Fostering self-regulation: parental perceptions of their role developing self-regulation with preschoolers having difficulty complying with social-conventional rules

• Main Author: Turk, Emily
• Other Authors: Boyer, Wanda Arleen Rumson
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: self-control in children; parent and child; UVic Subject Index::Humanities and Social Sciences::Education::Educational psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2092

The purpose of this thesis is to seek to understand how parents of preschoolers having difficulty complying to social-conventional rules perceive their role in helping develop self-regulation. My work as a graduate research assistant with Dr. Boyer enabled me access to a large grounded theory study entitled, Foundational Measures of Early Childhood Self-Regulation from which the parents were chosen. Since I endeavoured to capture the parent's perspective, as they reflect on the development of self-regulation, this study is designed within a qualitative paradigm particularly, a multiple case study design. In keeping with the qualitative case study tradition this study employed a demographic sheet and interview questions which were used in the larger study. Themes which surfaced include: parental frustration, feelings of ineffectiveness or success, concern for their child's future, birth of siblings and their child's ongoing development. In addition, parent's perceptions of strategies they used included reasoning, staying firm, staying calm, warnings, in advance, empathy negation and removal.