Family processes and the development of children's self-regulation

Abstract

Explores the origins of self-regulation in children's learning, with a focus on the home and family environments that help in its development and maintenance. In focusing on self-regulation in learning, the authors take a developmental approach, conceptualizing motivation as a set of resources that children develop. They assume that there is continuity in children's motivational resources—continuity over time and across contexts. They theorize that children's ways of negotiating normal developmental challenges, such as school transition, involve a complex interplay between the individual motivational resources that children bring, the home environment, and the structure and interpersonal context of the new experience. Drawing on self-determination theory, they discuss parents' roles in shaping early motivational and self-regulatory propensities that provide the basis for successful transitions to school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)