Relationships Between Children’s Shyness, Play Disconnection, and Loneliness: Moderating Effect of Children’s Perceived Child-Teacher Intimate Relationship

Abstract

Loneliness is a significant problem that predicts immediate and long-term negative outcomes for young children. This study examines the mediating effect of children's play disconnection on the relationship between their shyness and loneliness, as well as the moderating effect of children's perceived child-teacher intimate relationship on the relationships between child shyness, play disconnection, and loneliness. Participants include 171 4 to 6 year old South Korean children and their teachers and mothers. Children's teachers were asked to respond to the questions measuring child shyness and play disconnection, and the mothers assisted their children to answer the questions measuring child loneliness and child-teacher intimate relationship. The results of the study are as follows. First, child shyness affected loneliness via play disconnection. Second, child-teacher intimate relationship moderated the relationships between child shyness and loneliness and between child shyness and play disconnection. However, the association between play disconnection and loneliness was not moderated by child-teacher intimate relationship. The findings of the study suggest that teachers not only provide shy children with emotional support but also build affectionate and intimate relationships with them to support their peer play and to reduce their feelings of loneliness.

‘Out of sight, out of mind’: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of young people’s experience of isolation rooms/booths in UK mainstream secondary schools

“…This contributed to their feelings of being alone and anchored the emotion of loneliness aligning with Readdick and Chapman's (2000) findings that restrictive time-out creates loneliness. These findings are supported by a substantial body of literature that correlates loneliness with social disconnection (Ali & Gibson, 2019;Cacioppo et al, 2015: Cacioppo et al, 2006: Jahng & Kim, 2020Matthews et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2020). The YP in this study experienced a sense of weakened ties with the school community including teachers and peers as a result of their ostracisation in the IRB.…”

Evidence for Protective Effects of Peer Play in the Early Years: Better Peer Play Ability at Age 3 Years Predicts Lower Risks of Externalising and Internalising Problems at Age 7 Years in a Longitudinal Cohort Analysis

“…Our first research question concerns whether there is evidence for an effect of early peer play ability on later mental health outcomes at the general population level and the second research question extends this to look for evidence of protective effects of peer play in mental health high-risk groups identified by child temperamental traits at age 3 years; namely those children with low levels of persistence and those children with high levels of reactivity. We focus upon these subgroups since these temperamental traits of persistence and reactivity have been linked to both mental health and children's peer play ability [ 33 , 34 ].…”