Parental Accommodation in Pre-school Aged Children with Specific Phobias: An Exploratory Study

Specific phobia (SP), characterised by persistent anxiety, distress, and pathological avoidance of a feared stimulus, is among the most common childhood anxiety disorders and predicts later mental health difficulties. One mechanism known to maintain child anxiety and reduce treatment response is parental accommodation (PA), yet little is known about its role in young children with phobias. This cross-sectional study explored correlates and mediators of PA across phobia subtypes in 93 phobic children aged 3–6 years. All parents engaged in some form of PA, with accommodation significantly higher in the natural-environment subtype. Greater PA was associated with greater child anxiety, functional impairment, and sleep difficulties, as well as parental depression and parenting stress. In a hierarchical regression, child functional impairment and parenting stress were uniquely associated with PA. Mediation and reverse mediation analyses indicated that while PA partially accounted for the indirect association between child anxiety and functional impairment, functional impairment also significantly accounted for the indirect association between anxiety and PA, with no definitive evidence for the direction of causality. There is a need for longitudinal research to replicate these findings to elucidate potential treatment targets.