Many children who enter the care system and are subsequently adopted have had exposure to a range of potentially traumatising experiences including domestic violence, abuse, neglect and loss of key caregivers. There are also an increasingly high number of adopted children presenting with the impact of intrauterine exposure to alcohol, drugs and…

This dissertation investigated the caregiving relationships between infants and nonparental caregivers in early childcare settings through the lens of attachment and language behaviors. This study sought to provide an opportunity to extend our understanding of the socioemotional factors that influence children's development in their daily lives.…

Background: Although there are concerns regarding the use of restrictive housing with detained youth, little research has examined factors that contribute to youth risk for restrictive housing. Objective: The current study examined whether perceived containment and contextual factors (i.e., peer delinquency, neighborhood problems, stressful life…

Attentional difficulties are evident in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Accordingly, mothers of children with ASD may modify communication to direct their child's attention, and this pattern may generalize to later-born children. This study examined patterns of child-directed communication in 11 mothers of 18-month-old toddlers at…

Children with intellectual disability and behavioural needs (challenging behaviour) are vulnerable to exclusion from services and communities. The situation is exacerbated by difficulties in accessing appropriate support and services to effectively meet the needs of children and carers. Family perspectives on the 'lived experience' of children can…

Parent-adolescent relationships are highly bidirectional in nature, with parental behaviors affecting adolescents' adjustment and with adolescents' behaviors, in turn, eliciting parental practices. However, there is more to adolescents' agency in the socialization process than simple reciprocity. Adolescents contribute actively to the quality and…

In the USA, persons of Hispanic ethnicity experience higher rates of adolescent pregnancy and STIs than non-Hispanic white youth and there exists a lack of research concerning the sexuality education preferences of Hispanic adolescents. This study describes sexual health education preferences by Hispanic ethnicity among a high-risk sample of young…

Many interventions are characterized by repeated observations on the same individuals (e.g., baseline, mid-intervention, two to three post-intervention observations), which offer the opportunity to consider differences in how individuals vary over time. Effective interventions may not be limited to changing means, but instead may also include…

Infant mental health is strongly connected to an infant's relationship with a responsive, warm, and available caregiver. However, maternal mental illness reduces a mother's ability to detect and respond to changes in her infant's expressions and communication, which may have important consequences for infant attachment and emotion regulation. The…

There are expectations for parents to provide their children with emotional, social and economic security and predictability. Parents with a substance use disorder (SUD) are often unable to meet the norms and expectations of good parenting, and their children are vulnerable to developing problems with mental health, social relationships and…

It can be observed that changing attitude towards the environment and fellow human beings manifests itself as a socially unsustainable relationship, which in different ways and at different levels manifests itself in social exclusion. Social exclusion is increasingly emerging as a phenomenon that is complex in nature and its solutions must be…

The Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, a 45-year study of children born into poverty, offers a number of lessons for practitioners. Among these are the potency of early relationship experiences for predicting developmental outcomes and the fate of early experience following developmental change. This article describes the…

Social communicative precursors to autism spectrum disorder may influence how infants who are later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder interact with their social partners and the responses they receive, thus bidirectionally influencing early social experience. This systematic review aimed to identify a developmental timeline for parent-infant…

As the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) increases every year, so has the literature on early identification and early interventions (EI) that can result in better outcomes for children with ASD. There has been a focus on core deficits that are impaired in ASD and that appear to prevent other areas of development from flourishing,…

Since the 1970s, a proliferation of research and concept analysis of resiliency/e has attempted to clarify whether it is a trait or a state. Based on this dualistic approach, studies have either operationalized "resiliency" as a personality trait or "resilience" as a dynamic state. The present review of the concept argues that…