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Background: As often only parents are addressed, studying parent-child agreement and its explanatory factors is crucial in gaining accurate information on young children's emotional problems., Method: Parental and children's reports of children's emotional problems (anger, anxiety, sadness) and children's reports of life events were gathered between February and June, 2010 from 464 Belgian nonclinical children 5-10 years old., Results: Children reported more emotional problems than their parents. Parental underestimation was higher in the case of girls, older children, nontraditional family structures and authoritative parenting style. Furthermore, life events and emotional problems were significantly correlated only when using children's reported emotions., Conclusions: In our nonclinical children, interviewing both parents and children on children's emotional problems is necessary and parent-child disagreement can partially be explained by child or family characteristics., (© 2012 The Authors. Child and Adolescent Mental Health © 2012 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

To evaluate the impact of stress on children's well-being, it is important to have valid and reliable stress assessment methods. Nevertheless, selection of an appropriate method for a particular research question may not be straightforward, as there is currently no consensus on a reference method to measure stress in children. This article examined to what extent childhood stress can be estimated accurately by stressor questionnaires (i.e., Coddington life events scale) and biological markers (serum, salivary, and hair cortisol) using the Triads (a triangulation) method in 272 elementary school girls. Salivary cortisol was shown to most accurately indicate true childhood stress for short periods in the past (i.e., last 3 months), whereas hair cortisol may be preferred above salivary measurements for periods more distant and thus for chronic stress assessment. However, applicability should be confirmed in larger and more heterogeneous populations., (Copyright © 2012 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)