Effects of mother-child interaction on school adaptation of children according to maternal depression

Objective: Factors influencing school adaptation of school-aged children include both executive function(EF) and parent–child interaction. This study aims to investigate the developmental trajectory of mother–child interaction longitudinally using latent growth model analysis.Methods: A longitudinal descriptive survey study was conducted. The par ticipants comprised of 1,614 mothers and school-aged children, who participated in the Panel Study on Korean Children(6 th–8 th panel surveys). A model was designed and analyzed using latent growth modeling to estimate the pattern of change over time.Results: In the group where the maternal depression was within the normal range, only the path by which the change rate of mother–child interaction affected school adaptation of children was statistically nonsignificant(t = 1.007, p = 0.314). In the group where maternal depression was mild or higher, only the paths by which the initial value of mother–child interaction affected EF difficulty(t =-2.75, p = 0.032) and EF difficulty affected school adaptation(t =-7.876, p < 0.001) were statistically significant.Conclusions: This study confirms the research models developed by dividing mother–child interaction into two groups according to depression levels(i.e., normal range and mild or higher-level depression). The findings provide a basis for construction of individualized interventions.