The cross-lagged relations between children’s academic skill development, task-avoidance, and parental beliefs about success

This longitudinal study investigated the cross-lagged associations between children’s academic skill development, task-avoidant behaviour in the context of homework, and parental beliefs about their child’s success from kindergarten to Grade 2. The participants were 1267 children. The children’s pre-skills were assessed at the end of the kindergarten year, and math and reading skills at the end of Grade 1 and Grade 2. Parents provided ratings of their beliefs about their children’s school success and task-avoidant behaviour with regard to homework at the end of Grades 1 and 2. The results showed that children’s math and reading skills predicted children’s task-avoidant behaviour regarding homework as rated by mothers, but not by fathers, when autoregressive effects were taken into account. In addition, task-avoidant behaviour predicted the mothers’ subsequent beliefs about their children’s school success but not vice versa. A reciprocal effect was found between fathers’ beliefs about success and children’s task-avoidance.

► Reading and math skills predict mothers’ ratings of children’s task-avoidance. ► Children’s task-avoidance predicts parental beliefs of children’s school success. ► Parental beliefs of children’s school success predict children’s development of math skills.