A right to development is one of the basic principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Several articles are specifically about protecting and promoting children's development, and other articles refer to developmental concepts of maturity and evolving capacity. Realizing young children's right to development is informed by numerous…

Young children below school-age, especially those under three, have gotten more and more attention paid to them during the last years. Is it for good or for bad? Extreme and consequential views and actions towards (especially) the youngest children may result in problems--for the children. This essay presents a discussion about different ways to…

Children at risk for familial dyslexia (n = 107) and their controls (n = 93) have been followed from birth to school entry in the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) on developmental factors linked to reading and dyslexia. At the point of school entry, the majority of the at-risk children displayed decoding ability that fell at least 1…

Continuity of Care Between Home and School is highly valued in early childhood education. Good teachers consider working closely with families of young children an integral part of their job. When teachers and families develop partnerships, children's learning is enhanced. The intimate contact between teachers and families calls for teachers to…

One of the central concepts in Vygotsky's theory of child development is the Zone of Proximal Development. This article identifies how Jack moves through the Zone of Proximal Development in two areas of his musical development, vocal improvisation and song acquisition, from the ages of 24 to 36 months, with scaffolding provided by me, his father.…

A core task in language acquisition is mapping words onto objects, actions, and events. Two studies investigated how children learn to map novel labels onto novel objects. Study 1 investigated whether 10-month-olds use both perceptual and social cues to learn a word. Study 2, a control study, tested whether infants paired the label with a…

This article describes the doula concept and role developed by the Ounce of Prevention Fund in Illinois, working with several community partners. Doulas: (1) seek to build sturdy parent-child relationships to promote the healthy intellectual, emotional, and physical growth of children; (2) use a relationship-based model of intervention; (3) are…

Background: Physical surroundings and child rearing practices play important roles in the development of children. Preschoolers who develop well intellectually have homes rich in toys and books. There is a need to understand environmental influences upon children's behavior. In view of the need and importance of a Home Inventory in simple Hindi…

Because too many children experience the transition to school as a culture shock, during the past decade teachers have implemented so-called transition activities in order to bridge the gap between preschool and school. However, transition to school also calls for a development of higher mental functions, among others the development of children's…

Prior research (DeLoache, Uttal & Rosengren, 2004) has documented that 18- to 30-month-olds occasionally make scale errors: they attempt to fit their bodies into or onto miniature objects (e.g. a chair) that are far too small for them. The current study explores whether scale errors are limited to actions that directly involve the child's…

Although infants show remarkable sensitivity to linguistically relevant phonetic variation in speech, young children sometimes appear not to make use of this sensitivity. Here, children' s knowledge of the sound-forms of familiar words was assessed using a visual fixation task. Dutch 19-month-olds were shown pairs of pictures and heard correct…

Historically, the school psychologist's work in early education has been restricted primarily to providing services to young children with special education needs. A more contemporary model calls for an expanded role with a focus on school readiness and the provision of services to all young children and their families in a prevention-oriented…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tone pairs and single tones were measured for 16 participants with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls aged from 10 to 19 years. The tone pairs were separated by an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 20, 50 or 150 ms. The intraclass correlation (ICC) was computed for each participant…

An examination of selected Federal and State policies relating to the support of children with additional needs in early childhood services has highlighted a lack of guiding principles for the accommodation and support of children with chronic illness. Children with chronic illnesses are particularly vulnerable, as they often do not display the…

Two members of the U.S. Congress share their visions for infants, toddlers, and families. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Education and Early Childhood Development, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, advocates shifting priorities and resources toward young children and families and…