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Young Children's Self‐careand Independence Tasks:Applying Self‐EfficacyTheoryVerna Hildebrand aa Michigan State University , East Lansing,MichiganPublished online: 28 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Verna Hildebrand (1988) Young Children's Self‐care andIndependence Tasks: Applying Self‐Efficacy Theory, Early Child Developmentand Care, 30:1-4, 199-201, DOI: 10.1080/0300443880300116

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Early Child Development and Care,1968, Vol. 30, pp. 199-201Photocopying permitted by licence onlyReprints available directly from the publisher

© 1968 Gordon and BreachScience Publishers, Inc.Printed in Great Britain

Young Children's Self-care andIndependence Tasks:Applying Self-Efficacy Theory

VERNA HILDEBRANDMichigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

(Received 11 May 1987)

Social Psychologist, Albert Bandura, defines self-efficacy as theindividual's belief in his or her own ability to perform a behavior. Self-efficacy for some self-care and independence tasks occurs in an earlystage of young children's development. As caregivers take moreresponsibility for young children they must be aware of the child's needto become self-efficacious. Several self-care and independence tasksare discussed in relation to self-efficacy. Personal accomplishment is akey source of information for each child.

KEY WORDS: Self-care, independence tasks, self-efficacy theory.

"THAT'S IT, Jenny. Wash your hands. Put soap on them. Good! Nowrub them together. That's fine. Now, put them under the water andwash off the soap," says Mrs. Miller as she patiently and quietlyprompts Jenny, a toddler, to learn to wash her own hands.

Self-care tasks are among the myriad of personal hygiene andindependence tasks that young children must learn. Many peopletake these accomplishments for granted unless a child has difficultylearning them, as handicapped youngsters frequently do. Self-caretasks take patient, repetitious, and step-by-step teaching. Whethersuch tasks arc taught at home or in child care centers, the goal is tohelp children become self-sufficient, capable, and confident of theirown ability to carry out their own self-care tasks.

As a parent, caregiver, or director of child care centers, do youappreciate the significance of a child learning self-care tasks? Do yourealize that there is a relationship between how young children learnthese tasks and how they will learn other things? The connection isthrough self-efficacy.

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200 V. HILDEBRAND

SELF-EFFICACY DEFINED

Self-efficacy is a term Bandura, a well known social psychologist,defines as the individual's belief in his or her own ability to perform a behavior.Self-efficacy applies to the behavior itself rather than to the outcomeof behavior. Self-efficacy applies to people's judgment of their owncapabilities to organize and execute courses of action, e.g., perceivedself-efficacy is a personal judgment of one's own capability toaccomplish a certain level of performance (Bandura, 1986, 391).Bandura's studies show that accurate appraisal of one's owncapabilities is highly advantageous and often essential for effectivefunctioning (Bandura, 1986, 414).

APPLICATIONS OF SELF-EFFICACY THEORY

Self-efficacy theory has applications for all ages. The theory has beenfound useful in training women for child birth (Manning and Wright,I983); weight loss therapy, (Chambliss and Murray, 1979); smokingtherapy (Barrios and Niehaus, 1985); in training athletes, (Bandura,1986, 433); and for treating mental disorders (Bandura, 1986, 439).

Self-efficacy of individuals at older ages has its roots in the earlymonths and years of childhood. Thus, it is helpful for parents andcaregivers of young children to appreciate the fact that significantperceived self-efficacy is learned while children are developing motorskills and while their cognitive capacities are in the formative stages.Watch toddlers, like Jenny in the opening anecdote, learning to washtheir hands. They are typically confident without doubt regardingtheir ability—watch toddlers learning to climb on a chair or up astairs. Note how confident or self-efficacious they are regarding theperformance attempted. Most parents and caregivers are rightlyconcerned about children's drive toward independence because thechild's self-confidence is not matched by the child's understanding ofthe dangers some of those increased skills can create, such as runninginto the street where danger lurks. For their own safety children inthese early years require close supervision (Hildebrand, 1985, 231—233)-

CHILDREN LEARN SELF CARE AND SELF EFFICACY

In a study of 242 mothers' responses concerning their 3- to 5-year-oldchild's independence and responsible behavior with respect to 27

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APPLYING SELF-EFFICACY THEORY 201

tasks, a contradiction was found in that mothers often perceived thattheir child was not old enough to do a particular task; yet, they oftenindicated that they expected the child to do that task (Hildebrand,1975). Such information suggests the need for education for parents,teachers, and caregivers regarding the many self-care and independ-ence tasks children might properly be both able and expected toperform at various ages.

In an earlier era parents with help from a child's older siblings werelargely responsible for teaching the self-care, personal hygiene, andindependence tasks. With increasing numbers of infants and toddlersin child care outside the home, more caregivers are becominginvolved in teaching many of these tasks.

Are these parents, teachers, and caregivers aware that they areteaching children self-efficacy or a certain confidence in their abilityto perform? Do they realize that their teaching will affect children'sconfidence in their ability to perform a wide variety of tasks in thefuture?

For the majority of normal children the self-care and independencetasks are eventually learned satisfactorily by the time a child reachesschool age. Some sensitive parents and child care workers understandfully how slow and laborious this learning is. While some adults arepatient, others admonish, cajole, shame, or even punish a child whocan't do a task, for example, handle toileting, or dressing.

Infants and toddlers are in the early stages of handling self-caretasks. Most are pushing for self sufficiency in stages often attributed tomaturation (Gessell, 1940). The infants or toddlers reach for thespoon to feed themselves, they put the cracker in their mouth, theyclimb up into the highchair, they eventually say "Me do it," as theytry to put their own peanut butter on their bread. These are examplesof the child's early self-efficacy—indicating that the child feelscapable of the task he or she is attempting.

Language development presents another example of self-efficacy.Chukovsky, a famous linguist who collects examples of children'screative language, says, "Beginning with the age of two, every childbecomes for a short period of time a linguistic genius. In truth, theyoung child is the hardest mental toiler on the planet. Fortunately hedoes not even suspect this" (Chukovsky, 1968, 7).

Bandura's studies show that success breeds success, in other words,that the skills are generalizable (Bandura, 1986, 399). Thus, the self-efficacy theory tells us that when children learn self-care andindependence tasks well this success increases their confidence for

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202 V. HILDEBRAND

accomplishing other tasks. Where does the individual get theinformation regarding self-efficacy?

SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY INFORMATION

According to Bandura's studies, there are four sources of informationthat help the individual perceive him- or herself as efficacious—capable of accomplishing a task (Bandura, 1977, 80-82; Bandura,1986, 399—401). These sources are:

1. Personal Accomplishment. The child's behavior succeeds. Successhas its own reward. A little girl reaches a top stair step. A little boycreeps forward and successfully reaches a favorite toy. Successencourages the individual to repeat the behavior. The success withone task tends to generalize to other tasks, according to Bandura.Parents and others have noticed children who succeed in pulling offtheir clothes soon want to help dress themselves.

2. Vicarious Experience. Seeing others successfully do a task andenjoying a behavior encourages a new learner to try it. For example, aparent or sibling uses a spoon, a cup, or a pencil and the toddler wantsto try it, too. A 3-year-old sees a peer climb up the slide and makes aneffort to climb the same slide. The child with high perceived self-efficacy is following the models of the other children around who arejoyfully climbing up and sliding down.

3. Verbal Persuasion. Verbal prompting and reassurance mayencourage the small child to make efforts to try various tasks. "Youcan do it," is said hundreds of times by parents and caregivers.Certainly many parents, believing that verbal persuasion works, areheard attempting to persuade their child to try a behavior. Bandura'sstudies suggest that verbal persuasion is weak if a history of failure ispresent (Bandura, 1977, 82). For the youngest children, verbalexplanations or persuasion aren't helpful because the child is not yetready to understand abstract information (Piaget, 1950). Eventhreats of dire consequences attendant to doing or not doing the taskdo not help increase the child's performance.

4. Emotional Arousal. Good feelings result from successes. Theemotion of pleasure is observable in young children. According toBandura, people with high self-efficacy when confronted by obstaclesare spurred to greater efforts. Those who perceive themselves asinefficacious, dwell on their personal deficiencies, and experience

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stress and ineffectiveness (Bandura, 1986, 394). Fear and anxiety areobservable if a child tries and fails at a task, especially if the child isplaced in a competitive situation by a loved one.

Of these four sources of information of self-efficacy, personalaccomplishment, may be the most effective during the years beforethree. Emotional arousal, vicarious experience, and verbal per-suasion become more effective, in that order, in older childhood ascognitive abilities increase. Following are a few ways parents andcaregivers can support the development of self-efficacy in a child?

PROMOTING SELF-EFFICACY

As the child exhibits motor control and interest in self-care andindependence tasks adults should allow the child to try to attempt todo the tasks. The adult can protect the child from any harm thatmight come about because of the child's lack of understanding of theconsequences of the attempts.

Self-feeding should be promoted with small spoons, spillproof cups,and plastic dishes—always used over hard surface floors where thespills are easily cleaned up. Most parents discover these strategies bytrial and error.

Deciding How Much to Eat Harry and Ann complain when their 3-year-old, Sylvia, fails to eat "enough." Of course, "enough" is verypersonal and the parents should realize that a 3-year-old is growingmore slowly than at a previous stage and usually needs less food. Also,during the stage of autonomy (Erikson, 1950) between 2 and 4 yearschildren frequently use refusal of food to assert their developingautonomy.

It is standard operating procedure in a child care center for the staffto seat a poor eater, like Sylvia, next to a child like Mark who relishesevery bite. The vicarious experience, of watching Mark serves to helpmake Sylvia more self-efficacious, i.e., to judge that she can feedherself and eat a variety of nutritious foods. Parents are often amazedat how well and how independently their child eats in a centercompared to how that same child eats at home. Fortunately, in achild care center the caregivers do not have enough hands to feed ortime to cajole children, even if they were so inclined. Caregivers servemeals only at specified times and the child learns to eat at that time.Caregivers also make positive assumptions that children eat whenthey are hungry.

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Hair care for children, especially for little girls, is a problem in manyfamilies. The child can be more self-efficacious if she can brush herown hair. For some children short hair is a simple solution to what isoften a formidable problem at the beginning of each day—getting thechild's hair combed. Parents should consider a simpler hair style, notas punishment, but to avoid developing a pattern of confrontation.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, self-efficacy combines the judgment of one's capabilityto do a behavior and doing the behavior. This process begins whenthe child is engaged in early self-care and independence tasks.Feelings of confidence in one's ability to do these tasks are related tofeelings of confidence in future tasks. Parents and caregivers,understanding the significance of this early learning, should patientlyutilize their best strategies to teach skills when children are ready,protect children as they practice, share in their pleasure when theysucceed, and, thereby, help each child's self-efficacy to develop.

References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Barrios, F. and Niehaus, J. (1985). The influence of smoker status, smoking history,

sex, and situational variables on smoker's self-efficacy. Addict Behavior 10 (4):425-430.

Chambliss, C. and Murray, E. (1979). Efficacy attribution, locus of control, andweight loss. Cognitive therapy and research, 3 (4): 349-353.

Chukovsky, K. (1968). From Two to Five. Berkeley, California: University ofCalifornia Press, 1968.

Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: W.W. Norton Company.Gessell, A. (1940). The first five years of life: The preschool years. New York: Harper &

Row.Hildebrand, V. (1975). Mothers' perceptions of independent and responsible

behaviors of their preschool children, Psychological reports. 37, 631-641.Hildebrand, V. (1985). Guidingyoung children. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.Manning, M. and Wright, T. (1983). Self-efficacy expectancies, outcome

expectancies, and the persistence of pain control in childbirth. Journal ofpersonality and social psychology. 45 (2): 426-431.

Piaget, J. (1950). The psychology of intelligence. New York: Harcourt Brace.

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