Child maltreatment increases the risk of emotional and behavioral problems, yet many children demonstrate resilience, functioning better than expected given their level of maltreatment exposure. Although resilience is a dynamic process shaped by children’s social support, including friendships, how different patterns of resilience and friendship support unfold together across development remains unclear. To better understand this process, we examined how patterns of emotional resilience, behavioral resilience, and friendship support co-develop across childhood and adolescence. We used group-based multi-trajectory modeling with data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N = 6, 518, 51% female) to identify distinct patterns of emotional and behavioral resilience (doing better-than-expected given their level of maltreatment exposure) and friendship support, across five timepoints from ages 6 to 17 years. We identified five trajectory groups. Nearly half the sample maintained high emotional and behavioral resilience and friendship support across development. While resilience trajectories varied, friendship support was generally high across groups. Most children followed trajectories of high resilience and perceived friendship support. Even among children with lower emotional and/or behavioral resilience trajectories, friendship support remained high, an encouraging finding. Future research should examine how children’s other relationships (e.g., with parents and siblings) unfold alongside resilience.

Children vary in the extent to which they benefit from parenting programs for conduct problems. How does parental mental health change if children benefit less or more? We assessed whether changes in conduct problems and maternal depressive symptoms co-occur following participation in the Incredible Years parenting program. We integrated individual participant data from 10 randomized trials (N = 1280; children aged 2–10 years) and distinguished latent classes based on families' baseline and post-test conduct problems and maternal depressive symptoms, using repeated measures latent class analysis (RMLCA) and latent transition analysis (LTA). Classes differed mainly in severity of conduct problems and depression (RMLCA; 4 classes). Conduct problems reduced in all classes. Depressive symptoms did not change in most classes, except in a class of families where conduct problems and depression were particularly severe. Incredible Years led to a greater likelihood of families with particularly severe conduct problems and depression moving to a class with mild problems (LTA; 3 classes). Our findings suggest that for the majority of families, children's conduct problems reduce, but maternal depressive symptoms do not, suggesting relative independence, with the exception of families with severe depression and severe conduct problems where changes for the better do co-occur.