Category: Child Development

— Public health messages may help encourage fathers to have more conversations with their children about waiting to become sexually active, according to researchers at RTI International and George Washington University.

The study, published in The American Journal of Health Promotion, examined changes in parent-child communication habits following exposure to public health messages over 18 months.

During the study period, more than 1,200 parents of adolescent or pre-adolescent children were exposed to video, print and audio public service announcements (PSAs) that promoted the benefits of speaking to their children about delaying initiation of sexual activity. The PSAs were a part of Parents Speak Up National Campaign, a multimedia social marketing campaign aimed at promoting parent-child communication about sex. A control group of almost 700 parents were not exposed to the messages.

The researchers found that fathers exposed to campaign messages demonstrated a consistent and increasing pattern of father-child communication over the 18-month period compared to fathers who were not exposed to the PSAs.

However, among mothers, the PSAs had little lasting impact. Although there was some evidence of impact following initial exposure, the frequency of mother-child communication across the 18-month period did not differ between mothers exposed to the campaign messages and those not exposed.

"With this study, we wanted to extend our understanding of the impact of health-related PSA campaigns on parent-child communication patterns and explore these communication patterns as a developmental process over an extended period of time," said Jonathan L. Blitstein, Ph.D., a research psychologist at RTI and lead author of the study. "We found that mothers and fathers respond differently to these messages and that may be due to the fact that mothers in general are more likely to talk to their children about sensitive topics, such as sexual behavior. We also saw the importance of repeat exposure, which offers multiple opportunities for leaning and persuasion."

At the conclusion of the study period, fathers exposed to the PSAs communicated with their children about sex at levels that were similar to the baseline level of mothers. These results, researchers said, underscore the potential of fathers to become more involved in talking with their children about potentially sensitive and important topics.

"Given generally low rates at which fathers tend to engage their children in conversations about sex, even modest increases can produce meaningful gains," Blitstein said.

A new study has found that children of immigrants have an advantage over children of native- born Americans when it comes to the transition to adulthood. Among children of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, school conditions, and other characteristics, those born abroad to immigrant parents who came to the United States before their teen years are more likely to follow the best trajectory in academic achievement and school engagement, followed by those born in the United States to immigrant parents.

Those are the conclusions reached by a study conducted at Johns Hopkins University that appears in the September/October 2012 issue of the journal Child Development, in a special section on the children of immigrants.

In addition to examining immigrant children's trajectories in cognitive and behavioral areas, the study looked at how they fared psychologically. There were no differences in depression trajectories between children of immigrants and children of native-born Americans.

"Our findings challenge pessimistic views that having immigrant parents places children at a disadvantage at the point of transitioning to adulthood," according to Lingxin Hao, professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, who led the study. "Children of immigrants, when compared to children of native-born parents, are actually at an advantage on some key early adult outcomes."

The study looked at 10,795 children ages 13 to 17 who were followed to ages 25-32, using data from two related representative data sets — the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study.

Both Add Health and the AHAA study are funded mainly by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The current study was funded by an NICHD training grant to the Hopkins Population Center at Johns Hopkins University.

Despite often living in poor neighborhoods, immigrant Mexican mothers report few conflicts at home, support from spouses, and strong mental health. At the same time, these moms say they are less likely to read with their young children than native-born White mothers, stemming in part from comparatively low levels of education.

Immigrant Chinese mothers, in contrast, report being more likely than native-born White peers to read with their young children, but more likely to report weaker mental health and greater household conflict.

These are just some of the findings from a nationally representative study that included more than 5,000 immigrant Latino, immigrant Asian, and native-born White mothers and their preschoolers. The study uses data from the federally run Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and was carried out by researchers at the University of Incheon, Korea, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It appears in a special section of the September/October 2012 issue of the journal Child Development on children from immigrant families.

The study looked at migration history, cultural practices, and social class in relation to social- emotional and early learning practices in the home. In this way, it sheds light on the ways in which children from immigrant families are especially vulnerable and benefit from cultural strengths, compared with the children of native-born White parents.

"Many scholars have argued that poverty tends to go along with poor parenting," said Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who codirected the study. "Instead, we discovered that low-income Latino families often display important strengths in their parenting that may buffer the detrimental effects of poverty."

"Asian groups have also displayed important strengths, but different ones," noted Sunyoung Jung, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Incheon in Seoul, the study's lead author. "Chinese mothers in particular read more frequently with their young children than White American mothers."

The study was supported by the Hewlett Foundation, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley. The Spencer Foundation initially funded the Latino Child Development Project, supporting the study's analysis.

A study by the University of Southampton has shown that women are having children later in life mainly because they are spending longer in education.

Research by Professor Máire Ní Bhrolcháin and Dr Éva Beaujouan of the ESRC Centre for Population Change at the University reveals that finishing full-time education and training at an older average age is the main reason why people are having their first child later in life — both in Britain and in France.

Professor Ní Bhrolcháin comments, "Later childbearing has been a major feature of fertility trends in recent decades, both in Britain and other developed countries. A large number of explanations have been suggested for the trend towards later parenthood, but our study is the first to show that the major influencing factor is that people have been staying on longer in education and training." The average age of a woman having her first child in 2004 was 27 years-old, three years later than in 1974, when the average age was 24 years old. During the course of these three decades young men and woman were progressively staying longer at school and also going into further and higher education in greater numbers — with women completing their education or training at an increasingly later age. In the late 1970s, young women were leaving full-time education or training at an average age of 18 years old, but by 2004 this had risen by two years to an average age of 20 years old.

"The data we have examined shows that in the past several decades young people have been starting their full adult lives around two years later on average than in the recent past and this has meant family life starting later too," says Professor Ní Bhrolcháin. The Southampton study focussed particularly on the period between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, during which time the mean age of women having their first birth rose by almost one-and-a-half years. During the same period, the time between women leaving full-time education and a first birth only rose by 0.6 years. This means that about three fifths of the change in age at first birth in Britain is due to more time being spent in education and training (the figure is four fifths in France). So longer education and training is the most important explanation for later childbearing, although not the only one — there are other contributory factors.

Professor Ní Bhrolcháin comments, "If we start the clock when young women leave full-time education or training, the delay to motherhood, compared across the decades, is much less than looking purely at the differences in their ages at their first birth." To investigate the study, the researchers compiled and analysed data in Britain from the General Household Survey and in France from the Family History Survey.

Good health helps children with stressful transitions from elementary school to middle school, finds a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Students with chronic conditions such as asthma, obesity, learning disabilities, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and those with health-related needs, were noted to have lower academic performances.

"Most parents don't know how tough that transition really is," said lead author Christopher Forrest, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "When kids leave elementary school healthy, they're more likely to be good learners in middle school."

Forrest's research group sought to identify how health-related factors affected school outcomes over time. Their research tracked more than 1,000 fourth, fifth and sixth graders from 2006 to 2008 in Maryland and West Virginia, noting chronic health conditions, whether or not the child had gone through puberty, and the presence of health assets such as physical comfort, balanced nutrition and low negative stress.

School outcomes such as grade point average and attendance were compared. Children with fewer health conditions and who reported more health assets had higher GPAs. Puberty was associated with missing more days of school and poorer school outcomes. However, the presence of more health assets tended to buffer the negative effects of puberty. The study also linked a child's life satisfaction and connection to others, including teachers, to school success.

"There is a dynamic association between achieving in school and feeling satisfied and happy with life," Forrest said.

The transition into adolescence is a time of real vulnerability, commented Jane Mendle, Ph.D., assistant professor of clinical psychology at Cornell University. Certain problems faced by children during this stage–especially health issues–are amplified. "It's not that their obesity gets worse. It's not that their learning disability gets worse," Mendle said. "What's really the problem are the social repercussions of having that difficulty."

Parents, teachers and schools need to better help the students who may have particular trouble during this time. "It should be important to be aware of children that come into adolescence with a particular issue to help them through the transition," Mendle said.

Immigrant parents' education before migrating is more strongly tied to their children's achievement in the United States than any other social, economic, or linguistic parental attribute, either before or after migration. That's the conclusion of a new study in a special section of the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development on the children of immigrants.

The study was carried out by researchers at the Pennsylvania State University.

Immigrants come to the United States with different socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of proficiency in English. Past research hasn't fully considered how these factors affect children's academic achievement. For this study, researchers used parent data from the New Immigrant Survey, a longitudinal and nationally representative study of legal immigrants. To measure academic achievement, the researchers used scores from Woodcock Johnson III tests that were given as part of the New Immigrant Survey to more than 2,100 children ages 6 to 12 whose parents were included in the study. Among their findings:

• Premigration characteristics (such as education, work status, and occupation) of parents account fully for the test score disadvantage of Mexican-origin children of legal immigrants compared to non-Latino children of legal immigrants.
• The level of cognitive stimulation (how often a parent reads to a child, for example) in immigrant homes is significantly related to parents' premigration and English skills, over and above their postmigration socioeconomic status.
• Families' socioeconomic status before migrating contributes significantly to their socioeconomic status after migrating, but in different ways for different groups of immigrants. Specifically, immigrant parents who previously held higher-status occupations tend to find lower-status jobs after migration, while those who were previously unemployed are able to find jobs after migration.

"Our research reveals important aspects of continuity between immigrants' pre- and postmigration resources," suggests Suet-ling Pong, professor of education and sociology at the Pennsylvania State University and the study's lead author. "Even after the transformative event of immigration, family social privilege or disadvantage often persists and is transmitted to subsequent generations."

According to Pong, the results raise the possibility that adult literacy programs to increase education levels of immigrant parents could have benefits in both parents' and children's generations. Such approaches may be particularly important to consider for immigrant families from Mexico, she said.

The study was supported by the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State

University under an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

— Driving down the road, Lisa Huisman Koops, from Case Western Reserve University, bursts into song.

"I see a red car. What do you see?" Her young daughter in the back seat sings her reply.

The Koops' car is more than transportation. It's what the assistant professor in music education calls a music play zone — a dedicated space where children can make music.

But music play zones aren't just physical places. They can be times of day or emotional moments in life, accompanied with instrumental or vocal music. They can be as simple as moments, like singing, "Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho! It's off to work we go" as children pick up toys.

"Through musical play, children can develop tonal and rhythmic skills, express musical ideas, create compositions, and connect and develop various musical building blocks, both individually, with peers and adults," Koops reports in an article accepted for publication in the fall issue of Perspectives: The Journal of the Early Childhood Music and Movement Association.

In her article, "Creating Music Play Zones for Children," Koops offers ways parents and teachers can help children make music and develop a lifelong love for the art.

Koops came to these methods by working with a group of 12 preschool parents and their children, from newborns to age 3 in her music and movement class at The Music Settlement, and then in "Music Play Zone" classes with the same children as 4- to 6-year-olds. She analyzed videotapes of class and home activities to see what encourages or inhibits children from participating in music activities.

Even in hectic lives and busy schedules, parents can integrate music into daily life by providing age-appropriate, dynamic and safe environments and motivation to be musical, Koops says.

A music play zone can start as a space on a blanket, and over the years develop into a teen's room equipped with technology to record or compose.

Spaces don't have to elaborate or fixed. They can begin as a happy burst of a playful tune, like the one Koops had with her daughter on the way home, a moment to quell tears when comforting an upset child, the spontaneous and raucous banging out a rhythm on pots or pans, or a formal space filled with noisemakers from toy keyboards, microphones and instruments (horns and shakers), and CD and MP3 players.

Like parents modeling reading, Koops found the same is true in learning music: "Children learn that 'musicking' is a natural part of our lives."

No operatic skills needed. "Even if mom or dad sings out off key, it's okay," assures Koops. "Children learn they do not have be perfect or polished to enjoy singing or playing an instrument."

For parents, it isn't just learning the latest Barney hits, but sharing their music interests, from classical to jazz to religious.

Through her research in music education, Koops has set out to make music more meaningful for children and empower parents with ways to make it happen.

Over four years, she worked with parents on creating these fixed, emotional or temporal spaces. Teachers in the classroom also can adopt these music spaces in the classroom.

One family did a variety of musical exercises. Some were incorporated into the family's routines and others were free, unstructured musical playtime for children to experiment.

Koops advises parents to take "cues from what your child likes."

She says some children like to make music alone, while others like to be in the middle of a family sing-along. Some children are conductors, even at a young age, and like to direct the music activities as part of their development.

Parents need to balance participating in the activity from taking control away from the child, she says. You know you've possibly done the latter, she says, if the child loses interest in the activity.

But the message she hopes that parents and teachers take away from all of this is that music is important, and it starts young, Koops says.

 "Rooming in," keeping mother and her newborn in the same room 24/7 to encourage breastfeeding has been a popular initiative of The WHO/UNICEF Baby Friendly Hospital. A new review from The Cochrane Library finds some evidence that it does support breastfeeding, at least in the short term.

Using randomized controlled trials, the authors wanted to know if "rooming in" resulted in a longer duration of either "exclusive" or occasional breastfeeding up to at least six months of age.

"We really wanted to reassess the essential evidence, and in our minds, hoped to support the WHO recommendation," explained lead author Sharifah Halimah Jaafar, M.D., of the obstetrics and gynecology department at KPJ Ipoh Specialist Hospital in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.

The researchers initially considered 23 reports from 19 potential trials and identified only one that met specifications. It showed that the breastfeeding rate at four days after birth, before hospital discharge, was much lower in the mother-child group with separate care versus the rooming-in group. That trial, however, didn't provide evidence for breastfeeding for a longer period, even though early mother-infant continuous contact is known to have many advantages.

Many studies support mother-infant rooming-in practice because of its many benefits, both short and long term, Jaafar said. These benefits include better mother-infant bonding, increased frequency of breastfeeding since it enables feeding on demand, and reduction in the rate of sudden infant death syndrome and of other newborn complications.

"Interaction is so important in the first few weeks of life, a 2007 study found early 'skin-to-skin' contact between mother and baby may also benefit breastfeeding outcomes and reduce infant crying," Jaafar said. "It's also well known that separation can reduce breastfeeding frequency as well as amount of milk produced," she added.

"Humans are the only mammals that routinely separate mothers and infants in the first few days of life," said Alison Stuebe, M.D., M.Sc. and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "The mother-baby dyad is meant to be together."

Even though the studies are limited, it's very likely that separating infants from their mothers after birth for institutional reasons may have adverse effects, said Stuebe. "Nevertheless, in clinical practice, health care providers need to support rooming in — in the context of each mother-baby dyad's needs."

Rooming in should be the norm, but flexibility is needed to individualize care when circumstances require it, she said.

"If a mother is completely exhausted after 40 hours of labor, five hours of pushing, and a C-section, refusing to allow the baby to go to the nursery because hospital policy mandates rooming in may not be in the best interest of mother or baby," Stuebe said. "Policies that enforce a clinical practice 'always' or 'never' often have unintended consequences."

— We all know that, for the most part, it's wrong to kill other people, it's inappropriate to wear jeans to bed, and we shouldn't ignore people when they are talking to us. We know these things because we're bonded to others through social norms — we tend to do things the same way people around us do them and, most importantly, the way in which they expect us to do them.

Text messaging may offer tweens a quick way to send notes to friends and family, but it could lead to declining language and grammar skills, according to researchers.