Many children, especially those from lower-income families, face considerable instability early in their lives. This may include changes in family structure, irregular family routines, frequent moves, fluctuating daycare arrangements, and noisy, crowded, or generally chaotic environments. Moreover, instability and chaos affect young children's…

The recent attention being given to early childhood trauma and its negative effects on long-term learning and development has led many policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to focus on developing practices that support children and families who are experiencing trauma. Given the fact that many young children spend a significant amount of…

The Attachment Aware Schools (AAS) project was a targeted and collaborative intervention between academics and school-based practitioners. The aim of the project was to promote practitioner awareness of attachment in relation to child behaviours and learning. It focused on using relational-based strategies and interventions to address the needs of…

The emotional aspects of children's social relations have generally been marginalised in social science discourse. Children, who participated in the Australian segment of the Children's Understandings of Well-being (CUWB) project used various media to 'voice' the importance for their well-being of emotional relatedness with family, friends,…

The quality of the attachment bond between a child and a caregiver can have lasting effects on how the child perceives, interprets, and recalls events through the filtering of internal working models. Previous research has shown that secure children tend to recall emotional information better than insecure children. The current study examined the…

In this commentary, Ahnert addresses the Beckh and Becker-Stoll's (2016) paper that characterized positive teacher-child relationships through high levels of closeness and low levels of conflict. Once teacher-child relationships are positively established, the children benefit the most in developmental domains which are considered typically weak…

The development of babies whose families are homeless can easily be affected by their uncertain living arrangements. The PACT Therapeutic Nursery's attachment-based, trauma-informed, mindfully focused family interventions help these children and families move beyond the trauma of shelter living. In the past year, Nursery clinicians have infused…

Introduction: Mothers, who often serve as primary caregivers for their offspring, play a crucial role in the development of children. Understanding the parenting experiences of mothers who are blind can be valuable and beneficial for professional educators and health care workers who wish to provide holistic and appropriate services to both…

Shy children are less likely to interact with peers and teachers, ask questions, and participate in classroom activities. Children low in attention and inhibitory control also perform worse academically. Although research indicates children's relationships with teachers may be protective for children at risk for academic difficulties, less is…

In this commentary, Suess opines that comparing risk- and non-risk-groups, as is done in the study by Witting, Ruiz, and Ahnert (2016), is a favored approach in developmental psychopathology in order to learn more about underlying mechanisms of normal development, as well as developmental deviations. Witting and colleagues followed up this…

This paper reports on the longitudinal links between first-time mothers (N = 48) Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs), provided during pregnancy, and their first-born children's AAIs, provided at age 16 years. The AAIs from the adolescents were scored for reflective functioning (RF), and this was found to be significantly linked to whether their…

In this commentary, Spangler evaluates the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele report that arguede that reflective functioning in adolescence could not be predicted by quality of early infant attachment, but was associated with maternal (but not paternal) attachment representation, assessed before the adolescents' birth. Assuming that parental…

In this commentary, Soares and Baptista state that the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele (2016) article contributed with an informative study that adolescents' reflective functioning (RF) is predicted by maternal attachment representation, which was assessed even before the youth were born by using the Adult Attachment Interview. The authors assert…

We examined the prediction that the interaction between Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene ("NR3C1") methylation, stress, and experienced maternal support predicts anxious and avoidant attachment development. This was tested in a general population sample of 487 children and adolescents (44% boys, M[subscript age] = 11.84, SD[subscript age] =…

Teachers have reported that they have difficulty providing support to traumatized children and youth because of a lack of training in how to identify and respond to the needs of these children. The program, "Amazing Help Skills for Teachers to Unmask Trauma in Children and Youth" (AHSUM), is a trauma-focused training program, designed…