Chapter 6: Parenting And Schooling Influences On Early Self-Regulation Development

These select headlines highlight how issues related to self-regulation have become a media and public interest issue. The last headline references a study report released in May 2005 that received tremendous media attention due to its alarming finding that school expulsion rates were highest in the prekindergarten year (Gilliam, 2005; Gilliam & Shahar, 2006). According to a national survey of kindergarten teachers, more than half of their students enter school without the necessary social skills (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000), and social immaturity is a frequent reason for parents delaying their children’s (primarily boys) kindergarten entry (Stipek, 2002). Statistics like this beg for an answer to the question of what is causing children to be kicked out of classrooms prior to actually beginning school (if it is indeed the case that this problem has escalated in the last five years). Are children less self-regulated today than twenty years ago? Do parents and/or early childhood educators lack the knowledge and skill to address self-regulatory issues? While answering these questions is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Morrison, Bachman, & Connor, 2005 for a discussion), they point to the need for an examination of the environmental influences on children’s self-regulation development. Since the majority of children spend their time prior to kindergarten in a combination of parental and early childhood programs¹, we find it necessary to explore these specific aspects of children’s environments in order to better understand the influences of parenting and early schooling on self-regulation development. We review the extant literature in these two domains across the early childhood period (birth to age 8), including findings from large nationally-representative research studies and recent research conducted as part of our longitudinal study of young children’s literacy development, and conclude with intriguing cross-cultural research that may help illuminate our understandings of early self-regulation development.