Executive function<\/a>\u2014a set of mental skills that helps people gain control over their actions and thoughts\u2014fundamentally influences a child\u2019s ability to learn. Because executive function helps children sit still, focus on the teacher and persist in difficult tasks, it is more important for success in preschool than early language and math skills. Executive function in early childhood also predicts later educational achievement, wealth, health and low criminality, and it explains part of the different in early achievement between children from lower- and higher-income families.<\/p>\nSupport for autonomy, according to the researchers, means, \u201cGuidance that supports children\u2019s sense of competence and lets children use their own skills, as opposed to taking over the task or letting them struggle.\u201d An autonomy-supportive adult, they write, \u201cneeds to respect the child\u2019s pace, organize the task so that the child can be successful, and give help contingent on the child\u2019s current ability.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this study, 89 father-child pairs were assessed twice, when the child was three and when the child was five. The key measure at three years was the child\u2019s executive function. At five years, this measure was extended to cover literacy and numeracy, creating a composite measure termed \u201cschool readiness\u201d. So at five, the researchers measured how children managed picture arithmetic and word problems and an increasingly complicated card sorting exercise, how they performed the \u201cSimon says\u201d game, and how well they were able to resist opening a present for them which was left in the room alone with them for an unreasonably long time.<\/p>\n
Father-child interaction was measured in two ways. The first was a puzzle just a bit too difficult for the child to do alone. This is a traditional measure of whether a parent supports autonomy or controls the child and was designed in studies with mothers.<\/p>\n
For this study of executive function, the researchers invented another measurement, looking at how father and child played together in a gym. They were presented with four pieces of playground equipment and asked to play for 10 minutes. Videos of the activity were then carefully assessed \u2013 how fathers made suggestions to the child to enhance play, the father\u2019s responsiveness to the child\u2019s ideas, how much stimulation the father provided if the child got bored, the degree of sharing and having fun together, the extent to which the father provoked risk and excitement (e.g., by throwing, lifting, or tickling), and how engaged the father himself was in the play.<\/p>\n
Three notable results emerged.<\/p>\n
First, as stated above, autonomy support by the father when the child was three correlated with the school readiness measure when the child was five. This shows the significance of early parenting by fathers for school readiness.<\/p>\n
Second, when children\u2019s executive function was lower at three, fathers were more likely to be controlling at three and more prone to overstimulation during play at five. This suggests a two-way influence \u2013 a child\u2019s executive function may influence the father\u2019s parenting.<\/p>\n
Third, the researchers found a stronger link between children\u2019s executive function at five and measures from the gym exercise than they did between executive function and measures from the puzzle exercise, suggesting that the role of how parents play has been underestimated.<\/p>\n
\n
References<\/h4>\n
\u00a0Meuwissen AS & Carlson SM (2018), The role of father parenting in children\u2019s school readiness: A longitudinal follow-up<\/a>, Journal of Family Psychology, 32.5<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When a father supports a toddler\u2019s autonomy, the child is likely to show better executive function at the age of five and so be readier for school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":8348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5773,435],"tags":[32,406,35,1283,5745,25,2,400],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8338"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22781,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8338\/revisions\/22781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}