Preschoolers' Anxiety And Its Relationship To Mother's Mental Health And Parenting Behavior

Anxiety is characterized by physiological tension and worries about future. It is one of common emotional disorder problems of children, which are defined as unpleasant experiences about external events and internal thoughts and feelings, and which are harmful to children's social compact, interpersonal relationship, and school adjustment. Previous studies discussed related factors of children anxiety, which included physiological (heredity, gene, and temperament), psychological (cognitive ability and attribution), and environmental factors (family environment, parenting behavior, and school environment). While the influence of temperament and cognitive ability on children's anxiety has been approved by many researchers, it is undeniable that external factors also have great influence on children's anxiety, especially the early family environment. In modern times, mother is the main fosterer of children, who is the most influencing significant other of children, and who will have great impact on children's anxiety. On one hand, mother's mental health has influence on children's anxiety, high level of mother's mental health is related to low level of children anxiety, and low level of mother's metal health is related to high level of children anxiety. On the other hand, mother's parenting behavior has influence on children's anxiety, authoritative parenting behavior is related to low level of children anxiety and authoritarian and permissive parenting behavior is related to high level of children anxiety. On the basis of this, the related study is conducted to investigate pre-school children's anxiety. From two points of mother's mental health and parenting behavior, after investigating the relationship between mother's mental health and anxiety, parenting behavior and anxiety, this paper discusses the shared influence of mother's mental health and parenting behavior on children's anxiety, in order to disclose their mechanisms in preschoolers'children anxiety and find protective factors. Based on these findings, the counseling strategies to improve the anxiety children are proposed. 306 children aged 3-6 were randomly selected from two kindergartens of Jinan and Dongying, and Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, SCL-90, and Parenting Behavior Questionnaire (PBQ) were used to investigate these children's mothers. Conclusions are as follows:1 Children's anxiety. Children's anxiety declines with age, 5-year-olds'level of anxiety is significantly lower than that of 3-year-olds; the overall level and the five symptoms of children's anxiety see no gender difference; the highest level of children's anxiety symptoms is Fear of Physical Injury, the second is Separation Anxiety, the third is Social Phobia and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and the last is Generalized Anxiety.2 Mother's mental health is significantly related with children's anxiety. The overall level of children's anxiety and the five symptoms are all significantly positively related with mother's mental health score, and mother's compulsive symptoms, horror, and anxiety score are more related with children's anxiety.3 Mother's parenting behavior is significantly related with children's anxiety. Mother's authoritive behavior can significantly negatively predict children's anxiety, and authoritarian and permissive behavior can significantly positively predict it. The relationship between maternal parenting behavior and children anxiety doesn't have age and gender difference.4 The relationship between mother's mental health and parenting behavior. The higher mother's mental health level is, the more authoritive behavior she takes; the lower mother's mental health level is, the more authoritarian and permissive behavior she takes.5 Mothers'authoritarian behaviors have mediating influence on the relationship between mother's mental health and children's anxiety.