Parental Beliefs About Problematic Social Behaviors In Childhood

Parental beliefs refer to all of parents' recognition about child. Almost all known studies done on the subject of problematic social behavior in early childhood and the belief of parents have been conducted within western society. Little studies have been made in China. The purpose of this study is to explore the parental beliefs about children's social problematic behaviors within the context of modern day society in China, with particular reference to cognitive and emotional processes when dealing with aggression and social withdraw.Given the lack of particular Chinese material available, it was necessary to adopt methods from the study conducted by Mills and Rubbin (1990), in order for the study to contain factual substance and not be swayed by western methodology, we translated the questionnaire and edited it with particular Chinese characteristics. This study contains two steps, at first, 22 parents were interviewed personally and a further 66 completed the written questionnaire. Target group parents with children aged 4.Then, parents' causal beliefs and suggested strategies were coded and classified by four postgraduate students, and a structure questionnaire was conducted. Parents with children aged 4 to 8 were asked to finish the questionnaire and aggression subsection questionnaire or withdraw subsection questionnaire of CBCL questionnaire.The purpose of the research is to determine whether the belief of parents' will change, given the respective ages of the children and whether the parents beliefs differ from each other as well as the relationship between the parents beliefs and the children's actual behavior.Results of the study are following.1 - Parents' dominant emotional responses to both aggression and withdrawal is concern, but parents feel stronger embarrassment and anger with aggressive behavior than theydo with withdraw, however there is a stronger feeling of disappointment and puzzlement about withdraw than aggression. Mothers feel more anger, puzzlement and embarrassment about children's problematic behaviors than fathers do, while fathers feel more surprised and bewildered than mothers. Both parents of 6 and 8 year olds feel more angry and surprised than do those of 4 year olds.2 The causal attribution is different between two kinds of behaviors; parents tend to make internal attribution about aggression and external towards social withdraw. At the same time, parents tend to make more internal attribution towards the problematic behaviors of 4-year-old children than they do towards 6 to 8 year olds.3 Mothers use more moderate and low power strategies than fathers do when dealing with problematic children. Both Parents tended to use moderate or low power strategies to withdraw and choice high power strategies or made no response to social aggression. Mothers tend to use moderate power strategies towards boys but fathers tend to use moderate power strategies to girls. Both Parents tend to use low power strategies towards 4 year olds child and 6 year olds child but tend to use moderate power strategies and indirect strategies toward 8 year olds.4 Parents' internal stable attribution has a significant relationship with the children's withdrawal behavior. There is also a significant relationship between parents suggested high power strategies and the children's aggressive behavior.