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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1522792
This article is part of the Research Topic Psychoeducational Approaches to Mental Health for Educators and Students View all 14 articles

Emotional Competence and Problem Behavior of Left-behind Preschool Children:The Roles of Self-regulation and Authoritative Grand-parenting Styles

Provisionally accepted
Lanlan Luo Lanlan Luo 1Shan Jin Shan Jin 1*Qi Huang Qi Huang 2
  • 1 China National Academy of Educational Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 2 Peking University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Children who are left behind when their parents migrate for work have a high prevalence of behavioral problems, which affect social function. Although previous studies have found that emotional competence significantly predicts problem behavior, little is known about the mechanism(s) through which self-regulation and authoritative grand-parenting styles affects emotional competence and problem behavior. This study examined the associations between emotional competence and problem behavior of preschoolers as well as the mediating role of self-regulation and the moderating role of authoritative Grand-parenting Styles. Participants included 449 left-behind preschool children (46.3% girls, mean age = 53.65 months). Grandparents reported their parenting styles with children and teachers reported children's problem behavior. Children's emotional competence and self-regulation were completed one on one by trained research assistants following a standard protocol. Results revealed that children's emotional competence negatively related to problem behavior.Self-regulation partially mediating the effects of emotion competence on problem behavior. Authoritative grand-parenting styles moderated the relationship between emotional competence and problem behavior in children, but not the relationship between self-regulation and problem behavior. Especially, authoritative grand-parenting styles enhanced the promoting effect of emotion competence and reduced the problem behavior of children. Our findings underscore the importance of intrinsic elements of child self-regulation, as well as adopting more authoritative parenting behaviors in their daily interaction with children, on the development of

    Keywords: emotional competence, Problem behavior, Self-regulation, authoritative Grand-parenting Styles, Left-behind Preschool Children

    Received: 05 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Luo, Jin and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Shan Jin, China National Academy of Educational Sciences, Beijing, China

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