PERSISTENCE IN YOUNG CHILDREN CAN BE ENHANCED BY CAREGIVERS WHO HAVE A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHILD. SENSITIVE AND RESPONSIVE CAREGIVERS CAN PROMOTE PERSISTENCE BY CREATING PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS THAT SUPPORT CHILDREN'S ENGAGEMENT WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT. VERBAL ENCOURAGEMENT IS ALSO HELPFUL. CAREGIVERS FROM DIFFICULT ECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS WHO ENCOURAGE INFANTS' EXPLORATION AND LEARNING IN RESPONSIVE WAYS, AND HELP THEM BUILD TASK PERSISTENCE, MAY HELP BUFFER THE DELETERIOUS EFFECTS OF POVERTY ON CHILDREN.

Children can persist in exploring when they have secure relationships with their caregivers, and can return to their caregivers for comfort and support when they face challenges.

Warmer parenting styles, where parents are responsive to their children, and support and accept them, are correlated with greater persistence and attention in young children when carrying out tasks, also known as task orientation.

A British study of 125 pairs of identical and same-sex fraternal twins, aged three years six months to three years and nine months, found that in early childhood, task orientation and the acquisition and performance of cognitive skills were similar when the children were in shared environments. Children in families who had more education and resources tended to show greater task orientation and cognitive skills. However, task orientation and cognitive skills were even higher where parenting styles were warmer and more responsive to the children's needs.

This also suggests that since bonding and parenting styles take time to develop, developing these parenting relationships in the child's earlier years would be beneficial.

The quality of home environments in infancy also have a significant impact on toddlers' mastery motivation, which refers to the intrinsic drive to master one's environment. Mastery processes involve the development of persistence and curiosity about objects and materials. A Taiwanese study of 102 typically developing two- to three-year-olds concluded that mastery motivation is a stable trait by the time the children are two to three years old but is affected by a child's home environment in the very early years.

Findings from an ethnically diverse sample of Head Start families within the USA also showed that parent coercion, encouragement of learning, and parent-rated mastery motivation predicted school readiness a year later. When parents create an environment that encourages exploration, and the opportunity structure for children to benefit from exploratory behaviour, mastery motivation and school readiness are enhanced.

Parental language and encouragement are important predictors of infants' early persistence. A study suggested that parental use of process praise and persistence-focused language predicted infants' persistence during a task in which they interacted dynamically with their parent.

Researchers found that infants whose parents spent more time praising their efforts and hard work (process praise), and used more persistence-focused language in general, were more persistent than infants whose parents used this language less often. Parental use of process praise predicted infants' persistence even in the absence of parental support. Critically, these findings could not be explained by caregivers' reporting on their own persistence. Together, these findings suggest that as early as 18 months, linguistic input is a key predictor of persistence.

Studies of preschool children have found that playful and play-based pedagogy in early childhood education, and teacher modelling of motivationally beneficial forms of private speech lead to greater persistence and motivation in young children. Persistence correlated positively with playful private speech, where children model positive talk to themselves in playful environments.

This suggests that adults who encourage children at a young age to persist in tasks while playing with them can help the children develop self-motivating private speech when they are older.

Other studies have shown that sensitive and responsive maternal teaching is another path to enhanced cognitive development. This is both because responsive teaching may support infants' persistence while also promoting other learning types. Studies of mothers raising children in difficult economic circumstances discovered that those who encourage their infants' exploration and learning in responsive ways, even in the context of economic stress, may buffer the deleterious effects of poverty on the child, especially when they were able to build persistence when learning.

Research also reveals links between mother-child interactions and infants' persistence.

Just as mothers influence infant behaviours and performance, infants influence their mothers' interactions by providing cues about their emotional states, interests and needs. As such, infants are "active partners" who contribute to their own development by influencing others.

A study carried out among 65 mother-infant dyads examined the relative contributions of infants' persistence and mothers' teaching at 6 and 14 months to infants' cognitive development at 14 months. Researchers assessed infants' persistence at six months and 14 months. It was found that persistence was a stable trait, already evident in infancy. Infants' persistence at both ages and mothers' teaching at six months explained unique variance in infants' cognitive status at 14 months.

The study found that mothers who provide access to stimulating objects, are sensitive and responsive to children's emotions, and support children's behaviours just above their current level may foster both persistent behaviour and advanced cognitive development in the future.

Since infant's persistence also affected how mothers interacted with and taught their infants, it was concluded that both infants' early persistence and mothers' teaching are direct pathways to the cognitive status of the infant at the start of the second year.

A young child's level of persistence can be improved with social and environmental facilitation. Environments that foster choice, independence, and appropriate levels of challenge can enhance children's motivation, which in turn can improve their persistence.

Structured activities can be used to promote learning-related skills such as persistence and motivation among children. A study of 44 children between the ages of two to three years in early childhood classes in East Malaysia found that a programme, called ''I Can Read", helped enhance persistence on some mastery tasks, such as puzzles, and mastery pleasure after 15 weeks. However, the effect was not evident in children's mastery of shape-sorters, which are cause-and-effect toys. The programme involved exposing children to tasks involving mastery motivation and persistence, including object-oriented persistence, gross motor persistence, social persistence with adults, and social persistence with children.

This suggests that systematic efforts to enhance children's task persistence can be successful. Young children can be encouraged to be more persistent if we provide the appropriate environment and activities.

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13. Hashmi, S., Chua B.S., Halik, M., & Halik, H. (2017). Enhancing Persistence on Mastery Tasks Among Young Preschool Children by Implementing the "I Can" Mastery Motivation Classroom Programme. Hungarian Educational Research Journal, 7(2), 127-141.

Children often show signals when they are ready to advance in certain areas through their play. Vygotsky recommends that adults observe and provide guidance within play that builds on children's unique stages of development.

Caregivers of toddlers can support their learning by watching for signs of engagement in toddlers as they provide authentic opportunities for scaffolding and supporting their persistence in the learning process. Research continues to support a child-specific approach in which caregivers can scaffold by modelling play and using toys in symbolic ways that provide context and meaning for children.

An important part of scaffolding is identifying opportune moments during child-initiated play to extend and support the child's learning. Here are some examples that indicate children's engagement in learning experiences, and supportive caregiver responses that can help persistence leading to learning:

i) Sustained attention, focus and widening eyes, facial expressions which indicate intense interest in a specific object or task. A caregiver can share this experience by mimicking the child's play or providing related objects and experiences that build on the child's interest.

ii) Repetition and persistence within the same task may indicate curiosity or that a child is experiencing a slight challenge but is working hard to develop mastery of the task. A caregiver can support this effort by nodding, smiling, and verbally affirming the child's specific efforts in a descriptive manner that the child understands. Children may sometimes want to do the same thing repeatedly. Caregivers who can support this may help the child develop persistence and mastery.

iii) Drawing attention to their work/accomplishments. When a child is proud of an accomplishment, she often solicits a response from a trusting adult. A teacher may say something like, "You worked really hard to make a bigger stack of blocks!" to highlight how the child's efforts and dedication to the task resulted in success.