Research Report No. 29 Child Rearing Practices, Physical Development and School Readiness of Bangkok Preschool Children by Wanpen Phisalaphong, Ngamta Vanindananda Oraphin Choochom, Ashara Sucaromana 1984 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This study was the initial project of a unique type of study on "Relationships among Child Rearing Practices, Physical and Psychological Development" which followed the same group of children for five years, started at aged 5 and finished at age 10. Three main purposes of this study were : (1) to examine physical condition of the children (aged 5 - 6 years old) in terms of their nutritional status. (2) to investigate patterms of child rearing practices exercised by parents of different bio-social backgrounds concerning the amount of care parents put emphasis in term of physical, social-emotional, intellectual of moral development of the child, and (3) to examine 4 different aspects of school readiness abilities or children with different family backgrounds and patterns of child rearing practices used. Data were collected from 310 families in Bangkok who brought their children (aged between 5-6 years) to apply for enrollment in preschool class of Elementary Demonstration School, Srinakharinwirot University (Prasarnmit), Bangkok. A preschool readiness inventory,modified from Dr. Bettye M. Caldwell's Cooperative Preschool Inventory (revised edition 1970) appropriately to Thai culture was administered individually to 310 children (178 boys and 132 girls). Bio-social characteristics of children and family backgrounds and patterns of child rearing practices used by parents were collected through questionnaires and structured interviews. Physical variables being examined were height and weight. School readiness abilities were divided into 4 catagories, i.e., (1) Personal-Social Responsiveness : knowledge about the child's own presonal world and his ability to get along with and respond to communications of another persons. (2) Associative Vocabulary : ability to demonstrate awareness of the connotation of a word by carrying out some action or by associating to certain intrinsic qualities of the underlying verbal concept. (3) Concept Activation-Numerical : Numerical : ability to label quantities, to make judgments of more or less, to recognize seriated postions, and (4) Concept Activation - Sensory : to be aware of certain sensory attributes (shape, size, motion, color) and to be able to execute certain visual- motor configurations. The major statistical technique for hypothesis was two-way analysis of variance. The results could be summarized as follows : (1) Nutritional status of the subjects as a whole was found to be above average. Only a few cases showed malnutritional problems at first degree, of which more malnourished girls were shown than boys, This finding led to suggestion that eventhough most parents of these children were in higher socio-economic status, they still needed proper information about children eating habit and diets. It was expected that through proper suggestions or guidance they could improve the eating pattern of their children, which is a crucial factor on development of the child, both physically and mentally. (2) Higher educated fathers put more emphasis on practices that were supposed to stimulate moral development of their children than lower educated fathers. (3) Regarding school readiness abilities of children analyzed by two-way factorial design : bio-social characteristics or family backgrouds and pattern of child rearing practices, the results were as follows. (3.1) Children of higher educated mothers, who were given care less emphasized on presupposed social-emotional aspect showd higher ability on Associative Vocabulary than children of medium or lower educated mothers. This might be interpreted that eventhough given less stimulation the higher educated mothers still automatically acted as better models to their children on such ability than mothers in medium or lower educated groups. Besides direct contact on communication between mothers and children in the higher educated group could be more beneficial to the children then that carried on between the medium or lower educated mothers and their children. (3.2) Children of higher and medium educated mothers, who were given care moderately emphasized on actions presupposed moral behaviors showed higher abilities on Concept Activation-Senseory than children of lower educated mothers. (3.3) Children of higher educated mothers, who were mainly given direct care by their own parents (both fathers and mothers) showed higher ability on Personal-Social Responsiveness than children of lower educated mothers who were also mainly taking care by their own parents. (3.4) The first and the second born children who were given care more emphasizd on treatment in presupposed social-emotional aspect showed higher ability on Concept Activation-Numerical and on Concept Activation-Sensory than the third or later born children who were given the same amount of care. Main effect analysis of research data revealed some interested findings : (3.5) Children of higher educated fathers showed higher ability on school readiness as a whole than those of lower educated fathers. Children of higher educated mothers also showed higher ability on school readiness as a wshol. Besides, they showed higher ability on personal-Social Responsiveness, on Concept Activation-Numberical, and on Concept-Activation-Sensory than those of lower educated mothers. (3.6) Children of working mothers showed higher ability on Associative Vocabulary than those of non-working mothers. (3.7) Children in family of one or two children showed higher ability on school readiness as a whole, on personal-Social Responsiveness and on Concept Activation-Sensory, than children in bigger family (3 kids or more). (3.8) Children who were highly or moderately emphasized on moral behavior showed higher ability on Associative Vocabulary than those with lower emphasis. (3.9) Boys showed higher ability on Associative Vocabulary than girls, and the second born child showed higher Personal - Social Responsiveness than the first born, the third born or the laterborn. To sum up, the results of this study revealed the importance of parents' education, the amount of direct care given to the children by parents themselves, the size of the family, and the birth order of the child, on the development of their children's school readiness abilities. Higher educated fathers put more emphasis on the development of moral behavior of the children. Higher educated mothers and working mothers tended to act as better model to the children and also could influence their children in many aspects of their school readiness abilities. It is hope that the results of this research would be useful to parents as well as to early childhood educators in Thailand. The findings should and some specific knowledge and understanding towards the parents' potentials and pinpoint the factors which facilitate the preschool children growth and development espectially on abilities concerning school readiness. These will enable them to play a more appropriate role to their children both as effective parents and as "home-based" early childhood educators. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWUHOMEPAGEBack to Behavioral Science Research Institute