Effects of Parental Language Style on Children’s Resilience at Different Stage of Child Development

Abstract

Resilience can affect and influence individuals’ executive functioning, social behavior, and academic learning ability. Many researchers have examined on the effect of parenting style on children’s resilience. However, less is known about how specific parental language influences children’s resilience. To close the important knowledge gap, this study aims to test whether the positiveness of long-term parental language input is significantly related to high level of behavioral persistence among children beyond infancy. Data will be collected from children at three different age groups (18-month-old, 4-year-old, and 8-year-old) to critically evaluate how parents’ positive (activity-engagement) language style and negative (activity-avoidant) language style will influence children’s level of persistence and resilience at different developmental stages. It is hypothesized that, across age groups, children who receive more positive activity-engagement language input from parent’s exhibit will show higher level of resilience.