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Journal of Pediatric Psychology Advance Access published online on September 8, 2009
Journal of Pediatric Psychology, doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsp058
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Determinants of Somatic Complaints in 18-month-old Children: The Generation R Study

Noor Wolff, MSc1,2, Anne-Sophie Darlington, PhD2, Joke Hunfeld, PhD2, Frank Verhulst, MD, PhD3, Vincent Jaddoe, MD, PhD1,4,5, Albert Hofman, MD, PhD4, Jan Passchier, PhD2 and Henning Tiemeier, MD, PhD3,4

1The Generation R Study, 2Department of Medical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 3Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 4Department of Epidemiology, and 5Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Noor Wolff, Erasmus University Medical Center, Department of Medical Psychology & Psychotherapy, P.O. Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Telephone: +31-10-7043807, Fax: +31-10-7044695, E-mail: n.wolff{at}erasmusmc.nl.


  Abstract

Objective To investigate the effect of child temperament, maternal psychologic symptoms, maternal chronic pain, and parenting stress on children's somatic complaints. Methods The study was embedded in the Generation R Study, a population-based cohort study. Child somatic complaints were assessed via mother-report in 5,171 children of 18 months of age. Questionnaires assessed maternal somatic symptoms, symptoms of depression, anxiety during pregnancy and 2 months after delivery, maternal chronic pain during pregnancy, parenting stress 18 months after birth, and mother-reported child temperament 6 months after birth, as the determinants. Results Fearful temperament, temperamental falling reactivity, maternal somatic symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and parenting stress each independently and prospectively increased the likelihood of children's somatic complaints at 18 months of age. Conclusions In toddlers, temperament, maternal stress, and maternal somatic symptoms seem particularly important for the development of somatic complaints, but long-term research is needed to establish causality and predictive value of these factors.

Key words: child temperament; parenting stress; somatic complaint; symptom.

Received May 6, 2008; revision received June 15, 2009; accepted June 15, 2009


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