Parenting practices are known to be associated with childhood behavior difficulties. Past research has focused on the association between parenting practices and externalizing behavior problems in children. The relationship between internalizing behavioral problems and parenting practices has received less empirical attention. The current study explored the connection between internalizing symptomology in children and parenting practices. Sixty-six parents and children between the ages of 8 and 12 were surveyed regarding internalizing symptomology and parenting practices. Results indicated that parents of children with internalizing symptomology displayed statistically significantly poorer parenting behaviors than did parents of children who were free of internalizing symptoms. Two parenting styles were statistically significantly correlated with internalizing symptoms in children: Overreactivity and lax parenting styles. No significant interaction was noted among gender, internalizing symptomology, and parenting practices. Clinical findings may suggest that parent training may be warranted for children with internalizing symptomology.

This project proposed to examine school counselors' knowledge of and experiences with internalizing issues in children. The sample included all elementary and middle/secondary school counselors employed in Utah. The measure used in the present study was a questionnaire adapted from a study by Green, Clopton, and Pope. Analyses revealed that few elementary school counselors would meet with a student struggling with internalizing symptoms, but many would meet with the students' teacher(s) and parents. Overall, fewer secondary school counselors endorsed the presented responses as compared to elementary school counselors. More than half of both elementary and secondary school counselors indicated they had encountered one to five students struggling with internalizing issues during the past year. The knowledge gained from this research highlights changes that need to be made to preservice and inservice training of school counselors in order to aid in the identification and intervention of internalizing disorders in students.

Over the past two decades, a great deal of research has been devoted to the understanding of internalizing disorders in children. Internalizing disorders encompass a wide variety of problems, including depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and somatic complaints. It has been suggested that the existence of internalizing disorders in children has negative effects upon their self-esteem, academic achievement, physical health, and future adjustment. However, because internalizing disorders are, in great measure, subjective perceptions of internal distress, they are often not readily or reliably identified by external observers. As a result, several researchers have stressed the importance of eliciting the child 's perspective through self-report assessment. While there are several excellent self-report measures of internalizing constructs, none of these instruments is designed to measure the comprehensive domain of internalizing disorders in children below the age of 11 even though it has been established that children as young as 8 are able to give reliable self-reports. This apparent dearth of broad-based instruments for middle- to late-elementary school children creates problems for the assessment of internalizing problems because the various internalizing syndromes often coexist with one another, therefore limiting the utility of a single-syndrome instrument. The newly developed Internalizing Symptoms Scale for Children (ISSC) is a 48- item self-report instrument designed to measure the broad range of internalizing problems in children. This investigation was conducted to establish whether the ISSC is a reliable measure of internalizing symptoms in 8- to 12-year-old children over 2-, 4-, and 12-week intervals. Overall, the findings provide strong support for the ISSC as a reliable measure of internalizing symptoms in elementary-age children over short- to medium-length time intervals.