This study examined mother-child interaction as a predictor of mastery motivation (i.e., persistence on a problem-posing task) in 3-year-old children who were born premature and had either motor impairment or developmental delay (n = 34). Two aspects of mother-child interaction were hypothesized to predict for mastery motivation: response to child?s distress and cognitive growth-fostering behaviors. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that maternal response to distress, but not cognitive growth promotion, added significant unique variance (15.3%) beyond child cognitive performance in the prediction of mastery motivation. Results suggest that interventions focused on emotional aspects of the mother-child dyad provide important benefits to young children with disabilities who are born preterm. (Contains 4 tables.)