The Relationship Between Guardian's Parenting Behavior And Cognitive Development Of Infants And Young Children

The first three years is a critical period for infants to establish cognition,learn languages and develop social emotions.The development of infants between 0-3 years old is mainly through their guardians and the family study environments provided by them.In recent years,the researches on the development of infants have gained highly attention from the academic.Many foreign studies have shown that guardians'parenting behaviors and the study environment provided by them have significant impact on the children 's development of early cognition,language ability and social emotion.By contrast,our scholars focused most of their attention on the study of breast feeding,complementary feeding,motor development and the description of the infants'growth environment and growth condition.Besides,The studies about the relationship between parenting behaviors and infants'cognitive development were only limited in some urban areas.This study collected the information of the 976 children,who were researched at the age of 18-30 months,as well as their primary guardians from 11 impoverished counties in Shaanxi province using the internationally accepted Bayley Scales of Infant Development BSID and the Parental Questionnaire compiled according to relevant literatures at home and abroad.This study analyzed the status of the guardians'parenting behaviors and cognitive development of infants,as well as their influencing factors,and explored the relationship between parenting behaviors and infants'cognitive development.The results were as follows:1.The proportion of parents who actively interacted with children was less in China's poor rural areas.The parents who played games with children every day accounted for 39.55%,sang songs for the children accounted for 40.06%,read to the children accounted for 13.73%.Guardians tend to use body language to express their love for the baby.The times that Guardians expressed their feelings to the baby were about 8 on average every two days.The time that the infants watched TV or video was about an hour on average every day.The time that the infants played alone was about 2 hours on average every day.The gender of the infants.Whether the infants were premature.The infants' birth order,the birth weight of the infants.The relationship between the guardians and the infants,the age of the guardians,the educational degree of the guardians.Whether the family was enjoying the subsidy for the rural subsistence allowances.Whether the family had children's independent activity area.Family income.All these would affect the guardian's parenting behaviors.2.The cognitive development level of the infants was low in China's poor rural areas,especially the level of intellectual development.The average score for MDI(mental development index)was 84.48.The average score for PDI(psychomotor development index)was 105.10.The BSID test results showed that 741(75.92%)infants had MDI below the normal level,235(24.08%)infants reached the normal level.The data showed that 374(38.32%)infants had PDI below the normal level,602(61.68%)infants reached the normal level.The infants' birth order,the birth weight of the infants.The educational level of the guardians.Whether the family was enjoying the subsidy for the rural subsistence allowances.Whether the family had children's independent activity area.Family income.Whether the guardians played games with the children,read to the children,sang song for the children.The guardians expressed their feelings to the children.All these would affect the cognitive development of the infants.3.The parenting behaviors of guardians were significantly correlated with the cognitive development of the infants.The significant and positive correlation between playing games with the children(P<0.05),singing songs for the children(P<0.01)and the infants' cognitive development was found.The time of the infants playing alone was negatively related to the cognitive development of them(P<0.01).Based on the conclusions above,the policy recommendations presented in this paper were as follows:1.The government should carry out relevant training.2.Broaden the publicity channels of infants' health education.3.Guardians should put the infanticulture knowledge into practice actively.