The Toddlers Up Study
Department of Psychology
Talking to Children: It’s How You Do It that Matters
We know that talking about thoughts and feelings helps develop children’s social understanding. The Toddlers Up study shows that how you talk is just as important as what you talk about; children with mothers who were good at ‘tuning in’ to their child’s talk showed strong improvements in social understanding between the ages of 2 and 6. What’s even more interesting is that these talks about thoughts and feelings at age 2 were still important for children’s social understanding when they were 10-years-old.
Playing, Talking, and Learning to Plan
Talking to children doesn’t just help develop their social skills. The Toddlers Up study has shown that mothers who use open-ended questions, praise, and encouragement during structured play help their children develop planning and memory skills, two abilities that are very important in helping children adjust well to entering primary school.
Learning to Plan Helps Children's Academic Self-Esteem
As children enter primary school, it is these planning and memory skills that feed how confident they feel about their school work. However, children’s academic self-esteem is important for the continued development of planning and memory skills. This finding suggests that there is a more circular relation between these cognitive skills and academic self-competence as self-confidence comes not only from how well you’re doing now, but also how much progress you’ve made.
Mothers’ well-being matters!
Related to these planning and memory skills is the recent finding that the children of mothers who showed good well-being at the start of the study, or whose well-being improved across the preschool years, did particularly well on these tasks at age 6. In addition, both mothers’ well-being at age 2 and markers of high quality mother-toddler interactions (e.g., shared laughter, eye contact, reciprocity) each independently predict child adjustment at age 6.
Brothers and Sisters: Will they always fight and does it matter?
Some conflict between brothers and sisters is completely normal, and doesn’t seem to affect children’s development. However, in the Toddlers Up study, children whose relationships with siblings improved between the ages of 3 and 6 were more likely than other children to report having lots of friends at school. In other words, learning to get along with a brother or sister gives children valuable skills for the playground.
'Mindreading' skills and making friends
A more recent finding in the Toddlers Up study is that children’s ‘mindreading’ skills, that is, their ability to think about others’ thoughts and feelings, are important for the development of social skills and making friends. Alongside the general increase seen in these skills across the primary school years, children who were good at ‘mindreading’ at age 6 also tended to be rated as more socially skilled by their parents and teachers at age 10.
What else helps children get along with others?
Beyond these ‘mindreading’ skills, children’s behaviour also affects their popularity with their classmates. This is particularly true for girls, as those who were less aggressive and anxious in social situations also tended to be more well-liked by their classmates. Interestingly, anxiety seemed to matter more than aggression for girls, but this was not the case for boys. Aggressive and anxious boys were no less popular than other boys. We don’t yet know what predicts popularity for boys. One possibility is ability or interest in sport.
Sharing with Brothers and Sisters
Children spend a lot of time playing with their brothers and sisters, and this time together is important for practising skills to help them in later interactions with friends and classmates. In the Toddlers Up study we found that children who shared frequently with their older brother or sister when they were 3 shared more with children they had just met at age 6. This finding suggests that sharing with brothers and sisters can help children develop the skills needed to form positive relationships with other children.
What has the last decade of research told us? Plenty!
The Toddlers Up study has provided researchers with a wealth of knowledge on how children's developing cognitive and social skills are influenced by their family and sibling relationships. However there is still a world of information left to be gleamed from the numerous visits and questionnaires that our families dutifully completed!
