Children’s readiness for school is often threatened by the occurrence of both externalising (EP) and internalising (IP) problems. In search for solutions, research has shown that School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is particularly effective for fostering children’s behavioural skills and reducing EP. However, whether SWPBS can enhance children’s emotional skills and reduce IP is less clear. Therefore, TIME-IN was developed, which extends SWPBS by also including emotional support systems. It will be tested whether TIME-IN is effective for (a) improving emotion regulation (ER) and (b) reducing depressive symptoms. Furthermore, it will be tentatively explored whether TIME-IN is accompanied by more than natural fluctuations in both children’s EP and IP. The effectiveness of TIME-IN will be evaluated in a non-randomized study, in which an intervention group will be compared with a matched control group. Both research questions will be addressed in a sample consisting of children between 8 and 12 years of age with special educational needs (SEN), who have been argued to benefit most from school readiness interventions. Questionnaires for teachers, children, and their parents will be administered at the beginning (T0) and the end of the school year (T1) using multi-informant assessment. Practical implications, strengths, and limitations were discussed. ISCRTN registry 54456609.Registered on 28 March 2017. Ethical requirements were fulfilled.

School readiness of children with special educational needs (SEN) is still understudied. The present study examined how the presumed bidirectional relationship between impaired academic performance (AP) and internalising problems (IP) could be favourably influenced. In this regard, it was assumed that children's adaptive emotion regulation plays a crucial role, as it was shown to be independently related to improved AP and fewer IP. However, to gain stronger evidence for this assumption, it should be further clarified whether adaptive emotion regulation, AP and IP are also jointly associated and, if so, how this is reflected in children with SEN. To explore these issues, two different models were tested in a cross-sectional pilot including 61 Flemish elementary school children with SEN (39 boys and 22 girls, mean age = 10.0 years old). Teachers reported on adaptive emotion regulation, AP and IP. The results indicated that AP partially mediated the relationship between adaptive emotion regulation and IP (model 1), while IP fully mediated the relationship between adaptive emotion regulation and AP (model 2). Practical implications, strengths, and limitations were discussed.

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In the final part, a clinical reflection is presented on the dark side of identity formation and the empirical papers of this special issue. It is important that both researchers and clinicians ask themselves how theory and evidence about identity development can be used in clinical practice. Therefore, a relevant case study is presented about an emerging adult struggling with identity formation, Tim. Various facets of Tim's struggling are illustrated based on findings from this special issue. Starting from identity diffusion, Tim's transition to moratorium and achievement was examined from three complementary theoretical frameworks and related research on these topics as outlined in this special issue. Finally, change processes throughout therapy were discussed from various clinical frameworks.

Children’s readiness for school is often threatened by the occurrence of both externalizing and internalizing problems. Previous research has shown that Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is particularly effective for fostering children’s behavioral skills and reducing externalizing problems. However, whether PBIS can enhance children’s emotional skills and reduce internalizing problems is less clear. Therefore, TIME-IN was developed, which extends PBIS by also including emotional support systems. It was tested whether TIME-IN was effective for (a) improving emotion regulation and (b) reducing depressive symptoms. Furthermore, it was tentatively explored whether TIME-IN is accompanied by more than natural fluctuations in both children’s externalizing and internalizing problems. The effectiveness of TIME-IN was evaluated in a non-randomized study, in which an intervention group was compared with a matched control group. Both research questions were addressed in a sample consisting of 81 children between 8 and 12 years of age with special educational needs. Questionnaires for teachers (i.e., TRF), children (i.e., FEEL-KJ and CDI), and their parents (i.e., CBCL) were administered at the beginning (T0) and the end of the school year (T1) using multi-informant assessment. Only indicative evidence was found for the hypothesis that TIME-IN improved children’s emotion regulation. Practical implications, strengths, and limitations were discussed.Clinical Trial Registration: This work was retrospectively registered at International Standard Registered Clinical/soCial sTudy Number (ISRCTN) registry ISRCTN54456609 (Weymeis, 2017). Registered 28 March 2017.