OBJECTIVE:This study examined how family factors impacted parents' attitudes toward integrated behavioral health (IBH) in pediatric primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that COVID-19 impact would predict family functioning challenges, and that pre-existing familial contextual factors would predict parents' interest in IBH modalities.METHODS:Parents of children ages 1.5-5 years (N = 301) from five primary care clinics completed a survey with measures assessing familial contextual factors (income, race and ethnicity, and parents' childhood adversity), COVID-19 impact on family relationships and wellbeing, family functioning (child behavior, parenting self-efficacy, and parent psychological functioning), and parents' preferences for behavioral support in primary care. A subsample of parents (n = 23) completed qualitative interviews to provide deeper insights into quantitative relationships.RESULTS:Higher COVID-19 impact was significantly associated with worse parent mental health and child behavior problems, as well as lower interest in IBH virtual support options. Overall, lower SES and racial and/or ethnic minority parents both indicated greater interest in IBH modalities compared to higher SES and White parents, respectively. Qualitative interviews identified how pandemic stressors led to increases in parents' desire for behavioral support from pediatricians, with parents sharing perspectives on the nature of support they desired, including proactive communication from providers and variety and flexibility in the behavioral supports offered.CONCLUSIONS:Findings have important implications for the provision of behavioral supports for families in primary care, underlying the need to increase parents' access to IBH services by proactively providing evidence-based resources and continuing to offer telehealth support.

Students with intellectual disabilities (ID) have reduced access to sexuality education at school, tasking families with filling the gap. This limited access contributes to persistent health inequities, psychosocial risk, and reduced self-determination for individuals with ID. To understand the resources that families may encounter when filling this service gap, a naturalistic scoping review and content analysis of ID-specific sexual health curricula (SHC) was conducted. This analysis found a limited number of SHC available to family members who may seek them out online, and even fewer SHC designed for the specific needs of family-led delivery. While curricula identified in this study generally include the minimum recommended content areas for comprehensive sexuality education, they less frequently provide actionable guidelines for caregivers tasked with adapting teaching practices and outcomes assessment to the diverse profiles of students with ID. By understanding the SHC available to families of students with ID, school psychologists can improve their partnerships with families, disseminate needed resources, implement collaborative intervention practices, and advocate for inclusive sexuality education practices.

Best practices for technology use in academic settings, specifically those preparing students for postsecondary transition (ages 18-21) are not well documented and research studies commenting on the use of technology for acquisition of social and adaptive skills is limited. Literature indicates that students with mild-moderate intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) benefit from adaptive-skills programs and curricula. School psychologists, special educators, and school-based interventionists are in a unique position to provide adaptive skill services and tier-3 interventions that are evidence-based, innovative, and serve the most vulnerable students. This manuscript utilizes a sign-case design to test the use of virtual reality (VR) as an individualized intervention and teaching modality to a student in a center-based high school program with IDD. Results yield promising findings, indicating those with IDD may master VR as a tool, learn new skills with VR programming, and generalize those skills to real-world settings. Further, VR offers unique benefits that can shape the way school interventionists view technology and how innovative practices can be used for students with IDD.

Background: Heightened familial stress and distress during the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to increased negative parenting practices, particularly for parents with substantial adverse childhood experiences (ACES).Objective: To determine whether families' COVID-19-related distress is associated with young children's emotional/behavioral functioning via negative parenting, and whether these relationships vary based on parents' ACEs. Participants and setting: Participants were 267 parents of children ages 1.5-5 years recruited from five primary care sites across the United States.Methods: Participants completed internet questionnaires including measures of demographics, parent ACES, negative parenting, parent mental health, and COVID-19 distress. We used regression analyses to test a moderated mediation model in which the relationship between COVID-19 distress and child emotional/behavioral problems is mediated by negative parenting, and both the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 distress on child emotional/behavioral problems is moderated by parents' ACEs.Results: Negative parenting significantly mediated the relationship between COVID-19 distress and child emotional/behavioral problems (indirect effect beta = 0.07). Parents' ACEs moderated the associations between COVID-19 distress and both negative parenting and child emotional/ behavioral problems, such that each relationship was stronger in the context of higher parental ACEs. The model accounted for 42% of the variance in child emotional/behavioral problems. Conclusions: Findings have implications for managing risk and promoting well-being in young children during periods of significant stress and routine disruption. This study advances understanding of factors influencing negative outcomes in children during the pandemic's acute phase and may have implications for the development of targeted interventions to improve families' adjustment in the future.

ABSTRACT: Objective: Pediatric primary care is an ideal setting to provide behavioral health services to young children and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is unclear how the pandemic altered parents' priorities and preferences to obtain behavioral services in this setting. Method: Between July 2020 and January 2021, 301 parents of young children in 5 pediatric sites across the United States completed survey measures on their preferences for behavioral topics and service delivery methods in primary care. The current sample was compared with a previous sample of parents (n = 396) who completed the same measures in 2018. Results: Child self-calming was the only behavioral topic that was rated as significantly more important in the pandemic cohort in comparison with the prepandemic cohort. The pandemic cohort also reported significantly more interest in using certain media resources (e.g., mobile apps and videos) as a delivery method and less interest in group classes/seminars. After controlling for demographic differences between the samples, there was an increased preference for multimedia resources overall in the pandemic cohort, as well as a decreased preference for usual care. Conclusion: Parents generally endorse similar priorities for behavioral topics in primary care during the pandemic as they did before the pandemic. However, there is a clear preference for more remote and media-based services during the pandemic. Pediatric practices may consider augmenting behavioral health services with multimedia resources during and after the COVID-19 pandemic to meet parents' needs.

Several teaching moves have been suggested to support young children’s simple addition and subtraction performance, including use of a number path, directly modeling addition and subtraction, using mathematical symbols, and modifying problem difficulty. In the present study, teacher-researchers implemented an early arithmetic activity, Big Fish Story, with dyads of 3 to 4-year-old students. As part of the implementation, the teacher-researchers used these teaching moves to support young children’s in-the-moment answers to simple addition and subtraction problems. We use session-level data (n = 94 sessions) nested in dyads to examine and compare the frequency with which the use of these teaching moves are associated with two types of student responses, in order to preliminarily identify teaching moves that may support young children’s performance on simple arithmetic tasks. We conclude with implications for the field and early childhood practitioners.