Learn how to create and nurture communities of care for diverse children, families, and practitioners through responsive practice. In this text, the social and emotional worlds of babies and toddlers, their peers, and their caregivers come to life in the everyday moments of infant-toddler care and education. The authors show infants and toddlers…

A number of studies within early childhood education and care indicate the importance of social competence. This article focuses on how friendship is created among very young children in Swedish preschools. The study was carried out within a toddler unit with 15 children. Six 1-year-old children, three girls and three boys, were observed during…

The relationships that children experience with each other during infancy are often a neglected area of study. Most attention has been paid to infants' relationships with adults. However, children are increasingly spending greater amounts of time in group care and with peers at even the early stages of infancy. In these settings, adults are often…

In this article a study is presented of selective affiliation of two- and three-year-old children in the natural situation of Dutch daycare centers. Data of (behavioral) characteristics of 674 pairs of children (dyads) were collected. Multi-level analyses of these dyadic data were conducted and showed that the chance of friendship between two…

Utilizing data from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we investigated mothers' talk about mental states during play with their 24-month-old children as a mechanism though which infant-mother attachment was associated with children's later…

This study examined naturally occurring toddler peer interactions by means of assessing formal attributes as well as their content. We specifically investigated meanings or topics that toddlers can share in interactions. Twenty-three target children (17-23 months, 11 female) were videotaped for one hour in free-play situations in their daycare…

Episodes of children's crying and children's and teachers' responses to crying were observed in natural preschool settings using an event-sampling technique. Narrative descriptions of the episodes were coded as to cause of crying, teacher response, peer response, and context. (Author/NH)

Are children's same-sex affiliations due to genetically sex-linked behavioral tendencies or are they a result of power and privilege differentials in the larger society that discourage girls from engaging in cross-sex interaction? Sex cleavages in naturally occurring toddler peer groups were investigated by examining playmate preferences and…

Cross-sectional and longitudinal study of one- to six-year-olds in full-time child care assessed sequences and individual differences in development of social competence with peers. Study collects most extensive and varied data to date. Findings concern stability of individual differences, social classifications, influences of variations in…