Research Findings: This study examined the stability of preschoolers' peer play behavior across the school year and the relations between emotion regulation, receptive vocabulary, and the trajectory of social competence deficits. Participants were 331 preschool children attending Head Start; they were primarily African American and from a low-SES background. Peer play behavior was moderately stable from fall to spring. Analyses revealed that emotional lability in the fall was associated with consistently maladaptive and declining social competence. Furthermore, children who exhibited stable maladaptive behavior had lower receptive language skills and emotion regulation in the fall than children who exhibited consistently adaptive behavior. Preschool children with comorbid externalizing and internalizing behaviors during peer play were at the greatest risk for consistent peer play difficulties or declining social competence over the course of the year compared to their peers. Practice: The present study informs practices for identifying at-risk preschoolers shortly after entry into an early education experience. Moreover, the findings suggest that without effective interventions, those at-risk children are likely to exhibit consistently poor social competence over time. Implications for the use of early intervention and prevention targeting specific behavioral and peer problems are discussed.

This study examined parent characteristics and barriers to participation in a community-based preventive intervention with a sample of 201 parents from low-income and predominantly ethnic minority backgrounds. Person-centered analyses revealed five subgroups of parents who demonstrated variability in their parent characteristics, which included psychological resources and level of parental involvement in education. Group membership was associated with differences in school involvement and use of the psychoeducational intervention at home, after accounting for the number of barriers to engagement. For the intervention attendance variable, greater number of barriers was associated with decreased attendance only for parents in the resilient subgroup and the psychologically distressed subgroup. Attendance remained constant across levels of barriers for the other three subgroups of parents. The results of the study inform theory and practice regarding how to tailor preventive interventions to accommodate subgroups of parents within populations that experience barriers to accessing mental health services.

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Anxiety disorders in youth are common and, if left untreated, can lead to a variety of negative sequelae. Randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is an efficacious treatment for anxiety disorders in youth with preliminary evidence showing that CBT can be successfully transported into schools. The present article provides (a) a discussion of the inherent challenges and advantages of implementing CBT in the school setting, (b) methods used to identify anxious youth, and (c) key components of CBT for anxious youth with an emphasis on adaptation and application in the school environment. Future research directions are discussed. The successful integration of a flexible CBT approach into the domain of school mental health would be a favorable step toward effective dissemination and would ensure the enduring provision of evidence-based practice to children and adolescents struggling with anxiety.