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Abstract
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Play is an essential context for developing children’s social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Traditional group games provide opportunities for cooperation, communication, and learning social norms while preserving cultural identity. Bentengan, a traditional team-based game involving strategy and coordination, encourages teamwork and mutual understanding among children. Parental participation can further enhance these benefits by offering emotional support, modeling positive behavior, and strengthening parent–child bonds. However, limited research has examined how parental involvement in traditional games influences children’s social development. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of parental participation in the Bentengan game on the social development of 7-year-old elementary school children.
Paired t-test results showed a significant improvement in social skills scores in both groups after the intervention (p < 0.05). However, the experimental group (with parental participation) showed a greater mean increase (ؤM = 6.10) compared to the control group (ؤM = 3.85), indicating stronger within-group effects. ANCOVA results revealed that while pretest scores had a significant influence on posttest outcomes (F = 203.163, p = 0.001, ç² = 0.88), there was no significant difference between the groups (F = 0.205, p = 0.645). Thus, parental participation showed no statistically significant advantage over child-only play in improving social skills.
This study used a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design with a control group. Thirty 7-year-old elementary school children were randomly assigned to two groups: an experimental group (with parental participation) and a control group (without parental participation), each consisting of 15 participants. The intervention included 12 sessions of the Bentengan game (three sessions per week, each lasting 45 minutes). In the experimental group, parents actively participated in the game alongside their children,
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