Raising or caring for young children is a demanding job. Parents and other caregivers often struggle when children demonstrate challenging behavior. This article provides guiding principles and specific strategies that professionals and parents can use to gain insight into children's behavior and make positive changes in their daily interactions.

Children who are adopted at an older age through foster care and those adopted from overseas orphanages are at high risk for behavioral and emotional distress. This important manual presents a structured, evidence-based protocol for providing mental health treatment to families adopting vulnerable children. Drawing on their extensive clinical…

Mental health therapists use strategies such as rupture and repair, unconditional positive regard, and managing countertransference to help their clients achieve therapeutic goals. These tools work across disciplines. Teaching parents to use therapeutic techniques increases opportunities to enhance their child's development and builds compliance…

Parents of children newly diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders are a high-need population for whom skills-based parenting interventions likely help. Diagnostic centers are compelling locations to deliver parenting interventions because families are served in an accessible location and at a time they receive overwhelming treatment…

The "Parenting Stress Index, Fourth Edition" (PSI-4) is a 120-item measure used to explore parental stress levels considering a parent's relationship with one of his or her children between the ages of 1 month and 12 years. The main purpose of the test is to define these stress levels and from where they originate in order to identify…

Positive, healthy and happy families are the cornerstone of any healthy community. Parenting programs which address multiple aspects of family functioning are potentially the most effective means of creating positive family environments. However, the various constituents who "consume" parenting support and intervention often are not…

People are born with certain temperament traits. Some children are easy going and easy to get along with. Some are not. This article describes the temperament traits of the strong-willed child. The strong-willed is viewed as stubborn to parents and teachers. The child's goal is to always be in control of his own behaviors, regardless of the needs…

When parents get together, the subject of appropriately addressing the behavior of their children often comes to the forefront of conversations. Parents share various challenges they face with their children, including issues associated with listening, eating vegetables, doing chores, and a host of other discipline-related situations. The plethora…

The impacts of violence for young children and their caregivers are multidimensional. The story of 2-year-old Tyronne, his mother, Josephine, and his father, James, illustrates the use of a relationship-focused treatment, child-parent psychotherapy (CPP), in addressing the traumatic consequences of exposure to violence. This family's story…

The long awaited blessings of having a child bring simultaneous bouts of confusion and uncertainty regarding the vast parenting responsibilities that come with raising that child. When the child has a disability, sometimes the tasks can seem especially daunting. In this article, the authors aim to guide parents of children who display challenging…

The early childhood provider, because of the consistent contact over time with infants, toddlers, and their families, is well positioned to observe the nuances of the early caregiving relationship; monitor early child behavior and development; identify deviances; and offer support, guidance, and intervention when families struggle. This…

Sleep behavior disorders do not only affect infants' well-being, they also challenge the parents' physical and emotional resources, promote risks for the growing parent-infant relationships, and burden the parents' co-parenting relationship. Sleep-onset and night waking problems are widely spread among otherwise healthy infants, and they tend to…

Parents of children with developmental disabilities, particularly autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), are at risk for high levels of distress. The factors contributing to this are unclear. This study investigated how child characteristics influence maternal parenting stress and psychological distress. Participants consisted of mothers and…

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…

Single parenthood as a common psychosocial phenomenon seems to be regarded as one of the most significant issues in the psychological domain and needs to be taken into serious consideration due to emotional, psychological, and social problems created by it. With regard to the rapidly growing population of single parents and their children…