Neuroscience
Early findings have shown that the mothers of badly behaved young children think about their child’s behaviour in a characteristic way, tending to believe that their bad behaviour is intentional and has to do with the nature of the child rather than the child’s circumstances. This has led some to propose that the way such mothers think about their children’s behaviour may actually be contributing to the children’s conduct problems.
To test this idea Charlotte Wilson and colleagues recruited 80 mothers whose three-year-old children had been identified by community nurses as being particularly naughty and oppositional.
Consistent with past research, the researchers found that the mothers of the worst-behaved children (in terms of temper tantrums and disobedience) had more negative thoughts about their child’s behaviour – they tended to think their children behaved badly on purpose and would do so regardless of the circumstances.
But crucially, when the researchers followed the mothers up a year later, they found it was children’s behaviour that seemed to be affecting their mothers’ thoughts, rather than the other way around. That is, mothers with more difficult children at the first testing point were more likely to have developed negative thoughts about their child’s behaviour a year later. In contrast, children at age three whose mothers had more negative thoughts, tended not to have became more poorly behaved a year later.
The researchers said “…it is becoming clearer that early hard-to-manage behaviour in children has an impact on maternal thoughts and beliefs. In contrast, this study throws further doubt on the hypothesis that parental attributions have a direct effect on children’s conduct problems”.
___________________________________
Wilson, C., Gardner, F., Burton, J. & Leung, S. (2006). Maternal attributions and young children’s conduct problems: A longitudinal study. Infant and Child Development, 15, 109-121.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Does the way mothers think about their difficult children matter?
Early findings have shown that the mothers of badly behaved young children think about their child’s behaviour in a characteristic way, tending to believe that their bad behaviour is intentional and has to do with the nature of the child rather than the child’s circumstances. This has led some to propose that the way such mothers think about their children’s behaviour may actually be contributing to the children’s conduct problems.To test this idea Charlotte Wilson and colleagues recruited 80 mothers whose three-year-old children had been identified by community nurses as being particularly naughty and oppositional.
Consistent with past research, the researchers found that the mothers of the worst-behaved children (in terms of temper tantrums and disobedience) had more negative thoughts about their child’s behaviour – they tended to think their children behaved badly on purpose and would do so regardless of the circumstances.
But crucially, when the researchers followed the mothers up a year later, they found it was children’s behaviour that seemed to be affecting their mothers’ thoughts, rather than the other way around. That is, mothers with more difficult children at the first testing point were more likely to have developed negative thoughts about their child’s behaviour a year later. In contrast, children at age three whose mothers had more negative thoughts, tended not to have became more poorly behaved a year later.
The researchers said “…it is becoming clearer that early hard-to-manage behaviour in children has an impact on maternal thoughts and beliefs. In contrast, this study throws further doubt on the hypothesis that parental attributions have a direct effect on children’s conduct problems”.
___________________________________
Wilson, C., Gardner, F., Burton, J. & Leung, S. (2006). Maternal attributions and young children’s conduct problems: A longitudinal study. Infant and Child Development, 15, 109-121.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Mothers' Reading Style Affects Children's Later Understanding Of Other People's Minds
The use of cognitive verbs like 'think', 'know', 'remember' and 'believe' by mothers when reading picture books to their children has a beneficial effect on their children's later ability to understand other people's...
- It's Thanks To Dad That Girls Are More Cautious Than Boys
Part of the reason boys tear around recklessly having more accidents while girls are more cautious is no doubt due to their biological differences. But it could also have to do with parents treating young boys and girls differently. Now Lisa Hagan and...
- Reading To Babies Gives Them A Head-start
Toddlers read to daily by their mothers from an early age have bigger vocabularies and superior cognitive skills. Helen Raikes and colleagues asked 2,581 mothers from poor families enrolled on the Early Head Start programme in America how often they read...
- Dissecting Good Parenting
How affectionate parents are towards their children, and how they respond to their children’s distress are two distinct aspects of good parenting that each have a unique effect on a child’s development, psychologists at the University of Toronto...
- Do Mums Know About Child Development?
An American study has tested how much mothers know about child development, safety issues in raising children, infant sleeping habits and nutrition. Two hundred and three women at a paediatric clinic and an obstetric clinic in a southern state in America...