Measures of parasympathetic regulation, such as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), predict executive function outcomes, including inhibitory control, across childhood. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia augmentation tends to be associated with more maladaptive outcomes, compared to RSA suppression, but the literature regarding RSA profiles and…

Toddlers' sleep difficulties have mainly been investigated from the mother's point of view, despite the fact that paternal implication seems to influence young children's sleep quality. This qualitative study aims to better understand how fathers experience toddlers' sleep difficulties by examining their sleep-related cognitions and strategies…

Look at your baby or toddler. They are still learning to eat from a spoon, roll over, stack blocks, walk a few steps, or say their first words. It's hard to imagine that even in these early years, young children are being shaped by the biases that surround them in the world. This is why parenting for social justice begins at birth. Get started…

The overarching goal of the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) is to provide information about whether families and children benefit from Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program-funded early childhood home visiting programs as they operated from 2012 to 2017, and if so, how. The MIECHV Program…

This study investigated how parenting behaviors and child committed compliance predicted internalization of rules and externalizing behaviors throughout early childhood. Participants were 95 Chinese mother-child dyads. Maternal respect for autonomy and negative control were observed in free-plays at 14 and 25 months. Toddlers' committed compliance…

The ability to regulate one's emotions and behaviors is essential for adaptive functioning in society. We investigated whether parental mind-mindedness--parents' tendency to treat their children as mental agents--in infancy and toddlerhood predicts school-age children's self-regulation. The sample consisted of 125 mostly Dutch and White families.…

Parenting is a key factor for the development of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Therefore, early intervention programs should target parenting behaviors to improve children's developmental outcomes. The present study analyzed the effect of parental behaviors and other family factors on the cognitive and linguistic…

Since digital media such as smartphones, tablets or laptops are available in almost every household in industrialised countries, parents are challenged to integrate them into their everyday family life. To gain more information on parents' mediation of digital media, the relationships between their educational intentions, objectives and their…

This study, using longitudinal data from the South African Birth to Twenty Plus study, assessed associations between early childcare quality in the home between six months and two years, household SES and cognitive development at age 5. Childcare quality was assessed using measures of maternal responsiveness and cognitive stimulation. Cognitive…

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the association of infant fussing and crying with self-regulation in toddlerhood and the preschool years, as well as the moderating role of maternal sensitivity therein. When children (n = 149, 53.69% boys) were 6 months old, parents reported on their fussing and crying using a cry diary, and…

Few if any empirical studies have explicitly examined the home environments of Montessori-educated children or, more specifically, the question of whether Montessori parents reinforce or undermine their child's Montessori education at home. With a convenience sample of 30 parents of toddlers and preschoolers attending a private Montessori school…

Autonomy is one of the core motivators of children's creativity and (non)compliance. But it is less known how children's (non)compliance links to later creative potential and how maternal parenting behaviors contribute to those links. This article, as part of a longitudinal study, tested whether preschoolers' committed compliance and…

Externalizing behaviors observed in early childhood have been found to be stable, particularly for boys, but little research has investigated the antecedents of these behaviors, especially how the antecedents may differentially relate to externalizing behaviors in boys and girls. The goal of this study was to explore predictors of externalizing…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

We examined individual differences and predictions of children's patterns in behavioral, emotional and attentional efforts toward challenging puzzle tasks at 24 and 35 months using data from a large longitudinal rural representative sample. Using latent transition analysis, we found four distinct task-oriented patterns in problem-solving tasks…