Young children’s pre-academic and social skills: role of parents’ locus of control and children’s ADHD behaviours

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our study examined young children’s pre-academic and social skills in relation to parental locus of control and children’s behaviours of ADHD. The participants were parents of 1,502 children from four Chinese kindergartens (Mage = 4.59, SD = 0.93; Girls: 51.40%). Data on six domains of children’s pre-academic and social skills, parental external and internal locus of control, and children’s inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity were obtained with the Early Learning and Development for Children Aged 3 to 6 years, the Parental Locus of Control scale, and the ADHD Rating Scale-IV Preschool Home Version respectively. Hierarchical regression results showed that controlling for other variables, higher scores in parental external locus of control and child inattention behaviours significantly predicted lower scores in all six domains, while higher scores in internal locus of control and child hyperactivity/impulsivity behaviours predicted higher scores in all six domains (R 2 ranged from 18.0% to 47.0%). Noticeably, parental locus of control explained a smaller amount of the variance (1.0–5.0%) than behaviours of ADHD (5.0–11.0%) in the children’s outcomes.