emotional bonds to their parents were one of the predictor constructs. The current study ndings from African American children at high-risk, as indicated by repeated truancy, contributes to the existing body of research on attachment with respect to ethnic differences, and promises to inform other developmentally focused research with high risk children. In particular, the study of attachment security and emotion regulation in middle childhood (aged 7 to 12 years old) has been limited.

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The current study also contributes to this literature, substantively and methodologically. This is also the rst study of emotion regulation in elementary school-aged truant children in relation to specic attachment-related constructs. This study also has its limitations. First of all, the use of a cross-sectional design cannot address causality. Additionally, ndings of this study may not support generalizations to populations beyond similar demographic characteristics of the current study sample. We also faced several challenges with respect to measurement. As noted previously, the measurement of attachment in middlechildhood is difcult because neither observational nor survey measures have as yet been developed with a high degree of precision. In addition, our measurement procedures involved data collection with children and their parents at the site of their court hearings for truancy. These conditions may well have inuenced the quality of data we collected. In spite of these limitations, however, this study did manage to explore aspects of affect, relationships, and behavior that have not previously been studied in samples of truant children.

Implications for Practice The study ndings imply that positive parenting practices that promote childrens emotional security should receive attention in interventions targeted at helping truant elementary school children learn more appropriate social behavior at school. Theory suggests, and our ndings provide some limited corroboration of this, that an important mechanism in this process is childrens capacities for regulation of problematic emotion. From a developmental perspective, childrens capacities for emotion regulation are a core element of their developing social competence and adaptation to situational demands and expectations (Thompson and Meyer 2007). Deciencies in emotion regulation skills, both under-regulation (i.e., acting-out) and over-regulation (i.e., inhibited), of emotional expression appear to be an important contributing factors to childrens school adjustment and problem behaviors (Thompson and Meyer 2007). Middle childhood is an especially challenging period in academic and personal relationships: Peer relationships become an increasingly important part of life and academic demands are greater than in early childhood. Consequently, lack of capability in managing emotion may lead to unsuccessful negotiation of peer relationships and/or academic achievement (Thompson and Meyer 2007). The problems of anti-social behavior and poor emotion regulation must be seen in their larger developmental context, particularly the linkages of these problems to

emotional security with attachment gures. Because antisocial behavior and poor emotion regulation have deep roots in the childs experience with emotional security in the family, school policies that focus exclusively on punishment of childrens bad behavior are likely to be inadequate. These children and their families need to be provided with opportunities to obtain services that can help them to learn to achieve emotion regulation skills. According to Grosss emotion regulation strategies model (2007), for example, an intervention that focuses on cognitive change related to emotion, including better understanding of the link between specic social contexts and ones personal goals, is one of the ways to teach children to manage their emotion. In the United States, evidencebased, school-based prevention programs focusing on early school childrens emotional competence skills exist, such as the PATHS curriculum (Greenberg et al. 1995), the Second Step program (Cooke et al. 2007), and Making Choices (Fraser et al. 2000), each of which has been developed and evaluated with respect to effectiveness to prevent disruptive behavior problems. Designing and providing an intervention program to promote childrens emotion regulation may be necessary to reduce truancy risk and other school related problem behaviors. Parents can inuence their childrens emotional regulatory capacities both directly and indirectly through positive modeling of emotional expression and behavior, and even-handed discussion of emotion-related topics (Zeman et al. 2006). Positive parental socialization effects are only possible, however, when parents possess their own abilities to regulate emotion (Thompson and Meyer 2007; Zeman et al. 2006). An intervention program targeting childrens emotion regulation should, therefore, also target the development of parents awareness of characteristics of their own emotional expression and acknowledge the effect of parents emotional responsiveness on their childs emotional and behavioral well-being (Zeman et al. 2006). In order to further expand understanding of the emotional and behavioral characteristics of elementary school-aged truant children, future research should include comparisons with non-truant children, especially as these might illuminate path differences toward school disengagement. We also believe that it is important to include multiple measures of attachment security to provide a broader assessment of the construct and to avoid an over-reliance on a single method. There are also other variables that may contribute to childrens school-related behavior problems that this study was not able to include in the analyses. For example, Graziano et al. (2007) found that the quality of the studentteacher relationship mediated the association between childrens emotion regulation and academic success. Finally, larger samples would provide more statistical power, which could provide opportunities for more detailed analyses. Continued

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research focus on this particularly vulnerable population of children holds promise for addressing some of our most urgent social problems related to school engagement and academic success.

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