Beyond learning difficulties: Emotion regulation in children with specific learning disorder and its associations with maternal alexithymia and cognitive flexibility

Children with specific learning disorder (SLD) frequently experience emotion regulation difficulties, yet the family factors associated with these difficulties remain poorly understood. This cross-sectional study examined maternal alexithymia and cognitive flexibility in relation to emotion regulation difficulties in 116 children with SLD without psychiatric comorbidity and 111 age- and sex-matched controls. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing alexithymia, cognitive flexibility, and their children’s emotion regulation; Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Revised scores were recorded. Compared with controls, mothers of children with SLD reported lower cognitive flexibility and greater child emotion regulation difficulties, whereas maternal alexithymia did not differ. After adjustment for demographic and socioeconomic covariates, the difference in children’s emotion regulation difficulties persisted, whereas among maternal measures only perceived control over difficult situations remained lower. Within the SLD group, maternal alexithymia, cognitive flexibility, and maternal age were each associated with children’s emotion regulation difficulties in a covariate-adjusted model (R2 = .527; adjusted R2 = .455). Because all measures were mother-reported and obtained concurrently, the direction of these associations cannot be determined, and child-to-parent or bidirectional effects remain plausible. Longitudinal and intervention studies should test whether changes in maternal emotional awareness and cognitive flexibility relate to children’s emotional functioning.