Abstract
Family plays an important role in children’s personal development. It shapes one’s personalities, habits, and personal skills. Family influence on children can be reflected in both their emotional and social development. Different parenting methods lead to various child outcomes. A warm and supportive family helps children raise self-awareness, build social relationships, and improve cognitive skills, while an offish family often makes children feel depressed and insecure.
Keywords: emotional development, social relationship, parenting methods
Family Influence on Children’s Emotional and Social Development
“Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” (Henson) Family environment is the first and most influential setting children are involved in throughout their lives. Children’s future emotional and social development heavily depend on factors such as parenting methods and family rituals.
Feeling
According to the Ways of Being model(Blyth, Olsen & Walker, 2017, as cited in Dworkin & Serido, 2017), a child must experience ways of feeling, relating, and doing as a collective set of tools that work together in order to have social and emotional learning(Dworkin & Serido, 2017). Children set up the foundation of those tools while growing up in their families.
Children learn about emotional regulation through observational learning, modeling and social referencing(Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers & Robinson, 2007). Family rituals or traditions involuntarily affect a child’s behavior. For instance, a Chinese child does not express much of their feelings in speeches compared to an American child, and this is because in Chinese culture, people tend to use a more indirect way to show their affection or hatred toward someone else. The tradition of euphemistic expressions passes on in the family to the next generation.
Undoubtedly, there is also a chance that parents shape the child’s way of feeling intentionally. Parents' attitude toward their child is a significant factor. An example would be: Mothers rejecting attitudes towards family life and child-raising styles were found to be closely associated with the emotional and behavioral problems in their children(Yurduşen, Erol & Gençöz, 2012). Apart from parents’ personal conditions such as psychological illness or health problems that can change their attitudes toward children, the family structure may also make parents behave differently to their kids. For instance, older children in a multi-child family often feel neglected by their parents because they are busy taking care of the younger ones. These kids in turn learn to keep their feelings to themselves and become unwilling to talk in conversations throughout time. To better understand how parents’ attitude influences child behavior, we can use the Parent Attitude toward Children's Expressiveness Scale (PACES) to measure the degree of acceptance-control the respondent allows toward a child's hypothetical emotional and expressive behavior(Saarni & Harris, 1989).
Relating and Doing
Children learn how to play their roles in a social group from their previous experiences living as a family member. For example, if the family is always kind to the child, he/she might develop a friendly personality and act more supportive in future socializations. Family rituals may also affect children’s way of behaving inside a group of people. For instance, an Asian kid might remove his/her shoes and change into slippers before entering a house, but his/her American friend may not be used to this tradition and keeps the shoes on. Since everyone is born and raised in different families and cultural backgrounds, there is no need to be surprised by another person acting differently from you.
Apart from influencing children’s behaviors on social occasions, parents also play a role in providing children with social opportunities, especially physical activities. Direct reinforcement can be: providing transportation, engaging in physical activity with the child, supervising, and purchasing equipment(Beets et al., 2010). Allowing children to participate in various physical activities helps them understand how socialization works at an early age and can avoid many possible conflicts due to immature social behaviors.
Parenting Methods
Children learn best from their parents, and it is the parents’ responsibility to help children build up healthy and positive personalities. Here are three important and charming qualities that can make children act better on social occasions.
Independence
Independence is especially important when children are involved in group activities. Children need to be confident in themselves so that they are able to deal with problems on their own even when no one is there to offer help. Parents can help build up children’s independence by giving them individual tasks such as grocery shoppings and making take-out orders. Kids gradually learn how to make their own decisions and solve unexpected problems. Once children start to trust themselves and develop independent personalities, there is no need to worry that they will make unnecessary compromises when they are working with other people.
Empathy
Parents that do not care much about their children may result in their lack of empathy, which means that they are not able to identify with others who are experiencing something painful or delightful. These children cannot share feelings with others, thus they may be seen as dull, or sometimes even rude, by other people. It is particularly common to see this personality trait in Asian kids, for in many countries, it is a tradition to hold back one’s feelings. Families should encourage the members to express their feelings in everyday life, so that younger ones understand the importance of empathy in social interactions with others.
Controlled Emotions
Everyone has ups and downs in life. It is crucial to know how to not have others influenced by your negative emotions. Teaching kids how to control their emotions is essential. A bad example would be beating up a child simply because the parent had a rough day at work. Instead, parents should always treat children with a steady mood and never get violence involved in the family education. It is widely acknowledged that a child who has once experienced domestic violence will have a higher possibility of participating in violence him/herself in the future.
Conclusion
Family of origin influences children’s emotional and social development in many ways. Children learn how to feel, relate, and do from their family members and family rituals. It is important that the family has a supportive attitude toward children all the time and provides them with opportunities for social activities. Parents should keep in mind that their behaviors will affect children’s individual development, and that it is their responsibility to guide the children through the confusions and miseries in the early stages of their lives.
References
Dworkin, J., & Serido, J. (2017). The Role of Families in Supporting Social and Emotional Learning
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. Social development (Oxford, England), 16(2), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x
Yurduşen, S., Erol, N. & Gençöz, T. The Effects of Parental Attitudes and Mothers’ Psychological Well-Being on the Emotional and Behavioral Problems of Their Preschool Children. Matern Child Health J 17, 68–75 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-012-0946-6
Saarni, C., & Harris, P. L. (Eds.). (1989). Children's understanding of emotion. Cambridge University Press.
Beets, M. W., Cardinal, B. J., & Alderman, B. L. (2010). Parental social support and the physical activity-related behaviors of youth: A review. Health Education & Behavior, 37(5), 621–644. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198110363884