This paper discusses the use of child development charts to assess the social, self-help, gross motor, fine motor, and language development of infants and young children. It examines the roles of teachers and parents in observing and assessing children's development and provides 2 checklists, one for infants from birth through 21 months (at…

This digest explores some of the reasons for spanking, examines its effectiveness, and suggests alternative discipline methods. Many parents believe that spanking will teach children not to do things that are forbidden, stop them quickly when they are being irritating, and encourage them to do what they should. Others believe nonphysical forms of…

This theme issue explores the development of memory and creativity in very young children. The first article, "The Guy Who Went Up the Steep Nicken: The Emergence of Story Telling during the First Three Years" (Susan Engel), describes the developmental stages of children's story telling. The reasons children tell stories and strategies for…

This conference presentation describes services to Spanish speaking families developed by the Hope Infant Family Support Program in San Marcos, California. It discusses the program's evolution from one-on-one translation, to a more bilingual program, to monolingual Spanish, and shares the pitfalls and the successful strategies encountered in…

This survey was undertaken to gather accurate and reliable information on private and government-supported day care centers within Italy, and to compare such data to currently available government statistics. A questionnaire was drawn up and sent to the 21 regions of Italy to examine: (1) the number of centers in each region and the number of…

Intended for parents of infants and preschoolers with visual impairments, this booklet encourages parent involvement in all aspects of educational programming for their children and provides guidelines for selection of a suitable program. The first section examines the stresses involved during transitions from one program to another. Parents are…

A study examined relations among maternal stress, social support, adjustment, and the use of positive (encouraging) or negative (punitive) control strategies in a low socioeconomic status sample. The study sample consisted of 40 mother-son dyads examined longitudinally when the children were 18 and 24 months of age. During this period, mothers…

This document provides guidelines for preferred practice for the Child Identification Process for Colorado children, birth through five years of age. The guidelines were developed to be flexible and adaptable in support of individual community needs and in recognition of the variable resources throughout the state; however, the basic underlying…

Intended for parents and others caring for young children, this viewer's guide and videotape leads adults along the path of child's language acquisition and demonstrates how to use a language-rich environment to communicate with infants, toddlers, and preschool children in ways to foster language development. The first half of the guide presents…

This study examined the impact of play context on the speech of mothers and children. It was expected that the types of speech produced by both children and mothers when they played with toys that involve fine motor manipulation would differ from the speech produced when they played with toys that involve gross motor play. Sixteen children (eight…

This paper presents an overview of a 3-year longitudinal study conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The purpose of the study is to examine the concurrent, long-term, and cumulative influences of variations in early child care experiences on the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical…

A case study documented the emergence of literacy in an extremely precocious reader between the ages of 2 years, 7 months and 3 years, 2 months. The case study examined the relation between the subject's oral language and reading development; the bases of his word identification; the relation between his reading and writing development; and…

In Japan, the educational and treatment facilities for handicapped children in the community have poor interagency communication and lack consistent policies concerning developmentally handicapped children. A community care network is being established for these children in Koganei City, supported by a research institute and a local government.…

This newsletter issue contains 10 articles focusing on failture to thrive and the feeding of infants and toddlers with disabilities. Articles have the following titles and authors: "The Feeding Relationship" (Ellyn Satter); "Cultural Dimensions of Feeding Relationships" (Carol Brunson Phillips and Renatta M. Cooper);…

This paper describes the characteristics of toddlers aged 12 to 30 months in relation to the qualities necessary for an effective early childhood program for such children. The first half of the paper discusses these qualities, which include: (1) respect for toddlers' budding autonomy; (2) attention to language development; (3) social interaction…