Mother Support in Cognitive Development for Pre-School Children: A Phenomenology Study

摘要

Mother is the main pillar in supporting cognitive development particularly in pre-school children. There are many activities that can be held to stimulate cognitive development, one of which is play activity. The aim of this research is to reveal, understand and describe mother role for cognitive development in pre-school children by employing play activities. This research was indicated as a phenomenology study in which qualitative approach was implemented. In order to select the research subjects, purposive sampling was employed. The main criterion proposed by researchers in preferring the subjects is housewives whose children are in between 4 to 6.5 years old. In this research, there are 3 pairs of mother-child. In data collection, researchers applied tri-angulation method consisted of interview, observation and family coding system. The results have shown that mother-child interaction, chiefly in play activities, can be able to stimulate the cognitive development in 5 types of knowledge. These 5 types are language, geometric object, colour, function of objects and procedures or role of playing. In language, children have new vocabularies (wire fence, stick fire, Sub marine). In geometric object, children know how to classify object based on the ordered objects (fighter plane, wire fence, thorny fence). Still, Children are also able to differentiate many kinds of colour. Then, Children know the function and the procedure to operate the objects. The indicator of the result is based on the frequency of mothers in providing information (I) around the game of 60.50%, leading (M) of 30.43%, Initiation Order (PR) of 8.69%. Subsequently, the children respond by Patience (P) 64,85%, obedient with giving recommendation (PU) equal to 10,89%, and neglect response equal to (A) 9.4% both in verbal and non-verbal response.