Infants attend daycare at an early age, which raises questions about children's sensitivity to the childcare environment and the role of different temperamental traits in their development in the early years. In a two-year longitudinal study with parent- and caregiver-reported data for Dutch children at the age of 1 and 2 years (120 children from…

Purpose: Behavior and temperament (e.g., emotional reactivity, self-regulation) have been considered relevant to stuttering and its developmental course, but the direction of this relation is still unknown. Knowledge of behavior difficulties and temperament in childhood stuttering can improve screening and intervention. The current study examined…

This study explores the cultural construction of "difficult" temperament in the first 2 years of life, as well as the logistical and thematic continuity across infancy and childhood in what mothers perceive as difficult. It extends earlier work regarding older children in six cultural sites: Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden,…

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be…

A successful transition from kindergarten to 1st grade requires a positive combination of multiple dimensions of child competence. Using latent class analysis, we simultaneously examined the academic skills, work attitude, and social/behavioral competence of a large sample of Dutch kindergarten children to identify profiles of kindergarten…

This study investigated interactions between observed temperamental effortful control and observed parenting in the prediction of externalizing problems. Child gender effects on these relations were examined. The relations were examined concurrently when the child was 3 years old and longitudinally at 4.5 years. The sample included 89 two-parent…

The authors of the present study addressed the measurement of temperament by examining the convergence between observational and questionnaire measures and the occurrence of contrast effects in parental ratings of nontwin siblings on the Children's Behavior Questionnaire. Fathers', mothers', and observers' ratings of 94 early-school-age sibling…

This longitudinal study examined consistency and change in human personality. Rather than studying the consistency of individual differences over time, an approach which considers only the stability of a variable at the group level and ignores differences in stability at an individual level, this study used a person-centered approach to study…

This study explores parental ethnotheories of children's temperament through mothers' responses to McDevitt and Carey's Behavioral Style Questionnaire (1978) for 299 children aged 3 to 8 years and interviews with their parents, in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We first established a standardized,…

A review of studies on identity status and of a study involving 2,557 Dutch adolescents who completed the Utrecht-Groningen Identity Development Scale (W. Meeus, 1993) supports a refinement of the identity status model that shows progressive developmental trends and indicates that the difference between high and low statuses increases with age.…

While there is ample evidence that enemies and enemy images are prerequisites in preparedness for war, little information is available about children's understanding of enemies or the presence of enemy images. Based on a pilot study in which assessment instruments were developed and validated, the present study examined the understanding of…

The authors examined aspects of reliability and validity of the Goode-nough-Harris Draw-A-Person Test (DAP; D. B. Harris, 1963). The participants were 115 seven- to nine-year-old students attending regular or special education schools. Three judges, with a modest degree of training similar to that found among practicing clinicians, rated the…

This lesson book presents the curriculum of the Rock and Water program, which aims to assist boys in their development to adulthood by emphasizing the importance of being conscious of their own power and responsibility within society. The program focuses on the process of growth to adulthood via five steps: (1) self defense; (2) standing up for…