Questions that challenge the curriculum can put educators on the defensive. Lauren Porosoff discusses helpful ways that educators can be proactive about creating productive and meaningful conversations with parents and community members about curriculum choices and the reasons behind them.

Children and adolescents who experience parental incarceration are faced with significant challenges. Additionally, parental incarceration disproportionally affects African American families and families in urban settings. Due to institutional, economic, and social barriers, access to community mental health services for these affected children…

In recent years, the concept of post-adoption depression--with both parallels and differences from postpartum depression--has emerged as a salient descriptor of the experience of a significant minority of newly adoptive parents. This article offers a clinical perspective on post-adoption depression through the stories of several families seen in…

When parents make an unintentional mistake that harms their child, the associated guilt and grief can be overwhelming and difficult to treat. The parents described in this article unknowingly created a medical emergency when they added water to their child's formula, thinking it would help her constipation. The baby survived the trauma--but with…

Working with children and adolescents in the foster care system whose biological parents' parental rights have been, or are soon to be, terminated can present numerous challenges for counselors. Children in these situations often struggle with identification of conflicting feelings, grief resulting from the absence of the parent/parents, and…

Pamela High, MS, MD, co-director of the Infant Behavior, Cry and Sleep Clinic at the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, discusses the phenomena of infant crying and the impact it has on families. In most cases, infant crying will peak and resolve in the early months, but infant irritability can increase the risk of maternal…

When a beloved school closes, community emotions run high. De Witt and Moccia, administrators in the Averill Park School District in upstate New York, describe how their district navigated through parents' anger and practical matters in closing a small neighborhood elementary school and transferring all its students to another school. With a group…

Objective: To describe a clinical approach to the recognition of overt and latent concerns of parents and children when children are evaluated for suspected sexual abuse by medical examiners. Method: Description of a clinical approach. Results: We describe 10 concerns-six of parents: (1) should we believe our child?; (2) worries about the child's…

This essay traverses back and forth across the institutionally-imposed boundary between storytelling and critical reflection to explore how the author's thinking about feminist pedagogical praxis has been irrevocably altered by the experience of losing a parent as well as facilitating mutual support groups for young adults whose parents or…

Many parents are concerned with helping their children prepare for the transition to kindergarten. For some children, the anxiety of entering kindergarten is matched by the anxiety of leaving the surroundings in which they have been nurtured and cared for, especially if it is a situation that has been a consistent one for the child over a long…

Stacy Kane Greenzeig knows that being the parent of a child with special needs is a difficult, time consuming, emotionally draining, and a selfless job. As the mother of a son with disabilities, she has faced the challenges first hand and learned quickly that researching treatments, visiting doctors' offices, and working to help her child in any…

A developmentally oriented bio-neuropsychosocial model is introduced to explain the variation in family functioning and psychosocial adjustment in youth and young adults with spina bifida (SB). Research on the family functioning and psychosocial adjustment of individuals with SB is reviewed. The findings of past research on families of youth with…

When it comes to making the right choices for children with disabilities, families are the experts. To prove this point, the Hatton Project sponsored a grant wherein researchers interviewed members of 12 families of children with disabilities on factors that caused them to identify themselves as "successful." The results yielded eight lessons…

Evidence linking alcohol and other drug abuse with child maltreatment, particularly neglect, is strong. But does substance abuse cause maltreatment? According to Mark Testa and Brenda Smith, such co-occurring risk factors as parental depression, social isolation, homelessness, or domestic violence may be more directly responsible than substance…

A hypothesis, based on concepts of narcissism and perversion, is presented of the mental functioning of the physically and sexually abusive parent. The concept also gives insight into the structuring of the personality of the child-victim, who undergoes the risk of himself becoming a physically and/or sexually abusive parent. (DB)