Pre-bedtime Story Intervention And Mental Health Of Rural Boarding Children

Since the fortieth anniversary of reform and opening up,the welfare of children in China has been developing continuously.Combining with the national policies on basic education reform and rural revitalization,a large number of boarding schools have emerged in rural areas in order to solve the two major problems of rural poor children,which are neglected by their parents when they go out to work and the long distance for their students to go to school.However,the current rural boarding schools in China are not perfect in terms of hardware facilities,management system and teachers,and most of the boarding students are left-behind children,lack of parental care and companionship in daily life,and the mental health level of rural boarding children is low.Based on the baseline survey data of 135 rural boarding schools in five poverty-stricken counties of Sichuan Province and Hebei Province in 2015 and the follow-up survey data in 2017 after random intervention,this paper establishes OLS regression model to empirically test the effects of three intervention modes on the mental health of rural boarding children: playing bedtime stories,distributing books,and both playing bedtime stories and distributing books.The results show that the intervention methods of playing bedtime stories and distributing books can improve the mental health level of rural boarding children.Among them,bedtime story intervention significantly reduced the depression level of rural boarding children,and significantly improved the self-esteem and resilience of rural boarding children.Book intervention significantly reduced the depression level of rural boarding children,but had no significant effect on self-esteem and resilience.Further studies have found that there are gender differences in the impact of various interventions on children's mental health,and the effect is more obvious for left-behind children.This conclusion provides a feasible method for promoting the mental health development of rural boarding children,and provides a reference for improving the education policy and health security mechanism of rural boarding children.In the future,we can target the disadvantaged groups of poor and boarding children,develop more effective knowledge products for their growth needs and emotional needs,and make more children grow healthily with the joint efforts of family,school and government.