Relationship Between Preschoolers’ Social Withdrawal Behavior,Parenting Style, Parent-child Attachment And Peer Acceptance

Social withdrawal is referred to as that individuals may reach an abnormal levelof anxiety or fear when encountering a new environment or people. Such behavior canbe further divided into three subtypes: the passive-retreat, silent-taciturn andactive-retreat. This study was carried out by using scale method and observationmethod, with the assistance from teachers and parents. A group of kindergartenchildren aged from3to6was selected as research samples, and “Children’s SocialBehavior Teacher Questionnaire” proposed by Ye was employed to further divide thesamples into two groups: target group and control group, in order to understand thedifference between the normal children and social withdrawal children. Reliabilityand validity of EMBU-P was tested, fulfilling the standard. Relationship betweensocial withdrawal behavior, parenting style, parent-child attachment and peeracceptance was further investigated, with the following conclusions:(1) Age effect is profound in the taciturn and passive retreat;(2) Sex effect is significant, with more active retreat for boys and more taciturnand passive retreat for girls;(3) Great differences exist in peer acceptance, parent-child attachment andparenting styles for the two groups of children. Lower peer acceptance andparent-child attachment are found for social withdrawal children, and the four factorsfor parenting styles differ significantly;(4) Social withdrawal behavior and parent-child attachment, peer acceptance andparenting style are strongly correlated;(5) Emotional warmth may negatively predict social withdrawal behavior, whilerefusal and overprotection may positively predict the behavior;(6) Peer acceptance may positively predict social withdrawal behavior, whileparent-child attachment may negatively predict the behavior.