Background

Parenting strategies such as communicating clear expectations, providing calm directions, and teaching specific skills can strengthen young children’s social-emotional development. Parenting programs for children with disruptive behavior often emphasize gaining compliance via effective directives, and less on how to facilitate child skill acquisition or on effective parenting for differing situations and task demands.

Objective

We aimed to study how parenting strategies and associated child behavior vary by situational contexts. Specifically, we focused on the differential use of directives and guidance during different tasks.

Method

This observation study utilized a microsocial coding system, the Parent–Child Play Task Observation System (PCPTOS), to closely examine parent and child interactions in multiple analogue task situations. The study drew on pre-intervention data for 224 parent–child dyads who participated in a parenting-focused intervention trial for children ages 3–7 who presented elevated levels of disruptive behaviors.

Results

Interrater reliabilities were very good to excellent. Parents used directives more frequently during the clean-up task and guidance more frequently during the teaching task compared to the other tasks. Associations of parent use of directives and guidance with child behavior and affect differed by task. Observed parent directives were associated with child disruptive behavior during each task, whereas parent guidance was negatively associated with child disruptive behavior and positively associated with child positive affect during the teaching task.

Conclusions

Parenting strategies that are well matched to the situational context and proactively consider task demands are more likely to facilitate children’s social-emotional development.

中文翻译：

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满足任务要求：在不同情况下系统地观察家长指令和指导

背景

为人父母的策略，例如传达明确的期望、提供冷静的指导和教授特定技能，可以加强幼儿的社交情感发展。针对有破坏性行为的儿童的育儿计划通常强调通过有效的指令获得服从，而较少强调如何促进儿童技能习得或针对不同情况和任务需求的有效育儿。

客观的

我们旨在研究育儿策略和相关的儿童行为如何因情境背景而异。具体来说，我们专注于在不同任务中指令和​​指导的不同使用。

方法

这项观察研究利用了一个微观社会编码系统，即亲子游戏任务观察系统 (PCPTOS)，在多个模拟任务情况下仔细检查父母和孩子的互动。该研究利用了 224 位亲子二人的干预前数据，他们参与了一项针对 3-7 岁儿童的育儿干预试验，这些儿童的破坏性行为水平较高。

结果

评价者间的可靠性非常好到极好。与其他任务相比，家长在清理任务中更频繁地使用指令，在教学任务中更频繁地使用指导。父母使用指令和指导与儿童行为和影响的关联因任务而异。在每项任务中，观察到的父母指令与儿童破坏性行为相关，而父母指导与儿童破坏性行为负相关，与教学任务中儿童的积极影响正相关。

结论

与情境相匹配并主动考虑任务需求的育儿策略更有可能促进儿童的社会情感发展。