Abstract

The aim was to investigate how 5 to 9 years old children and their mothers evaluate the seriousness of physical or psychological autobiographical negative events narrated by the child. Children were asked to recall three personal events and evaluate their seriousness. Mothers evaluated the seriousness of their children's events from their own point of view and then considering their children's perspective. Mothers tended to overestimate the seriousness of the events when taking their children's perspective compared to their self-evaluation. For psychological events, mothers attributed higher levels of seriousness considering their children's perspective in comparison to children's selfevaluation. Implications for the role of negative event sharing with adults is discussed.