Child rearing practices: Parents influence their children in a variety of ways.

One way is through habitual patterns of interaction.

There is a history of interaction and faith over time. Parental influences lead to
behavior tendencies that have some durability.
Longitudinal analyses focus on the stability of behavior. Absolute stability refers to
behaving the same way in most occasions, e.g. hugging a child.
An alternative is interindividual consistency- refers to the relative placement of an
individual within the group.
Does the parent maintain overtime her/his position compared with other parents?
This takes into account developmental change in the parent as well as in the child.
Displaying different behaviors (hugging, talking affectionately) to a preschooler,
reflecting the same construct is an example of the second stability.
A third type of continuity is functional equivalence whereby the functional properties
of behaviors or parent- child relationship does not change.
Good parents modify their behavior according to the context.

Marital happiness plays a significant role in the psychological well-being and physical health of
married couples and any children they might have.

• How is parental marital happiness associated with child outcomes across two culturally Chinese
societies: China ( Shanghai) and Taiwan ( Greater Taipei)?
• The term parenting style refers to a constellation of attitudes toward the child that are
• communicated to the child while creating an emotional climate in which the parent’s behaviours
are expressed.
• The term parenting practice is defined as the mechanisms through which parents directly
help
• their child attain socialization goals.
• Evidence shows that parents’ marital happiness is positively associated with their sensitive, warm,
• and non-domineering parenting practices,
• which in turn are positively associated with desirable child outcomes, such as higher verbal skills
• and better socioemotional adjustment.
Family systems are influenced by the larger cultural and socio-political contexts in which
families are situated.

• According to Confucian family ethics, two factors— family lineage and the parent–child
• relationship—together constitute the core of family life, whereas the couple relationship is of

• secondary importance .

• Marital happiness, parenting styles, and children’s behavioural outcomes in Chinese societies
• (Huang et al. 2023).
Findings of the study showed:
• In both China and Taiwan, socioeconomic advancement has lowered fertility rates.
• while inequality has contributed to the growing prevalence of intensive parenting and a
• heightened yearning for close parent–child bonds.
• In both Shanghai and Greater Taipei, marital happiness was indeed positively associated
• with the authoritative parenting style and negatively associated with the harsh parenting
style.

•
Parenting styles, parents’ subjective socioeconomic status, their geographic location, and
parent and child gender each made unique contributions to child outcomes.

• Findings enrich the scholarly conversation on the contextual embeddedness of family

• processes.

• Parents’ marital happiness is significantly correlated with children’s social skills and children’s
• withdrawal, attention problems, and aggression.
• (a) Authoritative parenting was the dominant contributor to children’s social skills and
• (b) harsh parenting was the dominant contributor to children’s problematic behaviours.

Both parent and child gender were significant predictors of child outcomes.

• Being a boy was positively associated with an increased likelihood of having attention problems
• and aggression and was negatively associated with having strong social skills.
Another factor that consistently associated with child outcome was parents’ subjective social
status.

• Previous research has shown that low socioeconomic standing may affect children’s development
• by increasing malnutrition levels and by decreasing access to high-quality social, childcare,
• and educational resources.
• Respondents in Shanghai and Greater Taipei reported similar levels of marital happiness, indulgent
parenting, and child social skills;
• However, Greater Taipei parents reported slightly higher levels of authoritative parenting,
• harsh parenting, child withdrawal, and child aggression than did Shanghai parents.
• This pattern was unexpected because the Greater Taipei parents presented a significantly higher
• socioeconomic status both subjectively and objectively than did the Shanghai parents.
• Greater Taipei parents were more likely than Shanghai parents to notice imperfections in their
• parenting as well as in their children’s behaviours.
Cultural values, parenting and child adjustment ( Oburu,2024).
A study in Kenya.

• Cultural groups in Kenya have unique heritages, cultural values and traditions variously affect
parenting practices and child adjustment.
• These Kenyan cultures are evolving in response to transformations linked to expanded
educational opportunities, changing gender roles, urbanisation, globalisation and technological
advances.
• Individualism and collectivism are two sets of frame- works that have widely been utilised to
understand cultural differences.
• Cultural variability could affect parenting styles.
• In the traditional Kenyan family contexts, it was thus presumed that one of the main parenting
attributes was to develop skills in children that would enable them be socially productive,
competent and successfully fit into their respective societies.
• Children’s, mothers’ and fathers’ reports were used to assess whether mothers’ and fathers’
individualism, collectivism and conformity values are significantly related to parenting
behaviours and child adjustment during middle childhood.
 .
Cultural values are significantly related to parenting.

More collectivist parents placed higher premium on family obligations .

• Results indicated the following: (a) Parents who were higher in collectivism were higher in
warmth and expectations for children’s family obligations.
• (b) Mothers’ and fathers’ conformity values were positively related to maternal and paternal
warmth, parental knowledge solicitation, and expectations for children’s family obligations.
• (c) Mothers’ and fathers’ individualism was negatively related to expectations regarding
children’s family obligations.
• Paternal warmth was positively linked to collectivism, individualism and conformity values.
• The positive correlation between fathers’ collectivism and conformity values could have been
linked to their presumed leadership roles in the family.
• Findings suggest the importance of within-culture variability.
• For example, some mothers and fathers expect less whereas others expect more from their
children with respect to family obligations.
Children face abuse of several kinds. One is physical abuse by an older person or bullying by
school mates.
Another is child neglect- depriving the child of her/his basic needs; yet another is psychological
abuse as in the form of verbal abuse which includes ridicule and humiliation.

• Regrettably, parents of children may be the perpetrators of abuse.

• A few factors put some children at risk for abuse- those associated with the cultural context, the parents
and those associated with children.
• The cultural context and the social conditions in which parents rear their children are the most
contributing to abuse.
• In many countries as in Asia and Europe, physical punishment and spanking is against the law.
• In the US physical punishment is common and leads to child maltreatment.
• Poverty is a common social condition. Children are physically abused by parents in order to overcome
their stress, than making an effort to reason with them (children).
• Social isolation is a second reason.
• Abuse is more likely when families are socially isolated from other relatives or neighbours
• because living in isolation deprives children of adults who could protect them and
• deprives parents of social support that would help them better deal with life’s stresses.
Maltreatment becomes more likely when cultures condone physical punishment, parents lack
effective skills for dealing with children, and a child’s behaviour is frequently aversive.

• Researchers have identified several characteristics of parents that lead them to abuse their children.

Parents who maltreat their children often were maltreated themselves, which may lead them to
believe that abuse is a normal part of childhood.
• A history of child abuse places adults at risk for mistreating their own children
• Parents who mistreat their children often use ineffective parenting techniques and have
unrealistic expectations of their children that cannot be met.
• Marital discord makes life more stressful and difficult for parents to invest efforts in child rearing.
• Children who are often ill or disabled are also victims of abuse.
• When children are sick or disabled, they often need extra attention and special care that increase
• stress in a family and put children at risk for maltreatment.
Emotional abuse maybe caused by teacher, parent or elders.

The nature of emotional abuse among teachers involves belittling, the absence of a positive
emotional atmosphere, verbal abuse, and negative labelling of pupils.

• Research revealed that parent- or teacher-perpetrated verbal abuse is associated with children
• appearing either totally subdued or submissive, with frequent crying bouts or displaying anger,
• academic deterioration, and fear on being summoned for any task.
• Furthermore, the younger the child and the less developed the child’s sense of self and
identity, the more serious were the physical, emotional, and social consequences.
• Verbal abuse
• Evidence indicates that children who have been verbally abused by parents suffer cognitive
vulnerabilities.
• Quinn and Lee (2000) reported on the impact of verbal abuse by a primary caregiver as an inability
to form intimate relationships.
• Neuropsychological research indicates the association of verbal abuse and cognitive deficits
(Teicher ( 2002).
There is growing evidence that verbal assault can alter the way a developing brain matures
(Teicher ( 2002).

• Evidence shows that the abused children have severe learning problems.
• Almost as many suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
• Children who had been emotionally abused showed marked abnormalities in their left-brain
hemispheres as adults.
• The elements common to most conceptualizations of verbal abuse are inappropriate adult
behaviour of a sustained and repetitive nature considered within a cultural context.
• It is commonly agreed among researchers that the subjective meanings of experiences of
violation should be incorporated into definitions
• and a developmental perspective should be adopted in considering verbal abuse.
• Verbal abuse has remained grossly ignored and neglected for too long in India.
• This has repeatedly led to social, cognitive, and behavioural dysfunction.
Peer relations begin with liking others and get more complex with age.
Coupled with mutual liking, children seek trust and assistance from others.

• During adolescence, there is development of intimacy.

• The emergence of intimacy in adolescent friendships means that friends also come to be
• seen as sources of social and emotional support.
• Along with intimacy loyalty is expected. Friends also tend to be alike in popularity.

• Children with good friends cope better with stressful experiences,

• such as doing poorly on an exam or being rejected by peers.
• The benefits of friendship are long-lasting.
• Children who have friends are, as adults, at less risk for depression, anxiety, and aggressive
behaviour.
• As children grow older their friendships expand into groups.
Peer pressure can be positive.

Peers often urge one another to work hard in school, to participate in school activities, and to get along
with their family.

• Peers can influence behaviour through other means beyond pressure.

• For example, a crowd provides models for how its members should look and act;
• members go along willingly because they want to identify with the group.

• Nevertheless, peer relations go very badly wrong for some children.

• Some children do not develop satisfactory friendships, and feel very lonely.
• Others may be bullied, bully others, or both.
• Both of these phenomena are particularly relevant when considering the contribution of peer
• relations to risk for disorder.
Loneliness and solitude
An important distinction must be made between playing alone and the subjective experience of
loneliness.

• Loneliness is itself multidimensional.

• Scales used in research (Hay, 2004), measured four different but interrelated latent constructs:
• peer-related loneliness, family-related loneliness, negative attitudes towards being alone and
• positive attitudes towards being alone.

• Children with disorders may experience problems in relating to peers.

•

Problematic peer relations are associated with greater levels of emotional and behavioural
problems.
• The causal role of peer relations has been investigated
• with respect to the development of conduct disorder.
• Investigators have been keen to understand whether problems with peers are simply manifestations
of underlying conduct disorder,
• or actual contributors to the development of conduct disorder in their own right.
•
The two phenomena that have received most attention are peer rejection in early childhood and

associations with deviant peers in later childhood and adolescence.

• Children who are identified as being rejected or aggressive-rejected have fewer friends than
• their non-rejected non-aggressive counterparts (Deptula, 2003).

• However, by early adolescence, aggressive children may be as likely as non-aggressive children

• are, to belong to a peer group.

• Having enquired whether peers play a role in the genesis of disorder, it is important to ask the
• complementary question
• of whether peer relationships can serve as a protective factor in psychological development?
Very early in childhood, peers foster exploration of the physical and social world and facilitate
cognitive development.

• Under conditions of extreme deprivation, in the absence of caring adults, peers provide a source
• of emotional security.
• It is important to study affiliations amongst well-functioning youth as well as the networks of
• deviant peers.
• For example, during the secondary school years, teenagers form friendships and peer groups based
• on academic achievement and aspirations, as well as common interests.
• The relative levels of psychological problems within one’s peer group may serve as risk factors
• for an individual’s mental health and socio- educational adjustment.
• For example, associations with deviant peers may deprive youngsters of age- normative
• experiences that foster educational achievement and entry into the world of work.
 Children with special needs. There are children with sensory deficits, mental
deficits, reading disability and behavioral problems, to name a few.

Questions about ways of knowing have initially been a part of Philosophy.

Meta physics is the broad area concerned with conceptual enquiry. Epistemology tells
us about how we know what is real, whereas ontology explains the real as we know it.
Main ways of knowing are: perception (Heinz Werner), action (Piaget) and language
(Vygotsky). For Vygotsky, language constitutes the basis of socialization and
development.
Reaching without vision: Reaching in blind infants is a two stage process where the
initial reaches are to sounding objects pulled from the children’s hands and and this is
followed by reaching to objects held directly before them.

• Fraiberg’s extensive work showed that blind infants first reached for objects only at the age of
ten months, whereas sighted infants on an average reached at the age of five months.
• Fraiberg observed that development delays in other behaviors of locomotion such as crawling
suggested that reaching is a critical skill for locomotion.
• Blind infants need to be prompted by sound. If sounding objects are not present, the blind infant
may not reach. Thus reaching is dependent on the awareness of spatial information about the
object.
Lack of incentives for locomotion in blind infants.

Fraiberg associated delays in blind children with lack of incentives for locomotion.

• Lack of incentives for locomotion. When blind and sighted infants were compared on the Baley
scale (1969), blind children showed a delay in motor abilities requiring self initiated mobility,
such as elevating themselves, raising themselves to sitting or standing positions, crawling or
walking.
• Blind infants reach at their body midline to sounding objects.
• When blind infants reach, it may be related to their conceptual development (Bigleow, 1986).
• The ear hand coordination in blind infants – eight months, whereas eye hand coordination in
sighted infants- at four months, but sighted children are not able to reach for a hidden object till
they about nine months and this is at par with the attainment of object permanence in sighted
children.
• Early in development, infants rely on tactile information and perceive objects held in their
hands without much assistance from vision.
• It is only after the age of five or six months that vision dominates and eye hand coordination
develops.
• Vision dominates at older ages and infants tactile haptic abilities get underutilized.
Movement in space: The advantage of sighted conditions is that external and body centered
inputs coincide.
Absence of sight disrupts the balance between body centered and externally based information.
Blind children’s proprioceptive (position) and kinesthetic information is a more reliable source of
orientation.
• Movement coding and coding in terms of body centered references can be an important basis for
understanding external relations in blind and sighted conditions.
• Sighted children tend to use external visual cues for reference.
• Body centered reference cues are available as much to the blind as to the sighted.
• In conditions of congenital total blindness movement and body centered information tends to be
more salient and reliable than information from external planes
• Findings on infants and young children show that spatial development does not show a change
from egocentric to allocentric coding.
• Coding in spatial tasks examined to look at memory for locations and directions and distance of
movements showed
• that children as well as adults can use more than one form of coding.- in terms of external cues,
frames or references or on body centered frames.
Studies on the deaf: A growing tendency of inclusive education for deaf and hard of hearing
(DHH). The is need for full curriculum, oral language development with assistive hearing
devices and cochlear implantation, and social interactions with hearing peers.

• Research shows consistently that (a) language and learning outcomes of implanted children are
diverse and a potential gap in ultimate attainment may exist between implanted and hearing
children’s language development.
• Contributions of sign language are observed in research in which DHH students with early
exposure to the language, score comparatively to their hearing peers on standardised spoken
language and literacy tests.
• Findings demonstrate a positive correlation between sign language and spoken language
development.
A number of Asian countries are exploring to incorporate sign language into mainstream education
through various means.
• Hearing parents with deaf children face difficult decisions about what language(s) to use with their
child.
• Sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL) are fully accessible to deaf children, yet
most hearing parents are not proficient in ASL prior to having a deaf child.
Given that second language learning in adulthood is known to be challenging, it is often
assumed that the task of learning ASL by hearing parents is too difficult and takes too long.

• A growing body of literature reveals that deaf children who are exposed to ASL at an early age
from hearing parents acquire ASL vocabulary at an age-appropriate rate.
• Their language learning trajectories largely parallel those of deaf children with deaf parents.

• In addition, parents display positive outcomes from being deeply involved with their deaf child
and engaging in learning with them .
• Weaver and Starner (2011) interviewed 11 hearing parents of deaf children (ages ten months to 16
years). When asked about their motivation, their primary response was that they learned ASL to
communicate with their deaf child.
• Additional motivation included a desire to provide an ASL and English bilingual environment for
their child,
• to help their child gain access to the deaf community, and to include their child in family life.
Parents with recently identified deaf infants face several unique challenges such as new
parenthood.

• These challenges can become significant barriers to parents’ ability to learn ASL.
• Liberman et al (2024) used a mixed-methods survey to investigate the experiences, reflections, and
• beliefs of hearing parents who had committed to learn ASL to communicate with their deaf child.

• Findings revealed that, First, health care professionals and early intervention providers must
• inform parents about ASL as a language choice for their deaf children.
• Second, the study revealed that parents who learn ASL often seek resources that are outside the
• scope of their early intervention or other services.
• Finally, parents in their study had strong and positive beliefs about the value of ASL for their child
• and for their family relationships.
Children with intellectual disability
Children with IDs have significant difficulties in both intellectual functioning (e.​g.
communicating, learning problem solving) and adaptive behaviour (e.g. everyday social skills).

• Studies have shown that family SES has an impact on children’s development, especially in language
acquisition and language writing.
• Children with ID have difficulties in reading and literacy, but with the implementation of particular
interventions, both their reading abilities and other literacy skills can be improved.
• A mother’s education level and a father’s ability to adjust family stress and awareness of regulating the
home environment were shown to have an impact on the academic performance of children with Down
syndrome.
• In addition to the factors pertaining to a child’s particular development, the purposeful literacy
environment provided to children also affects children’s reading development.
• Wang et al; (2024) used a home literacy environment (HLE) scale, SES scale, Literacy development
scale, parent child relationship scale.
• The results demonstrated a close relationship among literacy development of children with ID and parents’
SES, HLE and the parent-child relationship.
• This is consistent with research on typically-developing children that showed that a nurturing
parent-child relationship can promote children’s reading and literacy development.
Children with learning disability have normal intelligence.
But they suffer from mainly three kinds of learning disabilities:
difficulties in reading individual words; difficulties understanding words that have been read
successfully; and, finally, difficulties in mathematics.

• Developmental dyslexia is the most common type of learning disability.

• Children have problems distinguishing sounds in written and oral language.
• Children with developmental dyslexia typically benefit from two kinds of instruction: training in
phonological awareness—experiences that help them to identify differences in language sounds—along
with instruction on the connections between letters and their sounds.
• In India learning disability has attracted wide spread attention over the last decade.
• There is now an increase in the identification of individual children with learning disability and a
demand for services.
• These children are mostly confined to urban schools with English as the medium of instruction.
• The identification of large numbers of children with learning disability lend support to the viewpoint
that learning disability is a widely prevalent life span disorder contributing to more than difficulties
in sound to script production or phonological processing.
• It is a neurological condition that affects the ability of the brain to send and receive or process
information.
Children with impaired reading comprehension have no trouble reading individual words,
though they understand little of what is read.
The problem seems to reflect difficulty in linking words in a sentence to create coherent meaning.

• If impaired oral reading is an out come of impaired reading comprehension, an enriched

environment with instruction in vocabulary and language skills should reduce impaired
comprehension.
• Another common form of learning disability is mathematical disability. Roughly 5% to 10% of
young children struggle with arithmetic instruction from the very beginning.
• They progress slowly in their efforts to learn to count, to add, and to subtract;
• Since mathematics engages a broader number of skills than reading, not much is known about the
difficulty.
• Children with mathematical disability are impaired in counting and retrieving arithmetic facts from
memory.
• Yet another idea is that mathematical disability reflects problems in the basic cognitive processes
• that are used in doing arithmetic, such as working memory and executive function.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Most children display three symptoms-
hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity. It is usually diagnosed during middle childhood and
may be genetic and environmental (prenatal exposure to alcohol, drugs, inadequate diet).

• Diagnoses of (ADHD) in children and adolescents have increased globally over the past 30 years
and is among the top 3 neuropsychiatric disorders among children with a global prevalence of 5%.
• Providing symptom appropriate care and support for children with inattentive/hyperactive
behaviours, regardless of diagnosis, might improve access to beneficial interventions.
• People with ADHD perform less well in neuro-psychological tasks that require executive functions
including response inhibition, attention, and working memory with an increased risk f suicide.
• In addition, many parents of children with ADHD are also affected by ADHD themselves with
these symptoms having a negative impact on their parenting.
• Therefore, interventions that address both children’s and parent’s ADHD symptoms concurrently
have the potential to work synergistically on both children and parents.
• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is often recommended as the primary evidence-based
treatment for ADHD.
Mindfulness-based interventions are becoming popular with emerging findings supporting its role
in improving ADHD outcomes, reducing parenting stress and improving youth emotional
functioning (Wong et al; 2024). The Effects of Mindfulness for Youth (MY mind) versus Group CBT
in Improving Attention and Reducing Behavioural Problems among Children with ADHD.

• They studied 138 families of children (8-12 years). Participants were assessed at baseline,
immediately after intervention, at 3 months and 6 months.
• MY mind (mindfulness for youth) is a mindfulness-based 8-week, 90 mins intervention.
• Handouts describing homework practices, theme of each session, homework daily diaries, and
recordings of mindfulness exercises were provided to each family.
• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for children included academic problem handling, self-
control, problem-solving, understanding and response to emotions, listening and conversational
skills, perspective taking in social situations, and social problem handling.
• Results demonstrate significant improvement in parental ADHD symptoms or parental stress in the
MY mind arm, although parental well-being appears to improve.
• Both MY mind and CBT significantly improved children’s attention score at 6 months and
• their behaviour outcomes.
Reading in children: children learn to read more rapidly in languages where letter-sound rules are
more consistent.
But phonological awareness remains the single best predictor of reading success in many languages.

• The benefits of reading aloud to children are not limited to the first steps in learning to read,
• but persist into the middle elementary school years and are useful for children learning to read
other languages.
• Children decode words by recognizing familiar patterns of letters and syllables.
• With more experience, the child sounds out fewer words and retrieves more .
• Children’s literacy learning starts well before formal schooling, and studies have shown that
children are sensitive to speech even prenatally.
• Passive listening and nonverbal communication are a child’s first step toward becoming an
active talker.
• Differences in children’s ability to segment conversational speech predicts later language
development .
• Research demonstrates that home learning environments (HLE) are associated with children’s
numeracy abilities, behavioural outcomes, and literacy competencies.
 Current reading frequency significantly predicts children’s numeracy abilities.
The age at which children were first read to was also related with children’s concept formation
and home literacy education (HLE).

• The onset of shared reading is thus an important predictor of both later shared reading
frequency and child linguistic competencies, independent of the family background.
• Vargas et al; 2024 examined print and reading habits and comprehension in children with and without
Special education needs (SEN).
• Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs
(SEN).
• Reading episodes give students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge.
• Students’ comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and
negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading.
• Those associations were independent of SEN status.
• Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students,
regardless of SEN status.
Relevance of learning to write. It involves the coordination of the fingers and the muscles of the
hand. It translates speech into thought.

• Writing is taught to children as they start school from the very first grade .
• Writing helps learners to express their ideas in the form of recounts, narratives, procedures, etc.
• Writing is the primary method to communicate knowledge. It uses a knowledge telling strategy as
one can remember or a knowledge transforming strategy- how best to organize information.
• Compared with speaking, writing is more difficult because it involves spelling, punctuation, and
actually forming the letters.
• Children would benefit from holding a pencil and forming alphabets as they write because it
• strengthens their motor and eye hand coordination.
• Writing is controlled by the contralateral cerebral hemisphere.
• Writing should be encouraged during development because findings reveal that the use of
• digital gadgets (kindle)reduces the skills of writing and lowers attention span in children.
Learning mathematics in children

Children learn about number early in life, and yet even the most basic principles of number
are highly abstract.
• In order to recognize and distinguish numbers, children have to be able to transcend
perceptual information.
• They must understand that two sets of objects can have the same number despite looking
completely different.
• (three cups arranged in a straight line, three saucers arranged in a triangle.
• children have to learn to count.
There are four operations that children perform on numbers that lead to two forms of
reasoning.

• Additive reasoning includes addition and subtraction.

Multiplication and division are the two operations called multiplicative reasoning.
• There is evidence that children are able to perform simple additions and subtractions with concrete
objects long before they go to school.
• The decimal system.

Where does children’s mathematical knowledge come from?

• The understanding of ratio and parts?
• One is logic and logical development. Additive and multiplicative reasoning both depend on the
use of logic.
• The second is the teaching of conventional systems.
• Counting systems are based partly on logic and partly on human invention.
• The decimal system is an invention and, linguistically, it varies from culture to culture.
• They are called Arabic numerals by Europeans and Indian numerals by Arabs.
• The two groups' terms referring to the culture from which they learned the system.
The third factor is meaning.
The evidence suggests that children learn most about mathematics on the basis of
experiences with situations and actions that mean something to them.

• These meaningful situations affect and sometimes restrict what they learn at first.
• Nuñes et al. (1993), on street mathematics.
• They showed that children who work in the informal economy in Brazil are able to make quite
complex calculations when buying and selling in the most flexible ways.
• Predictors of early math achievement: Research demonstrates that vocabulary competencies
predict later numeracy scores –
• receptive vocabulary is thought to be related to children’s ability for acquiring vocabulary in
the number system-
• whereas expressive vocabulary helps children express relationships inherent in mathematical
problems (big, more, two).
Development of motor skills. As children grow their motor skills strengthen.
Fine motor skills improve and gain in dexterity in several activities as in drawing, typing, building.
Fine motor coordination improves handwriting with age.

• Motor skills are critical to child development . Movement activities improve cardiorespiratory
system fitness, metabolic and neuro- muscular system performance, and they cause positive
changes in health.
• Family, social environment, and school environment have a major impact on the growth and
development of primary school-age children and their physical fitness and motor development.
• The existence of motor skills contributes to the enhancement of psychological and mental well-
being, fostering positive outcomes in social and emotional development
• In the context of physical education, there is a customary focus on enhancing motor skills by
instructing students in activities that involve human movement.
• Stimulation of motor skills through game models in early childhood and elementary school
students in Indonesia. Suryadi et al. (2024).
• The results show a wide range of content implemented with game-based learning in Indonesia.
 Play-based children's learning is able to optimize the basic motor development of kindergarten
children and improve students' basic skills for high motor skills.

• In the older group, learning designed in the form of games can stimulate children's fine motor and
cognitive skills, improve basic motor skills, and develop gross motor skills so that they can be
applied in the learning process.
• In sports education, especially for children, the game model is considered the most effective in
improving motor skills .
• Drill training has an effect on improving students' basic skills for low motor skills
• Playdough game model, manipulative game model, and game-based rhythmic gymnastics
training models were tested:
• Playdough games can stimulate children's fine motor and cognitive skills
• The game-based rhythmic gymnastics training model, namely jumping, rotation, and balance
games, all show the suitability of the model to develop gross motor skills.
• In addition, learning with game design also helps children with special needs.