Families with young children with and without developmental disabilities often engage in musical experiences in the home. These parent-child musical activities are associated with positive outcomes for children and parents andmay be a context to help foster strong parent-child relationships. However, little is known about how musical experiences differ across diagnostic groups or their relevance to parent-child attachment. Using an online questionnaire, the current study examined musical experiences and their relationship with parent-child attachment for 340 families with young children with typical and atypical development. Musical experiences were common in all diagnostic groups. Diagnostic groups differed in active musical engagement, potentially relating to the differing phenotypes of various developmental disabilities. Parent-child music engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, even when controlling for relevant variables. Promoting musical experiences may be an accessible way to support the parent-child relationship across diagnostic groups with implications for informal music engagement and parent-child therapy.
Full Text Preprint available at: https://psyarxiv.com/xveqy/
Published in: Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1dMNDh~JIdcQN