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.

First Published in 1999. This is Volume of thirty-two in the Developmental Psychology series. Written in 1937, the object of this volume of essays is to provide insight into problems presented by the mental growth of children from five years of age to the close of adolescence. It is also hoped that guidance will be obtained in steering children through the difficulties encountered in these years when school life begins and presents to the child special stresses.

The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.

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.

Fears, feeding, and sleep problems, croup and tantrums, stomachaches, asthma: these are some of the problems that every parent worries about at one time or another. According to Dr. Brazelton, most of these are a normal part of growing up. Only if parents add their own anxieties to the child's natural drive toward master will these "normal problems" become laden with guilt and tension and deepen into chronic issues. If parents can learn to listen, to hear the stress that may lie behind psychosomatic complaints, they can not only remove some of the excess pressures, but also help their children toward self-understanding.

More children born today will survive to adulthood than at any time in history. It is now time to emphasize health and development in middle childhood and adolescence--developmental phases that are critical to health in adulthood and the next generation. Child and Adolescent Health and Development explores the benefits that accrue from sustained and targeted interventions across the first two decades of life. The volume outlines the investment case for effective, costed, and scalable interventions for low-resource settings, emphasizing the cross-sectoral role of education. This evidence base can guide policy makers in prioritizing actions to promote survival, health, cognition, and physical growth throughout childhood and adolescence.

Resilience is a much-talked-about topic these days. The view that resilience is an important aspect of mental well-being has been gaining attention among health professionals and researchers. Tatyana Barankin and Nazilla Khanlou draw from the latest research and theoretical developments on resilience in children and youth and present it in a way that is relevant for a diverse audience, including parents, educators, health care providers, daycare workers, coaches, social service providers, policy makers and others. Among the unique contributions of this book is that the authors consider the development of resilience at three levels. Growing Up Resilient explores the individual, family and environmental risk and protective factors that affect young people's resilience: individual factors: temperament, learning strengths, feelings and emotions, self-concept, ways of thinking, adaptive skills, social skills and physical health family factors: attachment, communication, family structure, parent relations, parenting style, sibling relations, parents' health and support outside the family environmental factors: inclusion (gender, culture), social conditions (socio-economic situation, media influences), access (education, health) and involvement. Tips on how to build resilience in children and youth follow each section. The ability for children and youth to bounce back from today's stresses is one of the best life skills they can develop. Growing Up Resilient is a must-read for adults who want to increase resilience in the children and youth in their lives.