A Study On The Relationship Between Preschool Children's Temperament, Maternal Style And Delayed Gratification

Delay of gratification is the ability of individuals to control their immediate impulses or focus on more valuable long-term goals when faced with various temptations.Self-control is the core of personality development,and it’s most important skill and core component is delay of gratification.The results of previous studies show that during childhood adolescence and college,children with delay of gratification ability have better performers on academic achievement,social ability,frustration and stress,etc.than those without delay of gratification.Children’s delay satisfaction can also predict their cognitive and social skills in adulthood.Since early childhood is a sensitive period for the development of social and personality,it is very necessary to study children’s delay satisfaction and delay strategies.This study selected 81 children,which are between 2 to 3 years old,and their mothers from a parent-child class of a public kindergarten,Boutun,Zunyi.Gift delay paradigm was used to investigate the development status of delay gratification,while coded the delay tactics and mothers’ style during the experimental observations.Relevant temperament data was collected through questionnaires,and the relationship between temperament,mother style and delay satisfaction of the children in baby class was discussed.The results were as follows:1.The children in baby class can accomplish the delayed task of gifts,With the increase of children’s age,the waiting time for children is increasing and shows a significant difference in age;while gender differences are not significant.2.The delay strategies of children in baby class are distracting strategies and speech strategies,and there were significant differences in whether they were single child.Means while,there is a significant difference of speech strategies between in age and gender.3.Through the experimental observation,when mother participate in the gift delay task the mother-child interaction behavior is divided into non-indicative and indicative mother style.The statistical analysis found that the mother style have a significant differences of delayers in the chi-square test.However,the differences in the demographic variables were not significant.4.The children’s temperament in baby class had the highest score in the activity and emotional dimensions,and the score in the focus dimension was the lowest.There was no difference in age between dimensions;activity has a significant difference in gender,boys were higher than girls in their average scores;responsiveness was significantly different between whether they were single child,and the average score of single child was higher than non-only children.In the degree of mother’s education,there is a significant difference in concentration and responsiveness.The average score of mothers with bachelor degree or above is higher than those with college degree or high school degree.5.There is a correlation between social inhibition in the dimension of baby class children’s temperament dimensions and the help strategies and distraction strategies in delayed satisfaction and delayed strategies;there is a correlation between mother style and non-verbal strategies in delay of satisfaction and delayed strategies;in the delayed strategy,In addition to the non-meaningful strategy,there are correlations between the other four strategies and delay of satisfaction.Based on their correlations,regression analysis is performed on the temperament,mother style,and delay strategy of the baby class children,and the results show that the distraction strategy,speech strategy and non-verbal strategy in the delay strategy have a significant predictive effect on delay of satisfaction.Based on the research results,the following educational suggestions are proposed to improve children’s delay of satisfaction in baby class:First,we have to meet the needs and establish safe attachment of children in baby class;Second,parents most to keep their words and set good examples;Third,waiting strategies have to be taught while children were young;Fourth,giving children spaces to autonomous;Fifth,developing children’s delay ability most to seize the key period.