Latent profiles of emotional and behavioral risks in children with intellectual disabilities: characteristics and associations with parenting styles.

PURPOSE We aimed to identify heterogeneous emotional and behavioral patterns in children and adolescents with intellectual developmental disorder (intellectual disability) (ID) and to determine how these profiles are associated with different parenting styles.

METHODS Latent profile analysis was used to identify children's emotional and behavioral risk trajectories. One-way ANOVA assessed differences in parenting styles across the resulting behavioral risk profiles. Multinomial logistic regression investigated the associations of parenting styles with child profile membership.

RESULTS Analyses of 204 children and adolescents with ID (mean age 13.08 ± 3.17 years) identified three behavioral risk trajectories: (1) low externalizing, high prosocial group /low risk (14.21 %), showing minimal externalizing issues and strong prosocial behaviors; (2) hyperactivity-prominent/moderate risk (64.22 %), indicating pronounced hyperactivity and moderate externalizing problems; and (3) high externalizing/high risk (21.57 %), demonstrating elevated emotional and conduct problems with low prosocial behavior. One-way ANOVA showed significant between-group effects for indulgent (F (2, 201) = 13.46, ηp2 = 0.117, p < 0.01), democratic (F (2, 201) = 30.76, ηp2 = 0.234, p < 0.01), permissive (F (2, 201) = 4.42, ηp2 = 0.042, p = 0.013), and inconsistent parenting styles (F (2, 201) = 12.90, ηp2 = 0.115, p < 0.01). Multinomial logistic regression indicated that the democratic parenting style was positively associated with higher likelihood of child membership in the low externalizing, high prosocial group (OR = 1.317 [95 % CI, 1.186-1.463], p < 0.001) or the hyperactivity-prominent group (OR = 1.208 [95 % CI, 1.121-1.302], p < 0.001). The indulgent parenting style was negatively associated with the low externalizing group (OR = 0.829 [95 % CI, 0.703-0.978], p = 0.026).

CONCLUSION Findings suggest that democratic parenting style may be the most effective approach to support positive emotional and behavioral adjustment in children and adolescents with ID.