By the Ages


Book Description

BY THE AGES presents basic knowledge of age-appropriate developmental expectations and the learning experiences that can be offered at each stage of development. Both authors are experienced in teaching and child-care issues and have authored professional references and textbooks on the topic of child development.




Behavioral Challenges in Children with Autism and Other Special Needs: The Developmental Approach


Book Description

Attune, help, and recover: a structured developmental approach to behavioral challenges in children with disabilities. This book offers a comprehensive view of behavioral challenges for a child with autism or other special needs from a developmental perspective based on the DIRFloortime® framework. Parents and professionals are guided to understand and improve a child’s behavior while also supporting underlying developmental capacities for shared attention, warm engagement, trust, initiative, creative shared problem solving, symbolic and logical thinking, and the development of personal values. The approach is presented in three parts. Step-by-step, clinicians, caretakers, and educators will learn how to use the developmental approach to: 1. Understand the many variables involved in the behavior of a child with special needs, 2. Effectively respond to a challenging behavior in the moment with three key steps: attune, help, and recover 3. Create a long-term plan to support developmental and behavioral progress. When a child with a disability has a behavioral challenge, a clinician is confronted with the complexities of the child’s developmental strengths and vulnerabilities, individual differences, and his or her unique pattern of interactions in personal relationships. Keeping all the variables in mind, the developmental approach provides a plan that supports a child’s growth and deepens his or her capacity for perspective and care for others. The framework is based on universal developmental principles, which are effective regardless of the child’s particular age or disability. By recognizing a child’s developmental level of functioning, an adult can select strategies to effectively guide the child toward higher levels of relating, thinking and communicating. Through the process of compassionate attunement, and building on a child’s strengths, adults can optimistically chart a clear path to long-term success. A refreshing alternative to rewards-and consequences-based models of behavior management, the methods and practices in this book will empower any adult who interacts with a child with special needs, whether their work is directly focused on improving behavior, or because they must provide support so that the child can participate in other endeavors.




Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.




Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8


Book Description

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.




An Open Book: What and How Young Children Learn From Picture and Story Books


Book Description

Looking at and listening to picture and story books is a ubiquitous activity, frequently enjoyed by many young children and their parents. Well before children can read for themselves they are able to learn from books. Looking at and listening to books increases children’s general knowledge, understanding about the world and promotes language acquisition. This collection of papers demonstrates the breadth of information pre-reading children learn from books and increases our understanding of the social and cognitive mechanisms that support this learning. Our hope is that this Research Topic/eBook will be useful for researchers as well as educational practitioners and parents who are interested in optimizing children’s learning.







Mindful Parenting for ADHD


Book Description

Written by a pediatrician and based in proven-effective mindfulness techniques, this book will help you and your child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) keep calm, flexible, and in control. If you are a parent of a child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), you probably face many unique daily challenges. Kids with ADHD are often inattentive, hyperactive, and impulsive, since ADHD affects all of self-management and self-regulation. As a result, you might become chronically frustrated or stressed out, which makes caring for ADHD that much harder. In this book, a developmental pediatrician presents a proven-effective program for helping both you and your child with ADHD stay cool and collected while remaining flexible, resilient, and mindful. Bertin addresses the various symptoms of ADHD using non-technical language and a user-friendly format. In addition, he offers guidelines to help you assess your child's strengths and weaknesses, create plans for building skills and managing specific challenges, lower stress levels for both yourself and your child, communicate effectively, and cultivate balance and harmony at home and at school. If you are a parent, caregiver, or mental health professional, this book provides a valuable guide.




The Silenced Child


Book Description

Are children and adolescents being silenced and their growth stunted in the age of quick diagnoses and overmedication? In The Silenced Child, Dr. Claudia Gold shows the tremendous power of listening in parent/child and doctor/patient relationships. Through vivid stories, perceptive insights, and new research, she shows the way children grow from these relationships and how being heard actually changes their brains. She helps both parents and caregivers make the time and space for listening. Praise for Keeping Your Child in Mind: "A very useful, thoughtful book. It lays out the best thinking of our time to help parents make decisions about nurturing their child's development." -- T. Berry Brazelton, MD, professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus Harvard Medical School




Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Early Childhood


Book Description

Research is increasingly showing the effects of family, school, and culture on the social, emotional and personality development of children. Much of this research concentrates on grade school and above, but the most profound effects may occur much earlier, in the 0-3 age range. This volume consists of focused articles from the authoritative Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development that specifically address this topic and collates research in this area in a way that isn't readily available in the existent literature, covering such areas as adoption, attachment, birth order, effects of day care, discipline and compliance, divorce, emotion regulation, family influences, preschool, routines, separation anxiety, shyness, socialization, effects of television, etc. This one volume reference provides an essential, affordable reference for researchers, graduate students and clinicians interested in social psychology and personality, as well as those involved with cultural psychology and developmental psychology. - Presents literature on influences of families, school, and culture in one source saving users time searching for relevant related topics in multiple places and literatures in order to fully understand any one area - Focused content on age 0-3- save time searching for and wading through lit on full age range for developmentally relevant info - Concise, understandable, and authoritative for immediate applicability in research




The Roots of Prosocial Behavior in Children


Book Description

What kinds of childbearing practices foster the development of helping, sharing, and other prosocial behaviours? What roles do biology and culture play in the development of prosocial behaviour? In this book, Nancy Eisenberg and Paul Mussen review and summarize scholarly research that has been devoted to the development of prosocial behaviour in children, and examine the variety of influences that contribute to children's prosocial development, including the media, parents, peers, biology, culture, personal characteristics, as well as situational determinants. The authors argue that prosocial behaviour can be learned and is modifiable, and they suggest ways that parents, teachers, and other can enhance prosocial development. In addition, the authors attempt to communicate the advances in the study of prosocial development that have taken place over the last decade. The book highlights some questions that have not yet been addressed adequately by researchers, and suggests areas for future work.