Parenting Primary School Age Children Dr Louise Keown Faculty of Education

Focus Primary school age children ◦ 5-11years Key social and behavioural developments Key parenting issues and optimal parenting practices Atypical behavioural development – NZ findings Fathers’ impact on children’s adjustment

Key changes in children’s behavioural development Develop greater capacities for self-control and self-regulation, and social responsibility Linked to: ◦ Decreases in impulsive behaviour ◦ Growth in understanding of self and emotions ◦ Growth in cognitive abilities – redirect attention, longer term focus, perspective taking

Key Parenting Issues Strategies for positive behaviour development ◦ Co-regulation (Maccoby, 1992)  Parents stay informed  Effective use of contact time for teaching and feedback  Foster children’s ability to self-monitor behaviour  Children inform parents of whereabouts, activities, problems  Monitoring a key component  Supervising children’s behaviour from a distance

Key Parenting Issues Strategies for positive behaviour development  Parenting style  Standard setting  Reasoning about appropriate behaviour and consequences  Clear communication  Warmth and acceptance

Key changes in children’s social development Social contexts and relationships ◦ The roles of peers and family become increasingly complementary ◦ Peers provide a context to develop social and cognitive skills, test new behaviours ◦ Friends provide emotional support and validation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and worth

Key Parenting Issues Fostering emotional development and social competence  Parent as a role model  When positive emotion prevalent in the home, linked to children’s positive emotional expression and social skills. (Halberstadt et al., 1999).  Parents’ reactions to children’s emotions.  Supportive rather than dismissive reactions to children’s emotional upsets:  help children regulate emotional arousal;  linked to children’s social competence and adjustment (Eisenberg et al., 1998).

Abilities that are key to competent social functioning Emotional Intelligence (EI) components: ◦ Motivate oneself ◦ Persistence when frustrated ◦ Impulse control ◦ Delay gratification ◦ Identify one’s own feelings ◦ Identify other’s feelings ◦ Regulate mood ◦ Regulate emotions ◦ Empathy EI predicts how well people do in life

Individual differences Temperament – individual differences in emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity, and self-regulation (Rothbart & Bates, 1998). A child’s temperament style contributes to his/her social competence and adjustment.

Individual differences Children’s adjustment predicted by temperament plus parenting practices. Child temperament and parents’ socialisation efforts influence each other over time (Belsky et al. 2007).

Atypical behavioural development Keown (2011), 6-8 year old boys with behavioural difficulties followed-up from early childhood ◦ Most frequently reported challenges  Defiance, disobedience  Challenging boundaries, argumentative

Atypical behavioural development Keown (2011) ◦ Both mothers and fathers of boys with behaviour problems reported higher rates of child-parent conflict than parents of comparison boys. ◦ What is the risk posed by ongoing child- parent conflict involving both parents? ◦ What can be done to help?  Behavioural family intervention  Triple Positive Parenting Progam (Sanders et al., 2003)

Does fathers’ parenting make a unique contribution to children’s well-being? Maternal and paternal behaviours often highly related in many studies May reflect fact that effective mothers encourage fathers to be highly involved with their children

Fathers’ impact on children: Research evidence Contribute uniquely to children’s social and behavioural competence  Paternal sensitivity, warmth, appropriate regulation of negative emotion, positive control Positive involvement (shared activities, praise, affection) associated with fewer child behaviour problems (Amato & Rivera, 1999).

Key Messages Both fathers and mothers can provide interactions with their child that are advantageous to the child’s development. Children as well as parents play an active role in the process of development – interactive patterns of influence will apply in all cases (Woodhead et al., 2005).