Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to lockdown in many countries and Italy was the first one interested in Europe. The lockdown strategy is an essential step to curb the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases, but it is very demanding for the population involved and especially for children and their families. The aims of the present study are: (a) to explore the psychometric properties of the COPEWithME questionnaire, a new tool to evaluate parents' ability to support and promote child resilient behaviors, (b) to investigate the relation between parents' resilience and their ability to support and promote child resilient behaviors with child resilience and child stress-related behaviors assessed during the COVID-19 outbreak. Participants (N = 158 mothers, with 6- to 11-years-old children, 53% female), who were volunteers and anonymous, filled out an online questionnaire composed by CD-RISC 25, PMK-CYRM-R, and COPEWithME. With regard to the COPEWithME, validation exploratory factor analyses revealed a one-factor solution of 18 items. The COPEWithME positively correlates both with mothers' resilience and with children's resilience. Mediation analysis showed that the association between mothers' resilience and children's stress-related behaviors was mediated by the mothers' ability to support and promote child resilient behaviors. The COPEWithME, to our knowledge, is the first measure of parents' ability to support and promote resilient behaviors in school-age children, a key parenting skill that may help children in dealing with stressful situations such as the COVID-19 outbreak. These findings represent useful insights to advance mental health interventions in the post-pandemic phases suggesting focusing on a family's resources and resilience processes.