The "2025 Pro-Kid Policy Agenda for California" is the comprehensive state-level roadmap to ensure that all children have the necessary services and supports to reach their full potential. California has an obligation to end systemic injustices that create barriers to kids of color, as well as kids living in poverty, kids living in…

Behavior is a form of communication. For many young children, they may engage in certain behaviors to consciously or subconsciously communicate a need to access something, such as a desired adult or peer, sensory stimulation, or a tangible item. Other times, children may engage in a behavior to escape or avoid something, such as a particular…

This article is a conceptual co-exploration of the relationship between philosophy and childism. It draws upon a colloquium in December 2021 at the Childism Institute at Rutgers University. Nine co-authors lay out and interweave scholarly imaginations to collectively explore the concept of childism in critical philosophical depth. Through diverse…

Natural science in education can be summarized as a complex system. The professional and methodological task in the teaching of natural sciences is to convey this complexity. The terms and models of graph theory can be used to model the system approach, such as networks. Networks consist of elements and connections between them, which can be well…

The University of Minnesota's Birth to Three Clinic has adopted a holistic approach to supporting children's needs within an attachment-focused, trauma-informed, and neurodevelopmental framework rooted in the DC:0-5™ classification framework. This clinical framework of infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) assessment has been applied in…

The Roadmap presents county-level data and rankings on 20 indicators of wellness across five domains: economic development, physical health, mental health and safety, education inputs, and education outcomes. We believe these five domains capture the interconnected conditions and resources that are necessary for a child to succeed, both inside and…

This paper describes how training school and clinical psychology graduate students in early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) has the potential to fill gaps in the ECMHC workforce, enhance the capacity of early care and education (ECE) providers to effectively support the mental health needs of children and families, and help ECE…

This essay brings together three intergenerational colleagues, two RECE founders, and a mid-career colleague, engaged in reciprocal mentorship, collaborative projects, and research focused on child care, critical policy studies, and global childhoods. We explore our encounters with RECE and how we have engaged with, been influenced by, and found…

Based on case studies in three states (CO, RI, and TX), this brief examines promising strategies to address the developmental and mental health needs of infants and toddlers involved in Child Welfare (CW). Due to family adversities, trauma, maltreatment, and separation from primary caregivers, these infants and toddlers are at substantial risk of…

In August 2017, almost a million Rohingya people fled to Bangladesh to escape violence and persecution in Myanmar; 55 percent of them were children. BRAC, one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in the world, operates an initiative called the Humanitarian Play Lab model for children ages 0-6 in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.…

Teaching young students requires more than just learning about child development -- it requires understanding children and their experiences. Teacher educators have seen a lack of such authentic understanding among future and current early childhood educators. The authors set out to change that in a bachelor of education degree program in northern…

DC:0-5™: Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (ZERO TO THREE, 2016) emphasizes the centrality of relationships for young children's development and psychopathology. The authors share the story of a young child and his mother to illustrate the use of DC:0-5, with an emphasis on how…

Positive behavioral health outcomes are affected by a variety of factors including social, biological, economic and physical environments. These social determinants of mental health (SDOMH) affect not only individual children but the communities and neighborhoods in which children are expected to live, play and thrive. The State must ensure…

The incarceration rate in the United States has increased dramatically in the past half century. In 1970, about 100 out of every 100,000 individuals in the United States were confined in prison. Today, that number is five times as large, with nearly 500 out of every 100,000 individuals confined in prison. Currently, an estimated 2.7 million…

This short article offers a lawyer's perspective on working with immigrant youth, with three goals in mind. The first is to outline key features of the legal landscape immigrant children navigate in the United States, in order to provide contextual information of practical value in serving the young client/patient. The second goal is to use that…