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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 May 22.
Published in final edited form as: Early Child Dev Care. 2022 May 22;192(3):410–424. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2020.1763978

Parent Discipline and Pre-schoolers’ Social Skills

Virginia Tompkins a,*, Eve Villaruel a
PMCID: PMC8991749  NIHMSID: NIHMS1596732  PMID: 35399602

Abstract

Educators recognize children’s social competence as an indicator of school readiness. Children’s social competence may be promoted prior to kindergarten through parents’ discipline; however, prior research largely focused on parenting and social competence in older children or only focused on children’s problem behaviours. We assessed parent discipline as a predictor of 37 low-income pre-schoolers’ social skills over four months. Parents answered open-ended questions about how they would respond to child behaviours; children’s pre-school teachers rated their social skills. In a hierarchical regression controlling for children’s age and initial social skills, parents’ inductions significantly predicted children’s later social skills. Although children’s social skills were correlated with parents’ pairing of consequences and inductions, this relation was no longer significant when controlling for age and initial social skills. Power assertive discipline and time-outs were not significantly correlated with children’s social skills. The results suggest that parents’ inductions may be beneficial for children’s social skills by focusing the child’s attention on the reasons the behaviour was inappropriate.

Keywords: parent discipline, social skills, pre-schoolers

A primary aim of many preschool programs is to develop the social competence of children such that they are prepared for the social, emotional, and behavioural expectations of formal education beginning at the age of 5 to 6 in most industrialized countries. In the classroom context, social competence refers to the social skills needed to interact with peers and teachers in a positive way (e.g., sharing, cooperating) and the ability to refrain from problem behaviours (e.g., aggression, bullying; Denham, Bassett, Sirotkin, Brown, & Morris, 2015). One of the most important goals for parents of young children is to foster their social competence, preparing children to be successful in life, including in school (Ren & Edwards, 2015; Cheah & Rubin, 2003). Parent discipline serves as an important socializer of young children, including both preventive discipline (diverting from misbehaving) and corrective discipline (consequences for misbehaving). Parent discipline can model to young children ways of managing emotions and handling conflict, it can explicitly teach children what behaviours are expected or not appropriate, and it can encourage children to take the perspective of others. A great deal of work in recent years has examined spanking in early childhood as a predictor of problem behaviours (see Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016 for a meta-analysis); however, less is known about how discipline is related to social skills during early childhood. We report on a small, exploratory study examining relations between parent discipline and low-income pre-schoolers’ social skills in a short-term longitudinal study. We next review the primary disciplinary techniques used by parents of pre-schoolers as they relate to children’s social competence, defined in terms of both social skills and problem behaviours.

Parent discipline and children’s social competence

Power Assertive Discipline

Power assertive discipline includes both physical control (e.g., spanking) and psychological control, which affects the emotional or psychological state of the of the child, such as yelling at the child (Streit, Carlo, Ispa, & Palermo, 2017). Most work on power assertive discipline and children’s social competence has focused on spanking. Spanking has received a great deal of attention in recent years given the mounting evidence that spanking is linked to problem behaviours. Numerous longitudinal studies show that spanking in early childhood predicts children’s later externalizing behaviour (e.g., aggression), internalizing behaviour (e.g., anxiety), and antisocial behaviour (e.g., bullying; Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Grogan-Kaylor, 2004; Lansford, Bornstein, Dodge, Skinner, Putnick, & Deater-Deckard, 2011; Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 2012; MacKenzie, Nicklas, Waldfogel, & Brooks-Gunn, 2013; Maguire-Jack, Gromoske, & Berger 2012; Lee, Altschul, & Gershoff, 2013; Lee, Altschul, & Gershoff, 2015; Taylor, Manganello, Lee, & Rice, 2010). Researchers find cascading effects such that spanking at age 1 predicts problem behaviours and spanking at age 3, which predicts problem behaviours at age 5 (Gromoske & Maguire-Jack, 2012; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012).

Many parents believe spanking will improve children’s behaviour (Taylor, Al-Hayari, Lee, Priebe, & Guerroro, 2016). However, most research on spanking has examined problem behaviours as the outcome; little research has examined spanking in relation to improvements in children’s behaviour, such as social skills (Altschul, Lee, & Gershoff, 2016). Webster-Stratton and Hammond (1998) found that parents who used harsher discipline tended to have pre-schoolers with lower social skills. However, Altschul et al. (2016) found that spanking in the preschool years was unrelated to children’s social skills.

Inductions

Another disciplinary technique referred to as inductions involves parental explanations of wrongdoing and a reflection on how children’s actions make others feel. Studies with school-aged children (i.e., 10 years and older) show that children’s ratings of parental inductions are related to children’s social skills, such as prosocial behaviours (Carlo, Knight, McGinley, & Hayes, 2011; Dlugokinski & Firestone, 1974; Hoffman & Saltzstein, 1967; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996). There is less research on parental inductions and pre-schoolers’ social skills although Jeon and Neppl (2019) found that positive parenting (including explanations, but not in a discipline context per se) when children were 3 to 4 years predicted children’s social competence at 5 years. Additionally, Hart, DeWolf, and Burts (1992) found that pre-schoolers with inductive mothers were more likely to demonstrate social skills in peer interactions compared to those with power assertive mothers.

The research on adult-child reminiscing (i.e., talk about the past) and theory of mind (i.e., understanding of mental states) also suggests a benefit of inductive reasoning around emotions for children’s social development. During reminiscing with pre-schoolers, Laible and Thompson (2000) found that when mothers made more references to emotions and moral judgements, children tended to have greater conscience development (e.g., experiences guilt, seeks forgiveness). Additionally, research on theory of mind, which is related to socially competent behaviour in pre-schoolers (Razza & Blair, 2009), shows that parents who explain pre-schoolers’ misbehaviour and who discuss misbehaviour in relation to how it makes others feel tend to have greater theory of mind understanding (Farrant, Devine, Maybery, & Fletcher, 2012); on the other hand, parents’ power assertive discipline is linked to lower theory of mind (Pears & Moses, 2003; Ruffman, Perner, & Parkin, 1999).

Non-violent Discipline

In the current study, we also explored non-violent methods of discipline, including time-out and consequences (e.g., removal of privileges) in relation to children’s social skills. Non-violent discipline methods are those for which there is exposure to an aversive event in which the physical and/or emotional control of the child is typically less prominent than with power assertive responses. For example, it is recommended that parents carry out time-outs calmly without raising their voice or threatening the child (Morawska & Sanders, 2011). These are the most commonly suggested and used methods of discipline for reducing problem behaviours in young children, particularly in children with conduct problems (Barkin, Scheindlin, Richardson, & Finch, 2007; Drayton, Byrd, Albright, Nelson, Andersen, & Morris, 2017; Morawska & Sanders, 2011; Warzak & Floress, 2009). Time-out is intended to prohibit children from earning reinforcements from their environment as a consequence of misbehaviour for a period usually lasting 1-5 minutes (Morawska & Sanders, 2011). However, Warzak and Floress (2009) note several difficulties with the use of time-out with young children. Children may leave time-out, resulting in a chase or physical restraint of the child. Children may also become further disruptive or aggressive, and these struggles may be reinforcing to the child rather than punitive as they successfully avoid time-out. Additionally, parents may not remain calm in delivering time-out and children may not remain calm in accepting this punishment; thus, emotional self-regulation are important for both parent and child when using time-out as discipline.

As Drayton et al. (2017) point out, most of the work on time-out has been with parents trained in conducting time-outs based on scientifically established criteria; however, most time-outs are conducted by parents or teachers with no formal training in these criteria. Furthermore, much of the information parents are exposed to on time-outs comes from the Internet, which provides inconsistent and inaccurate information on time-out (Drayton, Andersen, Knight, Felt, Fredericks, & Dore-Stites, 2014). In one of the few studies to examine parents’ use of nonviolent approaches to discipline (e.g., time-out, removal of privileges) in relation to children’s social competence, Webster-Stratton and Hammond (1998) found that parents’ use of nonviolent discipline did not distinguish three groups of children based on their levels of social competence. However, this study was limited by a cross-sectional design and still does not specify whether there is something unique about time-out compared to other nonviolent approaches because time-outs were grouped with other approaches (e.g., warnings).

Although several studies report the effectiveness of time-out as part of behaviour-management plans, much less work has focused on time-out in relation to children’s social competence. Although not as punitive and potentially negative as power assertive discipline, consequences may not be as useful for modelling socially competent behaviour as the inductions mentioned above. Readdick and Chapman (2000) found that pre-schoolers perceived time-out as punitive and time-out was associated with negative emotions (e.g., fear, sadness). Additionally, about half of the pre-schoolers were not able to provide correct explanations for why they were in time-out. This also raises the question of whether including inductions with consequences may be a better predictor of socially competent behaviour compared to a consequence alone. Gardner, Forehand, and Roberts (1976) found that time-out with explanation was no more effective than time-out; however, this was a brief laboratory study and the outcome was compliance with the request not children’s later social competence.

Comparing discipline approaches

A limitation of some of the prior work on discipline and social competence is that researchers focused exclusively on one disciplinary technique (e.g., spanking) without examining relative relations between different discipline techniques and social competence (e.g., Lee et al., 2013; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). Parents are likely to use more than one technique and the extent to which parents use these different techniques may differentially predict children’s social competence. Other studies that have compared different parenting approaches in relation to children’s social skills have compared only two techniques, for example inductions vs. power assertion (Hart et al., 1992; Hart, DeWolf, Wozniak, & Burts, 1992; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996) or spanking vs. warmth (Altschul et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2013). However, warmth is not discipline and so the question remains—when parents encounter child misbehaviour, what disciplinary response might predict the development of social skills? Additionally, much of the work on inductions and children’s social skills focused on older children (e.g., Hoffman, 1975; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996) whereas less is known about parent discipline and social skills in the preschool years when non-violent discipline (e.g., time-outs) is the most popular method of discipline (Barkin et al., 2007; Pears & Moses, 2003; Tompkins, Logan, Blosser, & Duffy, 2017).

Additionally, the literature on parent discipline and children’s social competence primarily focuses on child problem behaviours and not on positive behaviours. Aside from suggesting that parents refrain from using spanking, these studies do not provide evidence for what parents should do instead. To the extent that inductive parenting may be viewed as the opposite of power assertive parenting, we might expect that inductive reasoning would be positively associated with social skills rather than problem behaviours; however, before making that assumption, more research is needed directly examining this link in pre-schoolers.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

Why would parent discipline relate to children’s social competence? In relation to problem behaviours, Lee and colleagues (e.g., Lee et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2015) draw on Bandura’s social learning theory (1973), arguing that when children are spanked, parents model aggressive behaviour and children imitate that aggression in conflicts with peers and siblings. Although aggressive discipline can result in obedience, it also elicits fear in young children and the obedience is short-lived because children may be focused more on their own fear and anxiety rather than internalizing the message that the behaviour is inappropriate (Hoffman, 2000). Thus, spanking interferes with children’s moral internalization of appropriate behaviour and, because it encourages children to focus on self concerns, does not promote prosocial behaviours (Hoffman, 1983). In relation to social skills social learning theory and the research findings described above would suggest that spanking or other power assertive responses would be negatively or unrelated to social skills because spanking by itself does not provide information about socially competent behaviour nor does it model the behaviours we wish to see children engage in.

Inductions, on the other hand, are theorized to promote children’s social skills because children learn empathy from these exchanges. Hoffman’s theory of moral internalization specifies that children then internalize these values, which then promotes prosocial skills in their interactions with others (Hoffman, 1983, 1994, 2000). Although a great deal of research exists linking discipline and problem behaviours and internalization of values (i.e., compliance), less is known about how parent discipline predicts social skills during early childhood. Although socially competent behaviour includes refraining from aggressive acts, socially competent behaviour also includes exhibiting desirable behaviours (e.g., effective communication, cooperation, empathy) with peers. Given the relations between inductions and theory of mind in pre-schoolers and inductions and social skills in older children (Carlo et al., 2011; Farrant et al., 2012), we hypothesized that inductions would predict pre-schoolers’ social skills.

Non-violent punishment, such as time-out and consequences, have received the least amount of attention in relation to social skills. Because non-violent punishment tends to make up the largest category of parent disciplinary responses for pre-schoolers (Pears & Moses, 2003; Tompkins et al., 2017), we further delineated time-outs and consequences. Consequences (e.g., removal of privileges) and time-outs are not inherently as threatening as yelling at or striking a child under ideal circumstances. Although time-outs can be effective in clinical settings or in behaviour management programs in the classroom (Morawska & Sanders, 2011), these are contexts in which parents and teachers have been trained in the desired parameters of time-outs and correct implementation. However, when asking parents who have not had such training about their understanding and implementation of time-out, Drayton et al. (2017) found that most parents did not understand why time-out is effective, how time-out teaches children appropriate behaviour, or what the correct procedures were. We hypothesized that consequences and time-outs would be unrelated to social skills given their lack of association with pre-schoolers’ theory of mind skills (Pears & Moses, 2003). However, we hypothesized that the relations with social skills are stronger when parents report providing inductions with consequences or time-outs.

Longitudinal relations

Longitudinal studies demonstrate that the strength of the association from earlier discipline to later child behaviour tends to be stronger than the relation between earlier child behaviour and later parent discipline (Altschul et al., 2016; Berlin et al., 2009; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). Additionally, researchers find that spanking predicts children’s later problem behaviours controlling for earlier problem behaviours (Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean, & Sameroff, 2012; Gromoske & Maguire-Jack, 2012; Lee et al., 2013; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). However, parent-child relations are transactional and reciprocal. For example, children’s initial behaviour, such as temperament, predicts parents’ discipline, with most work focused on spanking (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff et al., 2012; Lansford et al., 2011; Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 2012; Lee et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2015; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). This suggests that any study examining longitudinal relations between parent discipline and social competence should account for children’s initial social competence.

The current study

The focus of this study was parents and their pre-schoolers attending Head Start, a federally funded preschool intervention program for low-income children in the United States (U.S.). The context of Head Start is particularly appropriate for addressing the relation between parent discipline and children’s social competence because social competence is one area which Head Start aims to promote in preparation for children’s kindergarten entry. Head Start also includes parents in the intervention, including training on positive parenting practices (e.g., Reid, Webster-Stratton, Beauchaine, 2001). Thus, it would be informative to know what parents are doing and how these practices are related to children’s social competence.

Similar to prior work, we assessed parents’ open-ended responses to how they would respond to disciplinary situations (e.g., Streit et al., 2017), which reduces social desirability bias. Streit et al. (2017) used three hypothetical situations and rated the responses on a single scale of discipline severity in which a higher score was more severe (e.g., spanking). However, unlike, Streit et al. (2017), we classified responses categorically rather than along a single dimension, such that we could compare the relations to children’s social skills to all disciplinary techniques described above. This also allowed us to disentangle the popular use of time-outs from other non-discipline reactions (e.g., prevent the situation, distract the child), which were included in the same score as time-outs by Streit et al. (2017). Examining all potential parental responses to child misbehaviour on the same scale may explain the relatively weak relation Streit et al. (2017) found between discipline severity and children’s aggression and lower prosocial behaviours at 10 years; these relations were significant for African American, but not European American children. We assessed a variety of types of child behaviour to increase the likelihood of observing different types of responses from parents. For example, Anderson and King (1974) note that time-out is most appropriate for certain behaviours (e.g., physical aggression) whereas Morawska and Sanders (2011) note that time-out is not appropriate for situations in which the child is distressed (e.g., being clingy).

We examined children’s social skills both at the time of the parental report and about four months later; this allowed us to predict children’s later social skills, controlling for earlier skills. We assessed social skills with teacher report given that teachers are better able than parents to make normative comparisons across children (Altschul et al., 2016; McWayne, Owsianik, Green, & Fantuzzo, 2008). This is a strength relative to the some of the studies of parent discipline and child social competence that relied on parental report of children’s social skills (Altschul et al., 2016; Ren & Edwards, 2015).

Method

Participants

Participants included 37 Head Start pre-schoolers (23 male) ranging in age from 3.49 to 5.32 years (M = 4.45 years; SD = 0.42) and their parents, who were participating in a larger theory of mind training study (Tompkins, 2015). Families were recruited at parent meetings and through flyers sent home through children’s classrooms. Children were 59% European American, 27% African American, 11% Biracial, and 3% Alaskan Native. Parents’ highest level of education, measured in years, averaged 12.54 (SD = 1.16) and ranged from 10-16 years; 12 indicates a high school education in the U.S.. An income-to-needs ratio was calculated based on the U.S. Census Bureau poverty thresholds from family income and family size. A value of 1.0 indicates the poverty line, whereas values below 1.0 indicate living below the poverty line. The mean income-to-needs ratio was 0.57 (SD = 0.36) and ranged from .00-1.52. The intervention had no significant effect on children’s social competence (Tompkins, 2015) and intervention status was not considered further in the current study.

Procedure

After consenting to the theory of mind training study, children were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups, stratified by classroom and gender. Parents completed a survey sent home through their child’s classroom and returned using postage-paid envelopes. Parents were incentivized for the return of the surveys. Parent surveys were completed at pre-test such that parents’ discipline responses were made prior to the training and at the same time as the first teacher-rated social competence measure. At pre-test (time 1), teachers completed social competence assessments for participating children; they completed the same assessment immediately after the intervention and two months after the intervention. Because of the short duration between pre-test and the next assessment and because the intervention is not the focus of the current report, we report only on the pre-test social competence (time 1) and the last assessment (time 2), which spanned about four months.

Measures

Child vocabulary

As a measure of children’s verbal intelligence, children were administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (4th edition; Dunn & Dunn, 2007). This assessment requires children to choose one of four pictures based on a prompt from the experimenter. PPVT standard scores are reported and were used in the current study as a potential covariate. The PPVT-4 has high reported test-retest reliability of .91-.94 for 2- to 6-year-olds (Dunn & Dunn, 2007).

Social competence

Social competence was assessed with the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) Rating Scales (Elliott & Gresham, 2008). This form asks teachers to rate the child’s social skills and problem behaviours. Social skills are the focus of the current report and included a total of 46 statements that assessed communication, cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, engagement, and self-control. For each item, teachers are asked to report whether the child engaged in the behaviour: never (1), seldom (2), often (3), or almost always (4). Teachers had known children an average of 8.08 months (SD = 7.08), ranging from 1 to 24 months; the majority of teachers had known children for 5 or more months. Composite social skills scores were used in current analyses. Teachers were incentivized for returning the surveys for students in their classrooms. Test-retest for the SSIS across the social skills subscales averaged .82 (Elliott & Gresham, 2008); the SSIS is strongly correlated with other teacher assessments of social skills (r = .78), such as the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004).

Parent survey

Surveys sent to participating families instructed them to select the caregiver most responsible for the child’s daily care to complete the survey. Parents (92% mothers) reported several demographic variables on the survey, including highest level of education, family income, and the number of adults and children sharing that income. Similar to other studies of parent discipline (e.g., Hart et al., 1992; Webster-Stratton & Hammond, 1998), parents were given 12 disciplinary scenarios with instructions to write in their response to each situation. Because parents may adopt particular types of discipline with certain behaviours (e.g., Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Trickett & Kuczyncski, 1986), we used a wide variety of child behaviours—six related to social skills and six focused on the child only. Parents’ open-ended responses were then scored along four dimensions similar to prior theory of mind work (e.g., Pears & Moses, 2003), including inductions, power assertive responses, time-out, and consequences (primarily removal of privileges and making the child apologize). We did not examine spanking separately as parents’ reports of spanking were quite low (mean proportion = .009). Consistent with prior work (Pears & Moses, 2003), we coded parents’ responses into the most power-assertive category when they reported multiple approaches (e.g., made her apologize and sent her to her room). No discipline (e.g., ignore) and ambiguous responses were also coded by default, though they are not of central importance to the current study. Descriptions of each category with examples from each of the 12 scenarios are provided in Table 1. This method of measuring parents’ discipline is a valid predictor of children’s theory of mind (Pears & Moses, 2003; Tompkins et al., 2017), a skill related to children’s social skills.

Table 1.

Descriptions of parents’ disciplinary responses to 12 scenarios with examples.

Description Discipline scenario Example of Parent’s Response
1. Power Assertive
 Physical control Physically negative responses (e.g., spanking, slapping)  1. Your child damaged something on purpose that wasn’t his/hers (e.g., a friend’s toy, a neighbor’s garden)
 2. Your child took something that wasn’t his/hers from somebody else		 “I told you to be careful; two smacks on the butt on her way to her room.”

“Hit her hands and make her say sorry and give it back.”
 Psychological control Verbally negative responses (e.g., yelling, threatening)
  3. Your child was doing something dangerous “Next time you get a whoopin or the car will kill you.”
2. Induction
 Explanation Talking to children about the behavior, explaining that it was wrong, or providing an explanation of why it was wrong  4. Your child touched something that shouldn’t be touched
 5. Your child shouted at you or someone at home, made fun of someone at home, or said something mean to someone at home		 “Tell him that it could cut him and hurt him very bad so please don’t touch because I don’t want you hurt.”
“Told her that wasn’t the way to handle the situation. And told her to ignore the other person involved.”
 Own or others’ feelings Explanations of how the behavior affected others’ feelings or encouraging child to take the perspective of the other person  6. Your child teased, hit, or bit another child “Explained to her that it isn’t nice to hit or be mean to anyone because it hurts their feelings so be nice and if they hit or be mean to you tell a grown up.”
 7. Your child was being selfish (e.g., not sharing a toy) “Don’t be selfish because they can be selfish to you and he wouldn’t like that. Be nice at all times. Share with other and others will share with you.”
3. Time-Out Removal from the child’s current environment for punishment,  8. You thought your child was lying to you
 9. Being Noisy		 “Sat on step until she told the truth.”
“Made him apologize & go to his room.”
4. Consequence Consequences other than time-out, including removal of privileges and apologizing  10. Your child was being moody or throwing a tantrum
 11. Your child did not mind you when you asked him/her to do something		 “Took toys away until he calmed down.”

“I told her that she wouldn’t get to watch a movie at bedtime if she didn’t listen.”
No Discipline Redirect the child’s behavior; ignore the behavior.  12. Your child was being noisy or yelling “Let her; she’s a kid.”
Ambiguous It was unclear how the parent addressed the child’s behavior. N/A “My daughter is not selfish.”
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Results

Preliminary analyses

Key study variables, including social skills ratings, parent discipline, and PPVT standard scores were first examined for normality by analysing frequency histograms, normality plots, and the Shapiro-Wilk test. For the hierarchical regression, linearity was examined by plotting the residual versus predicted values. Assumptions of normality were met with the exception of the parent discipline values. Square root transformations were performed because many parents had a value of zero for particular discipline responses (e.g., a parent who never reported using power assertive discipline); the transformed variables were used for correlations. The Missing Completely at Random (MCAR) test was not significant, χ2 (33) = 30.962, p = .569. Because of a large proportion of participants missing data on the time 2 social skills rating, we examined only participants with complete data. However, using pairwise deletion resulted in an identical pattern of findings.

Table 2 provides descriptive information for the child assessments, including PPVT standard scores and children’s social skills at Time 1 and 2. To confirm that children experienced change in social competence over this time, we compared the social skills scale at Time 1 and Time 2 using paired-samples t-tests. Social skills significantly increased over time, t(36) = 3.47, p = .001. There were no statistically significant child gender differences in social skills or parents’ reported discipline; thus, child gender was not considered further.

Table 2.

Participant characteristics (N = 37).

Variable Mean SD Range
Child age 4.45 0.42 3.49-5.32
Family income-to-needs 0.57 0.36 .00-1.52
Parents’ education in years 12.65 1.16 10-16
Child standard PPVT scores 100.22 9.73 83-118
Social Skills Time 1 84.78 24.34 32-126
Social Skills Time 2 90.31 23.77 47-131
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Note: PPVT = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 4th edition

Table 3 provides descriptive information about disciplinary practices. Parents were mostly likely to provide no discipline to children’s misbehaviour (e.g., ignore). The smallest proportion of responses were those identified as ambiguous (i.e., it was unclear what the parent’s reaction was). Because we were interested in discipline, we focused on the remaining categories in the rest of our analyses, which included the following from most to least frequently utilized: time-out, consequences, induction, and power assertion.

Table 3.

Proportion responses to discipline scenarios from most to least frequent.

Variable Mean SD Range
No discipline .27 .28 .00-1.00
Time-out .22 .24 .00-1.00
Consequences .17 .18 .00-1.00
Induction .15 .17 .00-.50
Power assertive .13 .17 .00-.73
Ambiguous .05 .09 .00-.33
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Next, we examined these four categories in relation to children’s teacher-reported social skills at Time 1 (i.e., the time of the parent surveys) and four months later at Time 2. We controlled for age as it was significantly correlated with social skills at Time 1 (r = .38), power assertive discipline (r = .34), and consequences (r = −.35), all ps < .04. As shown in Table 4, only inductions were significantly and positively related to children’s later social skills. The other categories were unrelated to social skills, some in a negative direction.

Table 4.

Partial correlations among social skills and parent discipline controlling for child age.

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Social Skills Time 1 --
2. Social Skills Time 2 .61** --
3. Time-out .02 −.02 --
4. Consequences −.08 .06 .01 --
5. Induction .16 .34* −.05 −.10 --
6. Power assertive −.03 .09 −.18 .11 −.19 --
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Note.

**

p < .01

*

p < .05.

Because we speculated that time-outs and consequences may be more strongly related to social skills when combined with inductions, we next explored these relations. Table 5 further clarifies that only consequences with inductions were significantly correlated with later social skills, not time-outs or consequences without inductions.

Table 5.

Partial correlations among social skills and consequences and time-out with or without inductions controlling for child age.

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Social Skills Time 1 --
2. Social Skills Time 2 .61** --
3. Consequence without induction −.18 −.17 --
4. Consequence with induction .16 .34* −.32 --
5. Time-out with induction −.05 −.09 .02 −.21 --
6. Time-out without induction .06 .13 −.15 .48** −.16 --
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Note.

**

p < .01

*

p < .05.

Finally, to examine growth in social skills over time, we examined 1) inductions and 2) consequences with inductions in a hierarchical regression controlling for age and Time 1 social skills at step 1. We did not control for children’s PPVT scores, parents’ education, or income-to-needs as none were significantly correlated with children’s social skills. As shown in Table 5, inductions were a significant predictor of children’s later social skills, above and beyond children’s age and initial social skills. However, parents’ consequences with inductions did not remain a significant predictor of children’s later social skills and the overall model was not significant at step 2 with both discipline predictors.

Discussion

This short-term longitudinal study examined parent discipline as a predictor of low-income pre-schoolers’ social skills. We examined parental discipline exhaustively as parents answered open-ended questions about how they would react to a range of 12 different scenarios. Thus, a strength of the current study is that we could examine the relative relations of each approach that parents use in relation to children’s social skills. Importantly, in these analyses we controlled for children’s initial social skills, and these skills were evaluated by teachers, not parents. The primary finding was that parents’ inductions, but not other methods of discipline, predicted children’s later social skills. Because of our small sample, we discuss the results in terms of both statistical significance and effect sizes.

Similar to Altschul et al. (2016), we found that power assertive discipline was unrelated to children’s social skills (rs = .00 - .10). Numerous studies find negative relations between power assertive parenting and children’s problem behaviours, arguing that power assertive discipline models aggression and does not focus the child’s attention on the appropriate behaviour (e.g., Lee et al., 2015). Thus, we might expect that power assertive parenting would be negatively related to children’s social skills (Webster-Stratton & Hammond, 1998). However, Altschul et al. (2016) did not find this relation and argued that spanking does not predict pre-schoolers’ social competence because it does not directly teach about socially competent behaviors. This explanation is congruent with Bandura’s social learning theory (1973), in which parents model to children appropriate behaviors, children encode these behaviors, and then later imitate those behaviors. Thus, if parents are modeling power assertive discipline, children may not be exposed to more positive ways of addressing conflict. Although not statistically significant, parents who used more power assertive discipline tended to use inductions less (r = −.19).

On the other hand, consistent with our hypothesis we found that parents’ use of inductions was significantly related to children’s social skills four months later. This discipline response predicted children’s Time 2 social skills after controlling for child age and initial social skills, although the overall model was not significant when including consequences with induction. In comparison to the studies on spanking and problem behaviours in which bivariate correlations were provided (Altschul et al., 2016; Lansford, Wager, Bates, Dodge, & Pettit, 2012; Lansford, Wager, Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 2012), it also seems that the strength of the association between inductions and social skills in pre-schoolers may be stronger (r = .34). This finding is consistent with Hoffman’s (2000) theory of moral development, in which he asserts that children learn empathy from parent-child exchanges in which the parent draws attention to how the child’s behaviour has negative consequences for others, which then promotes their prosocial behaviours with peers. For example, when responding to children not sharing, several parents reported providing similar messages to children, such as: “Reminded her that sharing is caring and figured out ways to help her share that were fun instead of a battle between her and her friend.” The current results are also consistent with the few studies examining inductions or positive parenting with pre-schoolers in relation to their social skills (Hart et al. 1992; Jeon & Neppl, 2019) and extend the existing studies showing that inductive discipline is a predictor of social skills in older children (e.g., Carlo et al., 2011).

Prior research shows that parents’ warmth is associated with children’s social competence (Altschul et al., 2016). Although warmth is a different construct from discipline as warmth occurs in a variety of parental domains, it may be that inductions are more likely to be delivered with warmth as opposed to power assertive reactions, such as yelling and spanking (Ren & Edwards, 2015). Warmth promotes trust between parent and child (Altschul et al., 2016); thus, children may be more willing to listen to the message when delivered in a warm context. Additionally, this context may be less likely to induce fear and anxiety in children compared to more power assertive methods.

The results of time-outs and consequences provided further nuance to these findings. The results of the current study suggest that time-out is unrelated to children’s social skills, even when combined with inductions (all rs < ± .15). Thus, like spanking, time-out may be used by parents because it reduces the misbehaviour in the moment; however, it does not appear to allow for the internalization of the skills necessary to promote positive social interactions (Hoffman, 1975). This may be because time-outs like spanking promote a focus on the self rather than others. As mentioned above, Readdick and Chapman (2000) found that about half of pre-schoolers could not identify why they were in time-out. As Hoffman (1975) argues, internalization is a mechanism explaining why parent discipline is linked to children’s social skills; thus, if internalization is absent in time-out, there would be no benefit to children’s subsequent social behaviour. It may also be that when parents use time-outs, they do not do as prescribed but do so in anger and frustration, which does not model positive social skills. Thus, similar to spanking, social learning theory would suggest that for many children time-outs may not be modelling the types of social interactions that would be benefit them in their social encounters in the classroom.

Interestingly, the use of consequences with induction, was a significant predictor of children’s later social skills (r = .34), but not when controlling for earlier social skills. Given the small sample and exploratory nature of this study, this finding warrants further attention. Little research has examined consequences (primarily removal of privileges and making the child apologize) separately from other disciplinary responses. However, it may be that consequences are less aversive than time-out; when combined with an explanation of the wrongdoing, they may serve a similar purpose as inductions without a consequence. For example, one parent responded to a child teasing by saying: “He teased his little sister with one of his toys so I took that toy away from him for one week and talked to him about teasing.” Another responded to a child making fun of someone by saying: “Told him we don’t do that, and how he would be sad if someone did that to him, and he needed to apologize.” It may be that consequences are perceived as less punitive to children compared to time-outs as children do not have to experience a period of no reinforcements but can instead redirect to a different activity/reinforcer immediately or after they have complied with the parent’s request to apologize or make the situation right.

Thus, children may be more likely to internalize the induction paired with removal of privileges. It is also possible that time-outs are more likely to be delivered in ways that defy the suggested methods (e.g., with yelling, coercion) compared to consequences, and thus children are more focused on the punishment than the message with time-outs. Although parents likely have other motivations for using time-outs that have more to do with compliance than with promoting social skills (Rollins & Thomas, 1979), these results suggest that if inductions work equally well to promote compliance that parents may consider using this technique as it may promote both compliance and more positive interactions with other children. According to Hoffman (1975), inductions lead to the child’s moral internalization of appropriate behaviour; thus, providing a consequence alongside inductions for young children may serve a similar purpose as do inductions alone. However, the results of this study suggest that including that consequence may dampen the relation between induction and children’s social skills.

The examination of time-outs and consequences is a strength of the current study as these are the most frequently used discipline methods with pre-schoolers in this sample and others (Pears & Moses, 2003; Tompkins et al., 2017). We know of no research examining time-outs specifically in relation to social skills; rather researchers include time-outs and consequences together. Thus, our finding that consequences and time-outs were unrelated (r = .01) is interesting when evaluating prior research and may explain the lack of relation between this time-out/consequence category and children’s social skills in other research. For example, Webster-Stratton and Hammond (1998) found that parents’ use of nonviolent approaches to discipline (including time-outs, but others too) did not distinguish three groups of children based on their levels of social competence. Additionally, researchers have found that time-outs/consequences were unrelated to children’s theory of mind understanding (Pears & Moses, 2003). However, Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike (1996) found that mothers who used inductions in combination with non-violent punishment had toddlers with better compliance. Thus, in addition to increasing compliance, the current study adds that consequences combined with inductions may predict children’s social skills. However, this finding was no longer significant when controlling for earlier social skills and so should be interpreted with caution until further replicated.

Limitations

The main limitation of the current study was the sample size. Numerous large-sample studies and meta-analyses have identified links between parent discipline and young children’s problem behaviours (e.g., Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Gershoff et al., 2012). We view the present study as an exploratory study aimed at better understanding the disciplinary approaches that predict positive behaviours in children, namely their social skills with peers, as judged by pre-school teachers. Clearly, future work is needed to replicate these findings with a larger sample.

Although our sample was diverse (41% non-White), our sample size prevented us from examining racial differences in parent discipline. Although earlier work on race and discipline (primarily spanking) found that the discipline-social competence relation was moderated by race (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996), later work has failed to replicate that finding, including in meta-analytic work (Gershoff et al., 2012; Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Lansford et al., 2011; MacKenzie, Nicklas, Waldfogel, & Brooks-Gunn, 2012). Thus, in terms of its relation to social skills, our primary focus, we do not believe that we would find race as a moderator of this relation. However, future work should explore that possibility as Streit et al. (2017) did find that race moderated the relation between earlier discipline severity and prosocial behaviour in 5th grade students.

Additionally, it should be noted that parents’ responses to the open-ended prompts were understandably brief as we were asking them to respond in writing to 12 scenarios. Thus, there are likely further qualities of these responses that might relate to children’s social skills. For example, if a parent reported using a time-out, it was unlikely that they expanded on exactly how they might carry out a time-out. This is relevant as researchers find that untrained parents do not always use time-outs as prescribed (Drayton et al., 2017). Additionally, Kochanska, Aksan, and Nichols (2003) point out that although parents may be less angry when talking to children about discipline compared to when they are using power assertive techniques, there is still variation in how parents deliver the message through discourse, with some parents using a negative and critical approach. Thus, observational studies would be beneficial for determining further qualities of disciplinary practices that predict pre-schoolers’ social skills.

Conclusion

We now have a rich literature on parent discipline, primarily spanking, in relation to young children’s problem behaviours. Surprisingly less research has focused on parental discipline that may promote young children’s social skills. There are several effective parenting programs aimed at reducing power assertive discipline and increasing inductive discipline, with evidence that these interventions have particularly strong effects for low-income parents (Caughy, Miller, Genevro, Huang, & Nautiyal, 2003; Holden, Brown, Baldwin, & Croft Caderao, 2014; Reich, Penner, Duncan, & Auger, 2012). The current study offers further evidence on the types of discipline responses that may promote children’s social skills rather than focusing only on what to avoid (e.g., Holden et al., 2014).

Table 6.

Hierarchical regressions predicting children’s Time 2 social skills, controlling for child age and Time 1 social skills.

Predictor B SE B β ΔR2 p
Parents’ Inductions
Step 1
 Age 3.62 7.64 .07
 Social Skills Time 1 .55 .13 .60** .39 .000
Step 2
 Parents’ Inductions 40.64 18.87 .30*
 Parents’ Consequences with Inductions 14.57 18.41 .11 .08 .112
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Note.

**

p < .01

*

p < .05.

Acknowledgments

The work was supported by a grant from NICHD (#R03HD069514) to Virginia Tompkins (PI). I am extremely grateful to the Head Start teachers, parents, and children who participated in this study, and to the staff who made this possible.

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