Ontwikkeling, Opvoeding en Onderwijs
8 Parenting Preschoolers
Parenting a Preschooler
Preschoolers: children aged 3-5 years. This period is one of rapidly shifting
physical, developmental, and social change, and particular parenting challenges come along
with this. In some ways, parenting gets easier when children reach the preschool period
(much more regulated and independent already).
Beyond attachment, several domains of socialization become prominent in the
preschool stage, such as gender identity and prosocial development. Children’s continuing
development of their sense of autonomy often poses a challenge for parents. With
increasing bids for independence come discipline problems. Other common issues parents
face are child care and getting their children ready for school entry, the increasing dilemma
of screen time, child obesity, and adverse childhood experiences.
Gender Identity
One of most notable developments during the preschool period concerns the child’s
understanding of self. Although toddlers have learned to label themselves with the binary
terms of boys or girls based on their anatomy, they now develop a better understanding of
what the labels mean, and that gender is something stable and consistent. Along with
gender identity comes knowledge about gender-stereotyped activities and toys.
Social role theory posits that differences in boys and girls behavior develop, in part,
from parental communication of gender roles in society: parents actively promote gender
socialization (by teaching their children about stable gender identity and gender constancy;
by clothing their children, decorating rooms, and equipping their play areas; by harboring
different expectations and perceptions of their children based on their sex; through modeling
gender-based division of labor and assigning household chores based on gender).
Parents also encourage different behavior in their sons and daughters through
differential socialization practices (these differences in how sons and daughters are
socialized tend to be subtle).
Along with promoting certain gender differences, parents enforce gender
conformity.
Autonomy
Parents support the development of autonomy through the use of gentle,
nonintrusive control and by providing appropriate choices (e.g., “would you like to wear the
red or blue shirt today?”).
Parental guidance should not come with boundless praise. Parents should not
compliment their preschoolers for being smart (rewarding children in that way can
inadvertently undermine their achievement motivation). Instead, parents should praise their
children for working hard.
Emotion Regulation and Self-Control
Emotion regulation: the ability to control and regulate one’s own emotions; this is
one key aspect of self-control or self-regulation. In the preschool years, most children show
dramatic improvements in their regulatory abilities. Children who are unable to regulate their
,emotions are at risk for developing 2 general types of behavior problems: internalizing and
externalizing.
Parents help their children develop emotion regulation in several ways. Parents who
are good at emotion socialization provide direct didactic instruction about emotions, model
how to identify and deal with emotions, react to children’s emotional expression, and discuss
emotion-related topics (-> these things also improve executive functioning in their children
(=cognitive processes enabling inhibitory control, resistance to distraction, problem solving,
and goal-directed behavior)).
Effortful control tasks (e.g., instructing a preschooler not to touch the candy but
then leaving him alone in the room) are used to investigate self-regulation. Preschoolers
better at effortful control show fewer behavior problems and better academic performance.
Prosocial Development
Prosocial behavior: actions considered beneficial to other people or society as a
whole (e.g., helping, sharing, caring); emerge in the second year of life, but prosocial acts
are often at odds with preschoolers’ behavior. Empathy is closely linked to prosocial
behavior. When toddlers or preschoolers cause another person distress, parents use
affective reprimands to help their children understand the problem with their behavior (by
changing their own tone of voice and giving a reprimand and explanation about the
behavior).
Being empathic, prosocial, and having appropriate moral reasoning are 3 indicators
that the child is on a healthy developmental trajectory.
Corporal Punishment
Children’s bids for autonomy coupled with their lack of behavioral control create a
perfect storm for misbehavior in the preschool years. Not surprisingly, parental use of
disciplinary techniques peaks when children are 3-5 years old (e.g., reasoning, diverting
attention, negotiating, threatening, yelling, spanking, denying privileges).
Coercive discipline: when a parent uses a punishment (or threat of a punishment)
to force a child to behave in a particular way; includes, physical punishment, verbal
techniques (e.g. threatening), and certain types of psychological techniques (e.g. shaming).
Research into the relation between spanking and child behavior shows negative
outcomes like the children being a victim of physical abuse, a negative parent-child
relationship, child mental health problems, and child externalizing problems. No positive
outcomes were found.
Positive Parenting
Over the past 20 years or so, a new approach to discipline is advocated by many
parent educators: positive parenting (/positive discipline/attachment parenting/nonviolent
parenting), which is not oriented around the traditional Western parental authority, but
around an authoritative approach. The goal is having the parent and child develop a warm,
cooperative relationship. Parents still need to provide firm guidance, but without disciplining
a child in traditional and coercive ways. (-> found to elicit good behavior from the child and to
promote the development of conscience).
Contemporary Issues
Preschoolers With ADHD
, Engaging in positive parenting can be especially challenging with preschoolers with
ADHD. Globally, the prevalence rate is somewhere between 2-7% (and is increasing). The 2
most common types of interventions are dispensing medication (stimulants like Adderall,
Concerta, Ritalin, or Vyvanse) and training the parents (e.g., Triple P Positive Parenting
program; the Incredible Years) and children.
Child Care and School Readiness
For many parents, finding good, affordable care (e.g., relative care, childcare centers,
care in a provider’s home) is an essential part of early childhood. The onset, intensity, and
duration of childcare experiences vary widely. One study revealed that the best kinds of
non-parental child care were safe, clean, stimulating environments with low group sizes, low
child-adult ratios, and care provided by individuals who did not hold authoritarian child-
rearing beliefs. However, independent of the quality of the center, if children spend most of
their days at a center, they were likely to develop problems, such as aggression and
disobedience.
Children, particularly those from under-resourced families, benefit from attending
preschool as an intervention to prepare them for school. Parents also prepare their
preschoolers for school by promoting emotion regulation and social competence; by
engaging in specific educational actions related to school readiness; by using scaffolding or
structured guidance appropriate to the child’s developmental level.
Screen Time
Watching tv or videos can benefit children in some domains, but more often, is linked
to problems. Television can result in more aggression and self-regulation problems in
children; it can have a negative impact on EF, attention, play, and school readiness by
decreasing vocabulary. Another concern is the link between screen time and obesity.
Parents do not express a lot of concern about their children’s screen time, and if they
do, it’s with the violent or sexual content of the media. Pediatricians advise to avoid all digital
media for children <2 years (with the exception of video calls); for children 2-5 limited
exposure to just 1h a day (a parent should co-view tv shows with children if possible). More
generally, they recommend “tech-free” times and outings, setting limits, and encourage no-
screen play time.
Childhood Obesity
If the BMI (using age, sex, height, and weight in the calculation) of an individual is at
or above the 95th percentile of other children of that same age and sex, then the child is
classified as obese; if calculated to be at the 85th-94th percentile, then the child is said to be
overweight. Childhood obesity is a serious health problem for children; obese children are
5x as likely to grow into overweight or obese adults. Adult obesity can result in multiple
physical (asthma, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep problems)
and psychological problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem).
Parents influence their children's diet in 3 key ways: 1) they model food choices; 2)
they select what food is available for the child; 3) they control the child’s intake. Besides diet,
parents need to promote an active lifestyle by limiting screen time and engaging in physical
activities themselves and with their children. Physical activity is useful for burning calories,
but also contributes to cognitive development and social skills learning and enhances
psychological well-being in children.
, Adverse Childhood Experience and Child Behavior Problems
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): within-family problems that children may
encounter (e.g. child maltreatment (physical, sexual, psychological abuse, neglect) and
family dysfunction (divorce, marital violence, substance abuse, mental illness). Studies often
found a dose-response relation of ACEs and many indices of adult physical and mental
health: the more ACEs, the greater the likelihood of health problems in adulthood.
Stress triggers hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, which produces
neurotransmitters and neurohormones to be released (e.g. adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine,
serotonin, endorphins). These hormones are then responded to by brain receptors. In turn,
the hormones regulate gene expression. -> greater reactivity to stimuli and fearful
responses; less self-regulation; behavior problems.
Of course not all preschool behavior problems are due to stress. Problems can result
from genetic disabilities, physical problems, or temperamental issues. But with regard to
stress-related behavior problems, parents of preschoolers can play multiple roles (cause it,
happens beyond their control, protect their children against it, help them cope).
9 Parenting During the Middle Childhood Years
Middle childhood: the developmental period beginning at age 6 and continuing
through age 12. Even though the key socialization issues seem a lot like those in
toddlerhood, many parents find that child rearing gets easier in middle childhood. With
children’s increasing maturation, cognitive abilities, and abilities to self-regulate, this time
period is characterized by an increase in the cooperative parent-child relationship.
Erikson (1993) claimed the task of this period of childhood was that of developing a
sense of industry. Piaget observed children moving into the concrete operations stage, when
children’s cognition develops into being governed by principles of logical (though not
abstract) reasoning. Freud labeled the period as the “latency phase”, others the “golden age”
of childhood.
Parents and Within-Family Interactions
Birth Order and Siblings
One of the theories intended to account for birth-order effects is the resource
dilution model, where the family is viewed as a conduit that dispenses resources to the
children and, in turn, affects their academic achievement and cognitive development (=the
amount of resources available to a child depends on the family income, number of children,
and their spacing). Although this theory has fared better than Zajonc’s confluence theory
(based on the idea that intelligence becomes diluted with more children in the family) in
empirical tests, it has also been critiqued on various grounds, including methodology used to
test the theory. Sulloway’s explanation in his book ‘Born to Rebel’ why some children
become revolutionary thinkers (evolutionary theory approach): because of competitive
tendencies, later-born children are more likely than firstborns to be reformers or creative
thinkers who reject the status quo.
Bottom line: the birth-order research has failed to come up with robust effects based
simply on the order that a child was born into a family. When differences emerge, they tend
