"This is hard!" Children's and parents' talk about difficulty during dyadic interactions

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Child Development

Background:

• Children's beliefs about effort, ability, success, and failure impact their persistence on challenging tasks and academic outcomes.
• Parental responses to success and failure influence children's motivational beliefs.
• The role of parent-child conversations about task difficulty in shaping these beliefs is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate parent and child talk about task difficulty.
• To characterize the content of difficulty-related talk.
• To examine factors associated with the frequency of difficulty talk, including task context, child and parent demographics, and other parental motivational talk.

Main Methods:

• Secondary analysis of two observational studies on parent-child interactions (ages 3 to fourth grade and first grade).
• Identification and characterization of "difficulty talk" in parent-child conversations.
• Statistical assessment of associations between difficulty talk and contextual/demographic variables.

Main Results:

• Many families engage in discussions about task difficulty, with significant variation across families.
• Difficulty talk often consists of general statements (e.g., "That was hard!").
• Task context influences both parent and child talk about difficulty. Mothers' discussion of task features contributing to difficulty correlated positively with process praise.

Conclusions:

• Parent-child conversations about task difficulty are common and may be motivationally relevant.
• The nature of difficulty talk varies and is influenced by the task context.
• Further research can explore the specific impact of difficulty talk on children's motivational beliefs and academic trajectories.