Early mother-child interactions in dyads with drug addicted mothers and children prenatally exposed to drugs.

Introduction: Drug addiction is considered a major risk factor for parenting and for child development. Addicted mothers are often described as less sensitive and less able to regulate negative affects during interactions. On the other hand, children prenatally exposed to drugs appear more likely to experience difficulties in interactive emotion regulation. Despite the large amount of studies on the detrimental effects of substance exposure on child development the outcomes appear sometimes controversial. Method: The study aimed to compare the quality of early adult-child interactions in a group of drug addicted mothers and their children with a group of unselected dyads. 20 mother-child pairs (children aged between 12 and 36 months) with drug addicted mothers attending a rehabilitation program were coupled with 20 unselected mother-child pairs according to children\u2019s age and gender. 20-minutes mother-child interactions were videotaped during free play and assessed through the 4th edition of the Emotional Availability Scales (Biringen, 2008). The results were then compared in order to identify similarities and differences between the two groups. Results: The results highlighted differences between the two groups, with \u201caddicted dyads\u201d showing lower scores on emotional availability with respect to the comparison group. Addicted mothers and their children seemed to experience more difficulties during interactions when compared to controls. The groups differed also in term of homogeneity of the scores, with the \u201caddicted\u201d one reporting more heterogeneous scores in the EAS. Conclusions: Addicted mothers and their children are at higher risk for experiencing difficulties during everyday interactions. Anyway, the range of these difficulties appears highly variable across each case suggesting that some dyads might be more likely to be \u201cprotected\u201d from negative interactive consequences associated with the condition of drug dependence. Clinicians should take into account these aspects when programming, implementing and assessing interventions