The combination of the increasing pressure on mental health care and the limited HR and financial resources highlights the clear need for effective prevention strategies. It is increasingly being demonstrated that regulation problems (RP) in childhood, due to co-regulation problems within the parent(s)-child relationship are extremely important for mental health and thus setting the stage for developmental pathologies and persistent psychological problems in later life. To date, however, there is hardly any fundamental research with the aim to intervene in this vicious circle of mental health problems, especially in relation to (1) the understanding the vicious circle of regulatory problems within the broader social context, and (2) how we can prevent and treat these regulatory problems in young children.

The present study will address these gaps using a fully mixed concurrent dominant status design on 3 research goals: (1) assess the prevalence and evolution of RP (2) define the risk and protective factors of the child and the child’s ecosystem in RP (3) investigate the impact of several stressors on mothers’ and fathers’ parenting and how this impacts RP in infants.