The purpose of this work is to investigate how the filial play therapy program joined by fathers affects their young children's self-esteem, peer relationship and excessive immersion in internet games.
For this study, three child-care centers loca...
The purpose of this work is to investigate how the filial play therapy program joined by fathers affects their young children's self-esteem, peer relationship and excessive immersion in internet games.
For this study, three child-care centers located in A city, Chungcheongnamdo, were chosen, and program participation forms were distributed to the fathers of young children aged between 3 and 6 going to the centers. A total of 12 fathers were finally selected. Of them, six fathers who agreed on the participation but had difficulty in joining the program on account of their conditions heard the purpose of this study and were assigned to a control group under their consent. The other six were assigned to an experimental group. The program had been performed every Thursday between 7:30 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. from Jan. 17 to Mar. 7, 2013 (once every week during eight weeks). Before the program was performed, an orientation session and a pre-test were conducted. After the program came to an end, a post-test was conducted.
The tools used for this study were Self-Esteem Scale for five and six years old, developed by Harter and Pike (1984) and changed and supplemented by Young-sook Kim (1997), the scale for peer interaction behavior which was translated from the part of the PIPPS developed by fantuzzo and his colleagues (1998), and Internet Game Addiction Tendency Scale for Young Children developed by Gyeong-ok Lee (2006) under the auspices of National Information Society Agency. The filial play therapy program used in this work was one developed by Guerney(1964), changed by Landreth(1991), and translated and adjusted by Mi-gyeong Jang (1998) in consideration with Korean settings. For study analysis, SPSS(Statistcal Package for Social Science) 18.0 was used. To compare socio-demographic characteristics of the fathers in the experimental group and the control group, this work calculated frequency and percentage and conducted χ2 test. To examine the effect of the filial play therapy program joined by fathers on their young children's peer relationship, self-esteem, internet game excessive-immersion scale, it conducted Mann-Whitney's U test as a non-parametric test method. The significance level for statistical tests was at α=.05.
The following is the result summary of the current research.
First, whether the filial play therapy program joined by fathers would improve their young children's self-esteem was investigated. As a result, after the program, all sub factors of the experimental group's self-esteem, such as cognitive ability, peer acceptance, physical ability, mother acceptance, and self-acceptance increased, whereas the control group's fell somewhat or didn't show significant differences. It indicates that the filial play therapy program joined by fathers is effective in improving their young children's self-esteem.
Second, whether the filial play therapy program joined by fathers would improve their young children's peer relationship was investigated. As a result, after the program, the experimental group's positive peer interaction behavior rating was higher than the control group's, and there was a significant difference. Also the experimental group's negative peer interaction behavior rating fell after the program, whereas the control group's changed rarely before and after the program. Given the result, it indicates that the filial play therapy program joined by fathers is effective in improving their young children's peer relationship.
Third, whether the filial play therapy program joined by fathers would reduce their young children's excessive immersion in internet games was investigated. As a result, after the program, the sub factors of the experimental group's excessive immersion in internet games, such as the characteristics of the game environment, game-oriented life, withdrawal and emotional experience, fell, whereas the control group's increased somewhat or didn't show any significant difference. It indicates that the filial play program joined by fathers is effective in reducing their young children's excessive immersion in internet games.
Given the study results above, it is indicated that the filial play therapy program joined by fathers is positively effective in improving their young children's self-esteem and peer relationship and reducing the excessive immersion in internet games, and that it is possible for the filial play therapy to be used as an effective therapy tool.