Contents



## Preface

People often attribute a talent, an exceptional skill, or a creative act to the dispositional fea‐ tures of an individual. However, the values to which those traits are applied are an educa‐ tional matter. Respect for others and the nature, the custody of creation, is a value that is learned primarily in the family and then in the community. It is not always the fault of the parents if a child deviates from the expected developmental path, but they are not entirely exempt from liability. In fact, parents have the task of introducing the child into the belong‐ ing community and taking care of him/her until the child is able to live independently; thus, raising a child is a great responsibility. In doing this, one can be either indulgent and in‐ clined to reasoning or inflexible and prone to punishment. These educational preferences depend on the beliefs and values of both the parents and the community of which the spe‐ cific family is a part, but they are also the consequences of the relational style implemented between a parent and his/her child.

Not only parents determine a relational climate that contributes to the well-being of their children, but also children with their own features are responsible for the quality of parent‐ ing. In the last decades, researchers made a great effort to identify some of the factors that are crucial in shaping parent-child interactions, individual psychological health, and family climate along time. Attention to these updated empirical findings exploring the reciprocal parent-child interchanges is the salient feature of this book. The second section of the book is a three-chapter review on important factors that influence children's and adolescents' ad‐ justment. Some of these are adults' factors, such as parental practices, and parental experi‐ ence and confidence in managing the multiple demands of parenthood (i.e., self-efficacy beliefs). Other factors are the child's features, such as temperament, and some neurobiologi‐ cal characteristics (i.e., callous-unemotional traits) identified only recently as potential sour‐ ces of vulnerability for the child's psychological disorders. In the first chapter, authors introduce readers to relevant theoretical constructs related to adjustment problems in ado‐ lescence, such as behavioral and psychological control, parent-adolescent conflict, locus of control, and parental values. The second chapter presents a critical examination of the pa‐ rental self-efficacy through four empirical studies. Authors argue about the specific meas‐ urement levels, the self-efficacy beliefs as buffer variable between the child's characteristics and parenting skills, and the role of parental self-confidence in the interventions promoting child care and parenting quality. The third chapter of this section is devoted to parenting difficult children and adolescents. Authors debate parental competence interacting with children's difficult characteristics and the importance of early prevention and intervention programs. The third part of the volume contains two applied chapters presenting parental challenges and treatment interventions for childhood internalizing/externalizing disorders. Authors selected treatments founded on advances in research and evidence-based practices involving parents as key components within the intervention strategies. In fact, since the behaviors of parents are modifiable and produce changes and consequences in the child's emotive-behavioral adjustment, a modification of parent behavior may be a creative and ef‐ fective way to help children and to ameliorate the family climate.

The book is addressed to practitioners, researchers, and students interested in parenting. In the different chapters, they will find innovative suggestions and elements to enrich their knowledge and to draw the starting points for further investigations. Enjoy reading!

#### **Loredana Benedetto, PsyD, PhD and Massimo Ingrassia, PsyD**

Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Messina Messina, Italy

**Section 1**
