German Parents and Educators of Two to Four-Year-Old Children as Informants for the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).

Prosocial behavior is crucial to children’s socioemotional and interpersonal development and general well-being; it is a voluntary act intending to benefit and satisfy others’ needs for physical and emotional support []. This behavior facilitates proper development from childhood to adulthood [, ] as it is a protective factor for antisocial behaviors [, ]. In this line, different studies proposed that prosocial behavior reduces the risk of aggressive or undesirable behaviors since it mitigates the probability of its occurrence and promotes positive experiences and social adjustment [–]. Moreover, prosocial behavior is linked to interpersonal skills [], positively influencing individual development, social exchanges, and enhancing social responsibility []. Prosocial behavior is settled during early childhood, between ages 18 and 24 months, and develops according to cultural, contextual, biological, dispositional, situational, and social factors [, , ]. Between middle childhood (ages 5 to 8 years), these factors and experiences are responsible for the variance of prosocial behavior, its maintenance, and its increase in adolescence and adulthood [, ]. Remarkably, family represents a relevant context for children’s prosocial behavior. Children acquire behaviors primarily by interacting with their parents in the family setting through parental modeling []. Regarding children’s prosocial behavior, modeling can occur when parents perform empathic and prosocial acts directly toward the child or in interactions with others, predisposing children’s future actions based on positive social exchanges []. For instance, prospective studies have provided evidence that positive parenting predicts increased levels of prosocial behavior: these studies include the exploration of parental positive reinforcement [] and warmth in preschoolers [], and parental warmth, sympathy [], sensitivity [] and empathy in children [].