Cyberbullying

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

A generation of children and adolescents are now growing up in a digital world. It is estimated that over 90% of American teens use the Internet with the majority logging on daily. Most teens have phones that enable them to access the Internet from anywhere. Although staying connected with peers electronically may offer advantages such as encouraging feelings of connectedness, there may also be challenges associated with increased use of technology. Specifically, cyberbullying is a growing concern for parents and educators.

The Directors of the Cyberbullying Research Center, Drs. Hinduja and Patchin, define cyberbullying as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices”. According to their research, about 24% of students report having been cyberbullied. Some of the most common reported instances of cyberbullying include sending mean messages and spreading online rumors. Being the victim of cyberbullying is associated with negative outcomes, such as lower self-esteem.

The National Association of School Psychologists offers several suggestions for parents:

• Check in with your child about what they are doing online. Teach them appropriate Internet etiquette and encourage them to tell you if they experience any forms of cyberbullying.

• Make sure computers are not in bedrooms but rather in the family room or kitchen so that you can more easily monitor your child’s online activities.

• Let your child know that you may look over their online communication if a concern arises.

• If your child experiences cyberbullying, make sure to document this and share this information with the school. You may also file a complaint with a web site, ISP, or cell phone company.

Although traditional bullying often takes place in the school yard, children may be victims of cyberbullying in their own homes. Parents can get involved in helping prevent cyberbullying. For more information, see http://www.ncpc.org/topics/cyberbullying or http://csriu.org/.

A “Goodness of Fit”

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

Even at a very young age, temperamental differences are evident in children. Each child has his or her own behavioral style that affects how they respond in social situations. In one of the most famous studies of temperament, Thomas and Chess identified nine different temperamental dimensions: rhythmicity, activity level, approach vs. withdrawal, adaptability to new stimuli over time, threshold of responsiveness, quality of mood, intensity of reaction, persistence, and distractibility. They found that temperamental dimensions tended to cluster in predictable ways and believed children could be categorized as “easy” (even-tempered, positive responses to new stimuli), “difficult” (often negative, react with high intensity), and “slow to warm” (adjust slowly to new stimuli and people).

Thomas and Chess noted that temperament affects social interactions, even those with the parent. They proposed the concept of “goodness of fit”; that is, the fit between the child’s temperament and parent’s style. An example of good fit would be a difficult child who has patient parents who remain calm and insist that the child complies with rules. A less strong fit would be a difficult child who has parents that become irritable, impatient, and punitive.

Goodness of fit is often associated with positive developmental outcomes. The Center for Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (CECMHC) writes that “what is most beneficial about the goodness of fit concept is that it does not require that adults and children have matching temperaments.” CECMHC suggests that parents reflect on how their own style relates to that of the child, and consider how to best adjust their own behaviors to support their child. For example, if a child is “slow to warm”, the parent might keep this in mind and provide extra support and time when introducing the child to a new person or activity.

The CECMHC developed a tool to help parents examine the goodness of fit between their caregiving style and their child’s temperamental profile. The Infant Toddler Temperament Tool (IT³) can be completed in minutes and is available online. After responding to the brief survey, a report describing similarities and differences in parent’s and child’s styles is provided as well as suggestions for how to best foster the individual child’s development.  For recommendations on supporting a “goodness of fit”, complete the IT³ at http://www.ecmhc.org/temperament/index.html.

Promoting Early Development through Music

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

I recently had the opportunity to attend one of the Center for Children and Families’ Juega Conmigo classes, which have been designed to directly foster the cognitive, language, physical, emotional, and social development of infants and toddlers. I was struck by the degree to which music was incorporated into the curriculum from creating homemade instruments to engaging parents and children through song.  After speaking more with our Developmental Specialists, I learned that they incorporated music for more than mere enjoyment but rather as a way to promote children’s development.

This sentiment echoed a recent article in Young Children , Beyond Twinkle, Twinkle: Using Music with Infants and Toddlers, by Rebecca Parlakian and Claire Lerner.  They write that “For very young children, music has power and meaning that go beyond words… music experiences also support the formation of important brain connections that are being established over the first three years of life…”.

Parlakian and Lerner identify several domains of development which benefit from musical experiences:

• Social-emotional skills. Music is a social experience which children can engage in with caregivers and peers. Songs can teach children about emotion (e.g., “If you’re happy and you know it…”) and encourage sharing and turn-taking (e.g., call-and-response songs such as “Who ate the cookies from the cookie jar”).

• Motor skills. Songs that employ finger plays and gestures such as “Where is Thumbkin?” and “The Wheels on the Bus” are ways of practicing fine motor development. Further, dancing commonly accompanies songs and is a way to encourage physical activity.

• Cognitive skills. Children learn through song. For instance, early numeracy is encouraged through songs such as “One Two, Buckle My Shoe” and “Five Little Monkeys”.

• Language skills. Lastly, music influences language development and is a way for children to practice communicating.

For specific song ideas for different age groups, please see: http://www.naeyc.org/files/yc/file/201003/ParlakianWeb0310.pdf.

Emotional Well-being in Young Children

by Nazly Hasanizadeh, Ph.D. Student at UT Dallas

Emotional competence skills in children are extremely important, and sometimes underemphasized. Children who have high emotional competence can manage stressful situations better and effectively form and maintain positive friendships with others.

In the most recent lecture of the 2012 Spring Lecture Series from the Center for Children and Families, Dr. Jackie Nelson highlighted the ingredients defining emotional competence in children and provided tips for how to help cultivate these skills in children.

Here are some of the key components of emotional competence discussed by Dr. Nelson:

• An awareness of one’s own and others’ emotions: At about 2-3 years of age, emotionally competent children can recognize an array of both positive and negative emotions, typically starting with positive ones such as happiness, and then beginning to understand more negative emotions such as sadness. Additionally, children begin to realize that their own views and emotional reactions can differ from their friends’.

• Expressing emotions effectively and feeling empathy towards others: Being able to convey how one is feeling in an appropriate manner and the ability to share another person’s emotions are important skills of emotional competence. These skills help children foster positive interpersonal relationships with peers as well as family members.

• Using emotion regulation during times of stress: The effective use of problem-solving and support-seeking strategies to manage stress is a valuable skill of emotional competence.  For example, an emotionally competent child  may try to deal with a bully at school by seeking  advice from a parent.

Dr. Nelson suggested many ways to support the development of children’s emotional competence. One of the prime facilitators involves sensitive and supportive responses when your child is distressed.  Receiving comfort when distressed helps to build the child’s emotion regulation skills.  Helping children identify their different emotions and discussing emotions helps children understand their own feelings better and supports the growth of emotional competence.

For more information and support for children struggling with emotion regulation or other behavior problems, please visit http://www.challengingbehavior.org or contact The Center for Children and Families for information and referral services.

Diagnosing Autism

by Nazly Hasanizadeh, Ph.D. Student at The University of Texas at Dallas

For decades after first being clinically described in the 1940’s, autism was often combined with other types of disorders due to the lack of research and understanding. The diagnosis of autism continues to be refined as more information about it accumulates. But how can you tell whether your child is showing signs of autism or of another disorder? How can you decide whether you should seek help or not?

In the first lecture of the Center for Children and Families 2012 Spring Lecture series, Dr. Noah Sasson discussed the newly defined two main identifiers of autism: social impairments and repetitive and restricted behaviors. Social impairments include behaviors such as an inability to form peer relationships, less interest in sharing experiences with others, and an inability to understand social cues. Repetitive and restricted behaviors include things like focusing intensely on specific and unusual objects or parts of objects, repetitive motor or language use, and extreme distress with any deviation from routines. Dr. Sasson also emphasized that these behaviors should be present in early childhood and “limit and impair functioning” in order to receive a diagnosis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Sasson, parents should be aware of the following potential red flags after the child is at least 12 months old:

• Social Red Flags:
  • Does not respond to own name by 12 months
  • Reduced eye contact
  • Does not engage in pretend play
  • Lack of sharing interests with others

• Repetitive and Restricted Behavior Red Flags:
  • Rocks body continuously
  • Excessively preoccupied with specific pieces of an object
  • Cannot tolerate minor changes in routine

It is important to note that some of these behaviors appear to some extent in all children, however the difference between those who fall on the Autism Spectrum and those who do not is the intensity and life impairment of these behaviors.  First Signs is a national, non-profit organization which offers guidance for identifying the early signs of autism and related disorders.

If parents are noticing repeated occurrence of one or more of these red flags, here are several excellent resources for getting help:

The Crystal Charity Ball Autism Project:  This is great for obtaining information about diagnosis and intervention, and can be reached at 214-456-7700 and.

The Center for Children and Families: The Center for Children and Families’ Infant Development Program offers low cost developmental screenings and other support services. To speak with the Community Liaison, call 972-883-4827. Referral services are also available.

Early Education Really Matters

by Paula Knight, Masters student in the UT Dallas Human Development and Early Childhood Disorders program

There is great concern among parents, teachers and early education supporters that government funding for early childhood programs will continue to suffer cuts in current economic times.  The risk of funding loss continues despite the overwhelming evidence that high-quality early education makes a difference for young children, especially those that are at risk.  An at-risk child is one who is living amongst many complications or risk factors that may impede their ability to be productive members of society.  A recent article by Jeffrey Mervis in the journal Science summarizes the benefits found from three intensely studied early education intervention programs that make a strong case for the benefits of high-quality early education not only for the at-risk children who experience the program, but also society as a whole.

Mervis highlights findings from three well-studied programs, the first of which is the High Scope/Perry Preschool Program, the earliest of the model programs.  The Perry Preschool Program was implemented in a working-class community in Ypsilanti, Michigan, beginning in 1962.  The participating children had below-average IQ scores, were between the ages of three and four, came from low-income families, and had parents who typically did not have a high school degree.  Children attended the program 2 ½ hours per day, five days a week during the school year. They were compared to demographically similar children who did not attend an early childhood program and received no other form of intervention.  Children who attended this program were followed for many years and even into adulthood to determine the long-term benefits of the preschool program.  Through age 14, graduates of the Perry Preschool Program  required less special education, showed better motivation in their schoolwork, and valued learning more than the children who were without the preschool experience.  Cost/benefit analyses of the program over the many years the children have been followed have determined a lifetime per-child benefit of $284,000 from program costs of $17,600 per child.

The Abecedarian Project was initiated in 1972 at the University of North Carolina.  It enrolled children as young as six weeks of age in an intensive early childhood program.  The children attended the university based child-care facility five days a week for five hours a day year round until the children entered kindergarten.  Abecedarian placed high value on stimulating the children’s language development.  Studies of the program’s effectiveness showed that children performed slightly better academically than those studied in the Perry Preschool program, and the results showed that cognitive benefits lasted into young adulthood for the children.

Mervis also highlights the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS), a long-term evaluation begun in 1985 that has traced the benefits of early childhood education program attendance for low-income children in the Chicago area.  The CLS program was designed as a low-cost alternative to Perry and Abecedarian and some of the children received services for up to six years.  989 children attended preschool at one of 20 Child Parent Education Centers, initiated by the Chicago public schools in 1967 soon after Head Start had begun.  After receiving either one or two years of the intervention, some of the children continued to receive services through the third grade in one of several Chicago public schools.  What makes the study of the CLS different from the evaluations of the Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian programs is that children were not randomly assigned to receive or not receive the program’s services.  This is because Head Start had been in place for over two decades with growing evidence of the value of early education, making it unethical to exclude children from program participation in a randomized trial of program effectiveness. Instead, the study implemented a quasi-experimental design, which meant that the comparison group was made up of children who attended full-day kindergarten at five randomly chosen kindergartens.  Most of these children had never attended preschool.  The CLS early childhood experience was described as “a happy integration of basic skills, both for language and numeracy, as well as social-emotional skills, combined with an emphasis on parental involvement”.  Studies of its effectiveness showed that kindergarteners without an early childhood education experience had lower basic skills tests scores than the children who had attended either a one or a two-year CLS program.  Long-term societal benefits of program attendance were also found: The children who had attended the early childhood program were less likely to be arrested or to be involved in substance abuse as teenagers.

Although the cost of each of these programs was somewhat high, and considerably higher than the per-child cost of Head Start, the amount of money that they saved society in the long-run in the form of individuals staying out of jail, maintaining employment and contributing instead of costing society money was substantial.  The findings from the studies of these hallmark programs are just a few examples that show us that high-quality early childhood programs, especially for at-risk children, are important not only in helping to promote more optimal development for the individual children, but also in terms of substantial benefits to the larger society.

Tackling Toddlers’ Tantrums

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

Toddlers are learning to think and develop ideas and opinions, and because this can sometimes conflict with the ideas and opinions of their parents, battles are often the result. To the parents of a toddler, it often seems like their child’s favorite words are ‘no’ and ‘myself’.  Dr. Alicia Lieberman, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and the author of The Emotional Life of the Toddler, writes that “At times parents find themselves caught in a contest of wills, vaguely embarrassed at being unable to win more handily at this uneven match.”

How can parents of toddlers handle this battle of wills without their child throwing a temper tantrum?  The American Academy of Pediatrics offers some suggestions:

• Distraction can be extremely helpful. If you notice your child growing upset, attempt to guide him or her to a new, more appropriate activity.

• Try not to reinforce your child’s negative actions by providing a great deal of attention following his or her misbehavior.

• Wait until your child is calm and then talk about the situation and the behaviors you had thought were inappropriate.

• Use positive forms of discipline. Physical forms of punishment such as spanking may encourage your child to behave aggressively.

These steps can be helpful in decreasing the number and intensity of tantrums. Another key strategy is learning to pick your battles with toddlers. Although you should deal immediately with big issues that are a threat to your child’s safety such as running into oncoming traffic, other issues such as wearing mismatching socks out of the house are less important and you can give your toddler more say in such decisions. This is echoed by Dr. Lieberman who counsels “the lifelong lesson of the toddler years involves learning that sometimes letting go – within limits – is the surest way of staying close”.

Promoting Play: Our New Initiative in Bachman Lake

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

The Center for Children and Families is guided by a mission to promote understanding of how children develop and thrive and translate that knowledge into practice and policy to improve the lives of children and families. Recent reports have called attention to the diminishing amount of time that our children have available for play. This decline in free play has led to growing concern among many researchers and practitioners who cite studies indicating that play is an important avenue to learning.

Our Center staff and faculty believe in the power of play to positively impact children’s development. Parents can help build skills and concepts that lead to school readiness by encouraging their children’s play. The Center has worked to encourage parents to make play an important part of their child’s life beginning with our Annual Forum in 2010, that featured an evening lecture by Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek on the “Arts and Sciences of Play”.

We have also put these ideas to action by launching “Juega Conmigo” (Play with Me) sessions in the Bachman Lake branch of the Dallas Public Library in this high-need neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. During “Juega Conmigo” sessions, bilingual Developmental Specialists facilitate play activities with parents and their infants and toddlers using toys, music, and movement. We also share information about child development, how to best promote growth through play activities both in the sessions and at home, and offer free individual screenings of the children’s development. Our ultimate goal is to prepare at-risk infants and toddlers for Kindergarten by advancing children’s cognitive, language, physical, emotional and social development through play and encouraging growth-promoting parent-child interactions.

The initial response to the “Juega Conmigo” has been very positive, with many parents and their young children returning each week. We look forward to continuing to grow this program. If you would like more information about our “Juega Conmigo” program, please call 214-502-6457 or e-mail Carolyn Rodriguez Neisius, the program’s coordinator.

Stay tuned as we will soon provide more information from the Developmental Specialists leading our “Juega Conmigo” program including how to make toys at home from everyday materials. Making time for play is a serious matter. Playing with your child can strengthen your relationship and help your child develop skills necessary for collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creative innovation.

Bullying: What Parents Should Know

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

The statistics describing the percentage of children involved in bullying are startling. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development sponsored a large survey of American middle and high school students. Over 10% of youth surveyed reported bullying others occasionally.

Many parents are unaware that their children may be bullying others as this is a behavior that is frequently hidden from adults. Here are some signs that your child may be involved in bullying:

• Aggressive behavior toward parents, siblings, pets, and friends
• Lack of concern for others’ feelings
• Frequently bossy and manipulative
• Affiliation with other aggressive youth
• Very easily frustrated and angered

Although many believe that bullying is ‘just kids being kids’, this sort of behavior is extremely detrimental for both victims and perpetrators. Bullying others has been associated with antisocial behavior, substance use, academic problems and drop out, and difficulties in relationships.

What should you do if you think your child may be bullying others? Several suggestions are offered by Dr. Debra Pepler of York University and Dr. Wendy Craig of Queen’s University, Scientific Co-Directors of PREVNet, a network of researchers and national organizations in Canada that strives to translate research into policy and practice to help reduce the prevalence of bullying.  According to PREVNet, parents can offer the following suggestions to their children:

• Put yourself in another’s shoes and imagine how it must feel to be bullied.
• Excuse yourself from situations where bullying is likely.
• Work to overcome peer pressure to bully and do the right thing.
• Say you are sorry to those you have hurt in the past.
• Spend time with friends who don’t think it is cool to bully.
• Recognize that everyone is unique and being different is not bad.
• Understand that if others watch bullying and even laugh at this type of behavior, it doesn’t mean they think it is right.

For additional resources for children, parents, and professionals, visit PREVNet or STOPBULLYING.gov.

Principles of Positive Discipline

by Lisa Rosen, Ph.D.

Policy makers, educators, child rights activists, and researchers from 21 different countries including the United States, England, France, Israel, Ethiopia, Australia, and New Zealand, recently gathered in Dallas for “The Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Discipline”. Dr. George Holden of Southern Methodist University organized this conference, the first ever to bring together internationally recognized experts from diverse fields to promote awareness of child rights, the negative consequence of using corporal punishment (e.g., spanking and other forms of physical discipline), and ways of encouraging positive discipline in homes and schools. 

            Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff, Co-Chair of the Summit’s Organizing Committee and a professor at The University of Texas at Austin, summarized the results of many studies examining the negative effects of corporal punishment of children. She asserts “until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitively demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal punishment, including effectiveness in halting future misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects, we as psychologists cannot responsibly recommend its use”.  Careful review of the research literature provides a clear picture: there are no positive effects of such punishment, only negative effects.

            Gershoff acknowledges that discipline is one of the most challenging tasks of being a parent. Given that very few parents receive formal training on how to discipline their children effectively, they primarily learn “on the job” or default to using the strategies their parents used. Gershoff laments, “this unfortunately means we sometimes use discipline methods that are familiar but not effective”, such as corporal punishment. This brings us to the important question of what constitutes effective, positive discipline that can teach children acceptable behavior.

            Drawing on the research literature as well as years working with children, Gershoff outlines four main principles of effective positive discipline.

1. Guide, not punish. Punishment can teach children what not to do, but it is even more important for parents to teach their children what to do.
2. Focus on the positives. Building a strong relationship with your child is the cornerstone of effective discipline.
3. Be prepared. Let your child know what type of behavior you expect in different situations.
4. Be consistent. Children appreciate consistency – create fair consequences, share these with your child, and implement when needed.

For additional resources on promoting positive discipline, please visit http://smu.edu/psychology/html/globalLinks.html.