Child functioning Sample Clauses

Child functioning. COCD showed no elevated levels of OCD symptomology by parent or child report at a group level, nor increased rates of perfectionism compared to controls. This finding suggests that specific familial transmission of OCD behaviours in young children who have a father with OCD is not evidenced. However given the heterogeneity of the COCD group in terms of OCD symptoms, ranging from totally absent to being of clinical severity and the small number of children it cannot be known if this is a representative finding, particularly given the self-referring nature of the fathers’ sample for this study (discussed further in the Limitations sections 3.10). COCD show reduced social competency, which relates to items concerning their social participation in organizations, number and frequency of contact with friends and behaviour with others and when alone. They also show elevated levels of Social Problems, which includes difficulties being with others, negative thoughts and feelings towards others, degree to which the child is liked by others and loneliness. Correlations also show that social competence and problems are linked to self- reported anxiety in children in both groups. These finding are of particular interest given the proposed unique role of fathers in preparing children for the social world. It is useful to draw from the model of Xxxxxx and colleagues (Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx 2011) here in understanding these findings. They suggest in the context of paternal social anxiety, children place greater emphasis on signals of (social) danger from the father and will become anxious if the father displays significant anxiety or if the father is very influential in the family unit. They interestingly also theorize that the mother’s nurturing role does not negate the effect of anxiety in the father and may in fact strengthen it as they protect the child by reducing exposure to situations which then acts as an anxiety maintenance factor. It seems in the case of OCD (with high comorbidity) in this study, there is a less direct but potentially influential message of social danger being transmitted to children that decreases their competence socially and leads to increased social problems. An alternative or perhaps complementary hypothesis is that as children’s lives are restricted by their father’s OCD (by not being able to bring friends back to the house, or not being able to play with other children due to increased danger described by Xxxxxxxxx and colleagues (Xxxxxxxxx, ...