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Helping Children Help: The Relation between Maternal Scaffolding and Children's Early Help
Author(s) -
Hammond Stuart I.,
Carpendale Jeremy I. M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
social development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1467-9507
pISSN - 0961-205X
DOI - 10.1111/sode.12104
Subject(s) - helpfulness , psychology , developmental psychology , reading (process) , temperament , early childhood , social psychology , personality , political science , law
Theory and empirical research suggest that parental scaffolding of children's participation in chores may contribute to the development of early helping. Sixty mother–child dyads with toddlers between 18 and 24 months of age were assessed on two measures of scaffolding (during a cleanup chore; reading an emotionally laden book together). Children's helping was assessed in five tasks with an experimenter, and children were also assessed for social approach to an unfamiliar adult as a measure of sociability, and for internal state language as a measure of social understanding. Both mothers' scaffolding of everyday helping and children's sociability uniquely predicted individual differences in children's helping. Thus, individual differences in children's helping appear early, and are associated with both temperament and with parents' efforts to support and encourage young children's helpfulness.