Parents’ Experience When Present During a Child’s Resuscitation: An Integrative Review

Understanding perceptions of parents is necessary to meet parents’ needs during a child’s resuscitation. Parent presence at pediatric resuscitations has been slow to become consistent practice in all hospital settings and remains controversial. The purpose of this integrative review was to synthesize research on parents’ experience while present during a child’s resuscitation to improve understanding for health care providers and to facilitate application in practice. Nine studies met inclusion criteria, identifying four major themes. Parents experienced conflicting emotions, articulated a need for communication and support, reported that being physically present was comforting, and described their reactions to the experience. The available research on parents’ experience during presence at their child’s resuscitation offers a foundation for further detailed study. Further study is needed about parents’ perspective of support needed while present during a child’s resuscitation, as well as about any long-term effects of presence on parent stress and coping.

Prosocial Television, Preschool Children’s Moral Judgments, and Moral Reasoning: The Role of Social Moral Intuitions and Perspective-Taking

Children’s prosocial television shows include moral lessons in their narratives, but research suggests that children struggle to comprehend and transfer these lessons to other situations. The social intuitionist model of moral judgment, however, argues that dimensions of morality can be made more salient through environmental exposure. Using data collected from 101 parent-child dyads (children ages 4.5-6.5), we explore if children’s existing moral intuitions about fairness and care may be made salient following exposure to moral lessons in a children’s television show, and if parent presence and mediation aid this process. Results demonstrate that, compared with children in the control group, children who viewed the moral message either alone or with a parent experienced improvements in perspective-taking, which in turn influenced their moral judgments and moral reasoning. Thus, children’s morality can be positively influenced by prosocial television exposure via promoting perspective-taking, fairness, and care.

Parental Involvement in the Prereferral Process

Little is known about parental involvement in the prereferral intervention team (PIT) process. To shed light on the role of parental involvement in PIT meetings and referred student outcomes, this study used a stratified sample of 88 PIT student records from 14 elementary schools within one district. The records were randomly selected and reliably coded. Analyses revealed that greater parental involvement, measured in two ways—parent presence at PIT meetings and parent implementation of PIT interventions—was associated with an indicator of the quality of the PIT process. Parent presence at PIT meetings was also linked with a student outcome. When parents attended more PIT meetings, there was a decreased likelihood of referral for special education evaluation. Practical implications about why and how parents may influence the PIT process and student outcomes are offered.