Conflicts between children, a universal phenomenon across cultures, present unique opportunities for developing executive function (EF) skills, such as problem solving and exercising self-regulation. EF, primarily associated with a set of cognitive skills or processes that includes planning, organizing, and regulating behavior, plays an integral…

The author, a psychology instructor at an American university, describes the internationalization of his course in Human Growth and Development. The author argues that human development cannot be easily summarized by nature (i.e., biological and evolutionary predisposition) or nurture (i.e., learning through environment and experience).…

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…

Relationships play an important role in human development, especially in the first years of life. "Bridging the Relationship Gap" provides tools and encouragement to be the strong, positive, and nurturing adult these children need in order to thrive. Learn more about the factors that contribute to the achievement and relationship gap…

One of the most important things that a parent does for a child is determine the culture into which that child is born. This article addresses parenting, culture, and the intersection of the two. The study of parenting in culture is one of similarities and differences in parental cognitions and practices and their meaning. The author provides…

Culture has an important impact on attachment. This commentary highlights three aspects about culture and attachment in middle childhood: (1) the need to have a more sophisticated consideration of the implication of cultural values, (2) the need to incorporate the role of societal or political ecological contexts, and (3) the need to solve the…

Becoming a mother in a foreign land can be challenging and demanding for immigrant women and their families, and also for the professionals who support these families. In addition to the typical demands associated with raising a newborn, mothers who are immigrants confront other issues that professionals must keep in mind: a unique understanding…

This catalog provides short descriptions of major Division of Child and Family Development (DCFD) projects from Fiscal Year 2014. Multiple projects are described in the areas of child care, Head Start/Early Head Start, child welfare promotion, and the recognition of cultural diversity. An additional section features projects that fall into more…

To become cooperative members of their cultural groups, developing children must follow their group's social norms. But young children are not just blind norm followers, they are also active norm enforcers, for example, protesting and correcting when someone plays a conventional game the "wrong" way. In two studies, we asked whether young children…

In this article we argue that current theories on socioemotional development during infancy need to be reconceptualized in order to account for cross-cultural variation in caregiver-infant interaction. In line with the cultural-historical internalization theory of emotional development (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006) and the ecocultural model of…

Young children's feeding issues can be a complex challenge for early childhood professionals, especially since most get little to no training addressing this key developmental area. Now there's a single comprehensive resource that provides early childhood educators and interventionists with specific, practical, research-based guidance on resolving…

Children adopted from foreign countries, especially those who were in an orphanage, may experience greater difficulties than culturally or linguistically diverse children who do not come from such a background. Delays in learning language and, consequently, slower cognitive and social development, can undermine the academic success of these…

As more states have become engaged in kindergarten assessment efforts, early childhood educators and assessment experts have recommended developing such efforts within a coordinated assessment system that provides data about children's progress over time, (pre-k through grade 12), and is designed to address both educational policy and practice…

Early childhood educators work with children and families from a range of diverse backgrounds. As society becomes increasingly multiracial, multilingual, and multicultural, so too grows the need for educators' abilities to support children's development by instilling in them the tools they need to live together respectfully and stand up to…

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped…