Examines singing as a tool for managing children's behaviors. Suggests that singing can be a powerful tool to soothe a baby, promote learning daily routines and cooperativeness, ease separation troubles, build trust and self-esteem, awake a love for poetry and imagery, stretch memorizing power, help develop humor, and build motor skills. Proposes…

Examined changes in relations among indices of adjustment and caregiver behaviors for 99 Italian infants upon entry into child care and at 3 and 6 months. Found that after 6 months, expressive children received more and different forms of attention than did nonexpressive children. Some six-month patterns were rooted in temperament, with…

A nationwide survey examined the attitudes and opinions of 203 professionals regarding parent-professional involvement in the planning and implementation of goals and services for hearing-impaired infants and toddlers and their families, as required under Public Law 99-457, the Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments (1986). Respondents…

Presents three viewpoints on the question of whether high-quality, publicly funded infant/toddler child care should be provided to all families who want it. (BB)

Analysis of the labor participation of 65 mothers of infants and toddlers with disabilities found a slightly greater proportion of 1-parent families than expected, entry into the labor force at approximately the same rate as other mothers, a greater proportion of mothers engaged in part-time employment, and predominance of spouses as childcare…

This article describes the Colorado Phonetic/Phonologic Assessment of Hearing-Impaired Infants and Toddlers (PHONE) and the speech of 91 hearing-impaired infants and toddlers, examining number of vowels, consonants, elements per utterance, and utterances; differences by age and by hearing loss for each vowel and consonant; and relationship to…

Reproductive factors for Hmong immigrants (mothers of 1,937 children) were compared with those of 3,776 white, non-Hispanic women. Despite a high proportion of births at high parity and advanced maternal age, Hmong women gave birth to very low birth weight babies at about the same rate as white women. (SLD)

This article examines the role of assessment in developing Individual Family Service Plans (IFSP) under Part H of the Education of the Handicapped Act. Emphasis is on determining eligibility, collecting assessment data for describing developmental performance, and establishing desired outcomes. (PB)

"Early Partners" and "Partners for Learning" is a 2-part curriculum to support parent-child interactions in the first 36 months of a premature, low birthweight child's life. Analysis showed that the rate of delivering the curriculum in the child development center and the home added significantly to the prediction of 36-month…

Describes and examines three tests using an infant speech identification (ISI) procedure, in which English language environment infants, two- and six-year-old children, and adults were tested for their identification of sounds on a native (voice/voiceless bilabial stop) and a nonnative (prevoiced/voiced bilabial stop) speech continuum. (31…

Information about family background and birth history was evaluated with respect to its power to predict speech language status in 662 preschool children. A set of risk criteria was found to accurately predict 55 percent of those children with poor communication skills and 76 percent of those with normal communication development. (Author/DB)

The University of Hawaii Department of Special Education conducted the Preschool Preparation and Transition Project, a federally funded demonstration program, to support families and their children with special needs in the transition from infant programs to least restrictive preschool placements. The program addressed this goal through three…

This article discusses the development of an orientation and mobility screening measure suitable for use with children having severe visual impairments (and possibly additional impairments) from birth through five years of age. Twenty instructors rated the measures as being useful. The two forms of the measure (for either ambulatory or…

Examined the association between maternal depression, maternal separation anxiety, social support, and maternal involvement in the day-care center among 54 upper-income mothers and their infants. Found that higher levels of maternal involvement in day care were associated with lower levels of maternal depression. (MDM)

Presents an individual model of quality child care in which infant-caregiver, parent-caregiver, and peer relationships are central features. The model considers the influence of precare differences and the effect of program characteristics and standards on the well-being of children, parents, and caregivers. (MM)