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Early Development of Language Skills Help Kids to Cope Better With Anger

by Dr. Reeja Tharu on Feb 8 2013 12:37 PM
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Young children are prone to display temper tantrums, but by the time they reach school, they are expected to behave themselves. To help them achieve better behavior by the time they reach school, kids are taught language skills such as “using your words.”

A study was carried out by researchers from the Pennsylvania State University to determine whether language skills can help in anger management in children between the ages of 2-4 years.

The study was carried out on 120 children between the ages of 18-48 months from slightly below middle-income families. Through regularly conducted home and lab visits, the scientists measured the language skills of the children along with their ability to cope with tasks or situations that would generate frustration.

For instance, these young children were asked to wait for about eight minutes before they were allowed to open a gift while their mothers were finishing their work, and then their display of anger and coping strategies were recorded.

Meanwhile, the mothers of these children were required to fill in questionnaires on how their child usually coped with waiting.

The study revealed that, in children whose language skills developed more quickly, the coping strategies was much more pronounced; also, these children showed less anger at four years of age than those kids who had less language skills as toddlers.

The results of this study have been published in the Journal of Child Development.

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Source-Medindia


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