This book examines the role of peer relationships in child and adolescent development by tracking research findings from the early 1900s to the present. Dividing the research into three generations, the book describes what has been learned about children's peer relations and how children's participation in peer relationships contributes to their health, adjustment, and achievement. Gary W. Ladd reviews and interprets the investigative focus and findings of distinct research eras to highlight theoretical or empirical breakthroughs in the study of children's peer relations and social competence over the last century. He also discusses how this information is relevant to understanding and promoting children's health and development. In a final chapter, the author appraises the major discoveries that have emerged during the three research generations and analyzes recent scientific agendas and discoveries in the peer relations discipline.
How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.
Amy Rubin, the seven-year-old daughter of one of this volume's editors, was discussing with her close friend Kristin,. her teacher's practice of distributing stickers to her classmates for completing their seat work. As the conversation continued, Joshua, Amy's two-year-old brother (al though Amy would argue that he more often resembles an albatross around her neck) sauntered up to the older children. He flashed a broad smile, hugged his sister, and then grabbed her book of stickers. Corey Ross, the nine-year-old son of the other editor was trying to plan a tobogganing party with his friend Claire. The problem facing Corey and Claire was that there were too few toboggans to go around for their grade four classmates. Jordan, Corey's younger brother had agreed to lend his toboggan. However, Harriet, Claire's younger sister and Jordan's close friend had resisted all persuasive attempts to borrow her toboggan. The older children decided that the best strategy was to use Jordan's friendship with Harriet and his good example of sibling generosity in presenting thejr case to Harriet. Both of these anecdotes exemplify what this volume on peer relation ships and social skills is about. Children have friends with whom they discuss issues of perceived social significance. During the early elemen tary school years, rather sophisticated conversations and debates con cerning topics of reward distribution, altruism, person perception, social status, sibling relations, and cooperation can be overheard (especially by eavesdropping parents who have professional interests in such matters).
This comprehensive, authoritative handbook covers the breadth of theories, methods, and empirically based findings on the ways in which children and adolescents contribute to one another's development. Leading researchers review what is known about the dynamics of peer interactions and relationships from infancy through adolescence. Topics include methods of assessing friendship and peer networks; early romantic relationships; individual differences and contextual factors in children's social and emotional competencies and behaviors; group dynamics; and the impact of peer relations on achievement, social adaptation, and mental health. Salient issues in intervention and prevention are also addressed.
Willard W. Hartup This volume amounts to an anniversary collection: It was 50 years ago that Lois Jack (1934) published the findings from what most investigators consider to be the first intervention study in this area. The experiment (later replicated and extended by Marjorie Page, 1936, and Gertrude Chittenden, 1942) concerned ascendant behavior in preschool children, which was defined to include: (a) The pursuit of one's own purposes against interference and (b) directing the behavior of others. Individual differences in ascendance were assumed to have some stability across time and, hence, to be important in personality development. But ascendance variations were also viewed as a function of the immediate situation. Among the conditions assumed to determine ascendance were "the individual's status in the group as expressed in others' attitudes toward him, his conception of these attitudes, and his previously formed social habits" (Jack, 1934, p. 10). Dr. Jack's main interest was to show that nonascendant children, identified on the basis of observations in the laboratory with another child, were different from their more ascendant companions in one important respect: They lacked self confidence. And, having demonstrated that, Dr. Jack devised a procedure for teaching the knowledge and skill to nonascendant children that the play materials required. She guessed, correctly, that this training would bring about an increase in the ascendance scores of these children.
This book explores the impact of acquired brain injury and developmental disabilities on children's emerging social skills. The editors present an innovative framework for understanding how brain processes interact with social development in both typically developing children and clinical populations. Anderson, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.
Originally published in 1992, this volume provided an up-to-date overview of recent research concerning the links between family and peer systems. Considerable work in the past had focused on family issues or peer relationships, but these systems had typically been considered separately. This volume bridges the gap across these two important socialization contexts and provides insights into the processes that account for the links across the systems – the ways in which the relationships between these systems shift across development. In addition, the variations in the links between family and peers are illustrated by cross-cultural work, studies of abused children, and research on the impact of maternal depression. In short, the volume provides not only a convenient overview of recent progress at the time but lays out an agenda for future research.
The Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children is the essential reference on research on early childhood education throughout the world. This singular resource provides a comprehensive overview of important contemporary issues as well as the information necessary to make informed judgments about these issues. The field has changed significantly since the publication of the second edition, and this third edition of the handbook takes care to address the entirety of vital new developments. A valuable tool for all those who work and study in the field of early childhood education, this volume addresses critical, cutting edge research on child development, curriculum, policy, and research and evaluation strategies. With a multitude of new and updated chapters, The Handbook of Research on the Education of Young Children, 3rd Edition makes the expanding knowledge base related to early childhood education readily available and accessible.
A psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues joins forces with a physician and bestselling author to tackle one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time -- peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident -- as do the solutions. Hold On to Your Kids will restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. The concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth. Something has changed. One can sense it, one can feel it, just not find the words for it. Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They seem less likely to take their cues from adults, less inclined to please those in charge, less afraid of getting into trouble. Parenting, too, seems to have changed. Our parents seemed more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on us, for better or for worse. For many, parenting does not feel natural. Adults through the ages have complained about children being less respectful of their elders and more difficult to manage than preceding generations, but could it be that this time it is for real? -- from Hold On to Your Kids
