Young Children’s Mental Health and their Development of Social and Self-Regulatory Skills During Pre-K

• In Event: Language development and executive functioning

Abstract

Children’s emotional wellbeing is an important predictor of their kindergarten readiness and later social and school success (Bornstein et al., 2010; McKown et al., 2009). The abilities to self-regulate one’s emotions and behaviors and to have positive social interactions are critical for navigating the demands of preschool and kindergarten classrooms (Perry & Weinstein, 1998). In this study, we used multilevel modeling procedures to explore the short-term associations between parent- and teacher-reports of children’s emotional-behavioral problems, and children’s growth in self-regulation and social skills across the pre-kindergarten year, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We included both parent- and teacher-assessments of children’s emotional-behavioral problems to account for the unique information afforded by home and classroom contexts of observation.

Participants included preschoolers (N = 90; MAge = 4.5 years; 51% male; 52% Caucasian, 19% multiracial) who were expected to attend kindergarten the subsequent academic year. Children’s adaptive (self-regulatory and social) skills, and emotional-behavioral problems were rated by parents at time 1 (fall 2019). Children’s adaptive skills and internalizing/externalizing behaviors were also rated by preschool teachers (N = 11; MAge= 39.6 years; 91% female; 83% Caucasian) at time 1 and time 2 (spring 2020).

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations. Parents and teachers independently reported relatively low rates of children’s internalizing/externalizing behaviors, though their ratings correlated only modestly. Teacher-reports showed significant increases in children’s self-regulation and social skills across the pre-kindergarten year.

Table 2 presents results from multilevel models that accounted for the portions of variance in teacher-reports of children’s skills attributable to level-2 (teacher- or classroom-level) sources. Intraclass correlations indicated that 44% of the variance in social skills, and 17% of the variance in self-regulation, was attributable to level-2 sources. Child-level predictors were added to the models to examine the associations between internalizing/externalizing problems at time 1, as reported independently by parents and teachers, and teacher-reported development of self-regulation and social skills during children’s pre-kindergarten year. Results indicated that parent-reports of internalizing/externalizing problems did not predict teacher-reports of children’s development of self-regulation or social skills. Interestingly, teachers’ reports of internalizing/externalizing problems were significantly negatively related to children’s development of social skills during pre-K, but not to their development of self-regulation. Thus, after accounting for teacher-assessments of children’s initial self-regulation, neither the mental health assessments by teachers nor those by parents added any predictive variance to change over time in self-regulation.

These results replicate previous findings that mental health problems at the beginning of the pre-kindergarten year predict less growth in social skills, a pathway that has likely worsened in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings raise three additional points of discussion: First, why were parent reports of children’s internalizing/externalizing problems not predictive of children’s development of self-regulation or social skills? Second, why were teachers’ ratings of internalizing/externalizing problems related to children’s development of social skills but not to their development of self-regulatory skills? Lastly, which specific dimension(s) of internalizing/externalizing behaviors predict children’s subsequent development of social skills? A second round of analysis will address these questions.

Authors

• Eli Labinger, Portland State University
  Presenting Author

• Cristin McDonough

• Brielle Petit, Portland State University

• Robert W Roeser, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Andrew J Mashburn, Portland State University