Blanca Silvia Fraijo-Sing

Background. Nurturing and responsive parenting, along with parental competencies that foster child development, are the foundation for healthy emotional and psychological growth, as they provide children and adolescents with a secure environment in which they feel valued, understood, and capable of coping with everyday challenges. From this perspective, the quality of family interactions plays a central role in the development of children’s self-esteem.

Objective. To analyze the relationship among formative parental competencies, parental stress, and children’s self-esteem. 

Design. The sample of 332 participants comprised 166 children aged 8 to 12 years and their caregivers. The E2P v.2 scale, the PSI-SF, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were administered, after obtaining consent from the parents and/or caregivers and assent from the children.

Results. At a correlational level, formative parental competencies were negatively associated with parental stress, and positively associated with children’s self-esteem, while parental stress was negatively associated with that self-esteem. When examining the relationships using structural equation modeling, formative parental competencies were associated with less stress and higher self-esteem in children, without showing a direct effect of stress on the children’s self-esteem.

Conclusion. These findings suggest that the quality of parenting practices is associated with lower levels of parental stress and higher levels of children’s self-esteem, highlighting its potential role as a protective factor. This pattern of associations may inform the design of interventions aimed at strengthening parental competencies aligned with positive parenting, without implying causal effects.

Background. Developmental studies have shown that the home environment has a significantly influences subsequent academic performance by supporting the development of skills essential for the acquisition of competencies necessary for school life, including literacy skills. Children with limited early literacy proficiency often experience challenges in acquiring literacy skills. Family literacy promotes the development of skills necessary for their acquisition.

Objective. The aim of this study is to identify and categorize literacy practices conducted at home, examine the participation of parents and children in reading and writing activities, and explore mothers' beliefs on this subject.

Design. For the present study, interviews were conducted with 102 mothers of preschool children in a city in northwestern Mexico.  The approach for this study is qualitative and constructivist.

Results. The study identified key dimensions: limiting environment, literacy interface, physical environment, interaction frequencies, and beliefs. These dimensions consistently highlight shared time as the main activity to promote reading and writing. However, the strategies deemed most relevant to language stimulation are primarily academic and place special emphasis on remediation and explicit teaching.

Conclusion. Despite expressing interest in developing activities to encourage reading and writing at an early age, these activities often fail to align with skills and developmental period of preschool children. The adult-centered and formal view of literacy practices in the home may be enhanced by educating the parents about their children’s developmental stages and literacy needs.