Early childhood is the period that the basis of whole-person development is built. However, modern young children are suffering from numerous emotional difficulties as they experience unstable relationship with others because of parents' divorce, exce...
Early childhood is the period that the basis of whole-person development is built. However, modern young children are suffering from numerous emotional difficulties as they experience unstable relationship with others because of parents' divorce, excessive passion for children's education, etc. In order to adapt well to these situations, it is essential for them to form positive thought and positive emotion about themselves. Also self-esteem in this period significantly influences on young children's later social life, therefore, they need to acquire healthy self-esteem with promoting sociality at the same time. Earlier studies have a limitation that they targeted not young children but school age children by applying group play therapy as an educational program or focusing on problematic behavior.
Thus this study aims to examine the effect of child-centered group play therapy on improvement of young children's self-esteem and sociality targeting 3-5years old (Korean age) general young children. The present study is nondirective and nonstructural child-centered group play therapy and is different from preceded directive and structural group play therapy program. The participants of this study were recruited from M kindergarten located in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul by handing out questionnaires which targeted 3∼5 years old young children's parents and asked about participating after explaining the purpose of this study. Ultimately eight young children were selected and they were divided into two experimental groups of four children with considering their gender and age. The control group was chosen from Y kindergarten located in Seongbuk-gu by explaining a purpose of the study and asking about the participation. The child-centered group play therapy was performed for experimental group twice a week, 15 sessions in total. A self-esteem scale and sociality scale were used as a quantitative research tool. In order to get reliability of difference verification in self-esteem and sociality before conducting the child-centered group play therapy, a Mann-Whitney-U test of a nonparametric test was carried out and homogeneity between experimental group and control group was verified. To investigate the effect of child-centered group play therapy, a Wilcoxon's signed-rank test of a nonparametric test was conducted by using SPSS 19.0. Furthermore, a process of the child-centered group play therapy was recorded and then transcribed. Finally, group member's change was analyzed qualitatively referring to assistant coordinator's feedback.
The summary of the research's results is as follows:
Frist, the child-centered group play therapy significantly changed overall self-esteem and subordinate factors which were cognitive ability, physical ability, peer acception and mother acception.
Second, child-centered group play therapy showed significant changes in overall sociality and autonomy area.
Third, during the process of sessions, child-centered group play therapy showed positive change in behaviors that indicated self-esteem and sociality.
The meaning of the study is as follows:
First, the study clarified the improvement effect of self-esteem and sociality by conducting child-centered group play therapy with choosing not school age children who were mostly subjects of advanced research but young children as participants.
Second, this study defined that the child-centered group play therapy for general children is effective to strengthen their self-esteem and sociality. As a result, child-centered group play therapy will be able to applied to preventive approach for various emotional difficulties that young children may go through.
Third, this study has a significance in acquiring enhancement effect of young children's self-esteem and sociality by conducting group play therapy with a nondirective and nonstructural child-centered approach that is based on whole belief in inner directivity and inner strength of young children.