In adults, higher anxiety level related to COVID-19 has been associated with having a pre-existing medical or mental health condition and poor sleep quality. However, no study yet has looked at these links in children. The present study’s main aim was to assess family changes associated with child and parent fears and concerns about COVID-19. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 144 families with children aged 9–12 years during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Families came from Quebec, Canada, and the survey was done in the early stages of the lockdown (April–May 2020). A phone-based survey assessed parent and child COVID-19-related fears and concerns, family-related changes and health issues. Results showed the more fears parents have about COVID-19, the more fears their child also has. Moreover, changes in family sleep habits were associated with parental and child fears and concerns about COVID-19. Reduced access to health services was associated with parental concerns about COVID-19. If another lockdown was to be put in place in the future, it would be important to inform families on the importance of sleep schedules and to maintain or increase health appointments when possible.

Objective: To evaluate how sociodemographic characteristics and various aspects of parent well-being, family functioning, parent-child relationship, and child characteristics are related to psychological functioning in children aged 9 to 12 years during the COVID-19 lockdown. Method: Participants included 144 children aged 9 to 12 years and their parents who lived in the province of Quebec, Canada, during the COVID-19 mandatory lockdown. Parents and children were administered a phone-based survey in which various child, parent, parent-child, and family characteristics were assessed. Results: Results showed that higher internalizing problems in children were related to greater depressive symptoms in parents, lower attachment security to parents, and greater aversion to aloneness in children. Results on externalizing behavior problems showed that more problems were associated with more family dysfunction and chaos and lower attachment security to parents. Finally, results on children's anxiety toward COVID-19 showed that more anxiety was associated with greater parental anxiety toward COVID-19 and more child aversion to aloneness. Conclusion: Our findings showed that even during an unusual and stressful context such as a pandemic, proximal variables such as the attachment relationship that have been known to be closely associated with adaptation are significantly related to child psychological functioning. Such observations are important because they highlight factors that may accentuate child vulnerability in times of a pandemic and shed light on potential intervention targets.

This study examines longitudinal links between mother–child conversations and attachment patterns in early childhood and later attachment representations. It also tests the role of conversations as mediators in the association between behavioral security and attachment representations. Mother–child conversations (snack-time) and attachment behaviors (Separation-Reunion procedure) were assessed for 83 5.5-year-olds while attachment representations (attachment narratives) were measured at 8.5 years of age. Results showed correspondence between attachment behaviors and representations for secure-confident, ambivalent-preoccupied, and disorganized/controlling-frightened groups. Affective quality of mother–child conversations predicted both child attachment behaviors and representations. Secure and confident children showed greater integration of affective information, ambivalent and preoccupied children more affect exaggeration, and disorganized/controlling and frightened children more chaotic conversations. Avoidant children tended to show more affect minimization in conversations. Finally, mother–child conversations centered on the sharing of emotions and thoughts mediated the relation between behavioral and representational attachment security, which underscores the importance of mother–child conversations in the development of attachment representations in childhood.

This study examines the influence of mother–child and family interactions on the development of child attachment representations in middle childhood for a sample of 49 families. Mother–child interactions were observed during a snacktime in a lab setting (Moss, Rousseau, Parent, St-Laurent, & Saintonge, 1998 Moss, E. , Rousseau, D. , Parent, S. , St-Laurent, D. and Saintonge, J. 1998. Correlates of attachment at school age: Maternal reported stress, mother–child interaction, and behavior problems. Child Development, 69: 1390–1405. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ) when children were 5–6 years old. Three years later, children's attachment representations were assessed using a doll play narrative procedure (Solomon, George, & DeJong, 1995 Solomon, J. , George, C. and De Jong, A. 1995. Children classified as controlling at six: Evidence of disorganized representational strategies and aggression at home and at school. Development and Psychopathology, 7: 447–463. [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ) in the lab setting. Within 6 months of the second lab visit, family interactions were filmed during mealtime and coded using the Mealtime Interaction Coding System (MICS; Dickstein, Hayden, Schiller, Seifer, & San Antonio, 1994 Dickstein, S. , Hayden, L. C. , Schiller, M. , Seifer, R. and San Antonio, W. 1994. Providence family study mealtime family interaction coding system Unpublished classification manual, Bradley Research Center, East Providence, RI [Google Scholar] ). Results showed clear differences between attachment groups on quality of mother–child and family interaction with the secure/confident group showing highest and the disorganized/frightened group showing lowest quality interactions. Family interactions predicted children's attachment representations, after controlling variance explained by prior mother–child interactions.