Parent predictors of the home math environment and associations with toddlers’ math skills

Abstract

Mounting evidence suggests that home engagement in mathematics is related to variability in early math skill. Although prior work has investigated parental predictors of home math engagement more broadly, it remains understudied whether the same factors relate to toddlers’ home math environment, and if home math experiences are associated with toddlers’ math skills. Here we asked whether parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and experiences with math relate to their engagement in home numeracy and spatial activities with toddlers and are associated with toddlers’ developing number and spatial skills (N = 189). We find that a broad range of parent factors, including parents’ beliefs about the importance of math, math growth mindset beliefs, math anxiety, and math coursework, predicts parents’ frequency of engaging in numeracy activities with toddlers. Furthermore, home number activities predicted toddlers’ number skills. Parents’ math beliefs, attitudes, and experiences all had positive indirect effects on toddlers’ number skills through associations with number activities. However, none of these parent factors predicted home spatial activities, and we saw no association between home spatial activities and toddlers’ spatial skills. Altogether, these results suggest that even at very young ages, parent factors shape the home environment and toddlers’ early numeracy learning, but we did not detect associations for spatial skills.