Childhood states are commonly invoked by adult humans in derisory ways and as put-downs. While infantile and clownish ways of behaving are often met with insult, we argue that these ways of being could instead be seen in terms of their productive potential. Drawing on posthuman and feminist theories and invoking clownish qualities of Haraway's Bag…

Empirical research shows that adults' role in play with infant-toddlers is to provide children with play materials, observe from a distance, and control the surrounding dangers. An international trend to increase children's cognitive skills at a very early age has established a need to better understand toddler's conceptual learning and how this…

The authors examine the relationships between home play and learning--measured by reading and teaching practices at home--among low-income families, including those with mental health issues. Based on a large database from the Family Map Inventory, a screening tool for home visiting programs, the authors' findings revealed that play-related…

The article highlights connections between music and movement activities and emergent literacy development among infants and toddlers. I review how music is linked to phonological awareness, oral language, vocabulary, and other related skills that support reading, like executive function. I also highlight the benefits of including…

This special issue on early self- and co-regulation addresses a topic that is founded on a rich mix of theoretical perspectives, including self-determination theory, socio-cultural theory, attachment theory and artificial intelligence. Reflecting this diversity, the papers adopt a diverse range of approaches to cutting-edge questions regarding…

We examined the relation between maternal responsiveness and children's acquisition of mental and non-mental state vocabulary in 59 pairs of mothers and children aged 10 to 26 months as they engaged in a free-play episode. Children wore a head camera and responsiveness was defined as maternal talk that commented on the child's actions (e.g., when…

Play is a central discourse in policy and practice pertaining to young children's learning, development and well-being in many countries around the world. Dominant ways of understanding and advocating for play often construct universalising notions of children and childhood, overlooking that play is always-already culturally situated and…

This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different…

Since Margaret Mead's field studies in the South Pacific a century ago, there has been the tacit understanding that as culture varies, so too must the socialization of children to become competent culture users and bearers. More recently, the work of anthropologists has been mined to find broader patterns that may be common to childhood across a…

A pioneer in the infant/family field in the United States, Magda Gerber was the founding director of Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE), known for its unique two-generation approach to the care and education of young children. This paper offers a summary of Gerber's teachings from the late twentieth century with citations pointing to their…

Whilst the role of interactive play, thought and language in children's development has been acknowledged, less is known of the role of interactive play, thought and "music." Children's early music-making is both generative and performative in nature and provides a means by which they engage with self and others. Their independent…

Partnerships are dynamic, negotiated spaces encompassing community organizations and interprofessionals. Partnerships support young children and families as they transition from home to school. Interprofessionals create a culture for learning and accessible resources. Early childhood centers, public health and libraries develop collaborative…

Symbolic play is a powerful vehicle for supporting emotional development and communication. It embraces all developmental capacities. This article describes how symbols are formed and how emotional themes are symbolized whereby children reveal their understanding of the world, their feelings and relationships, and how they see themselves in the…

We examined social attention and attention shifting during (a) a play interaction between 12-month olds and an examiner and (b) after the examiner pretended to hurt herself. We coded the target and duration of infants' visual fixations and frequency of attention shifts. Siblings of children with autism and controls with no family history of autism…

Recently emerging intervention studies for toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were reviewed through a systematic assessment of intervention outcomes, research rigor, and intervention features. The review includes published peer-reviewed experimental studies of toddlers with high risk for or diagnosis of ASD in which the majority of…