“Positive Parenting” refers to a fairly broad range of approaches and strategies that share a core view that children thrive when they are respected and guided with sensitivity. The term contrasts with ideas about child rearing that focus on what is negative or “bad” in children and to discipline approaches that rely on […]
parenting
Emotions: What They Are and What They Do For Us
Emotions are complex phenomena Emotions involve a subjective reaction to something in the environment and we experience them as either pleasant or unpleasant. It’s pleasant to feel happy or interested, but not so nice to feel frightened or angry. There is more than a century and a half of research in a number of fields […]
Secondary Emotions
A new set of feelings emerges during early childhood called secondary or complex emotions They differ form the primary emotions (distress, disgust, interest, happiness or contentment, sadness, fear, anger and surprise) in several ways. Most importantly, they aren’t just biologically given, rather they are learned and require both cognitive and social information. Sometimes these are […]
You don’t have to take on your child’s pains.
You don’t have to take on your child’s pains: In fact …. you shouldn’t! This morning I got a text from one of my daughters, who’s away at college. “Are you around? I want to talk to you. I have a problem.” Wow. Nothing can make a parent drop what she’s doing faster. A couple […]
Required Paternity Leave??
A French think tank, the Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Économique (the French Economic Monitoring Center, acronym OFCE) recently suggested that new fathers be required to take paternity leave. Their reasoning is interesting and touches on two areas. From an economic perspective, they suggest that requiring fathers to take time off would help reduce the impact […]
Attachment Part 4: Infants and Beyond
The Long Term Influence of Attachment Patterns As children grow older the quality of their attachment to their parent influences how much they trust their parents. Parents are an important source of knowledge, advice and information for children and adolescents. Teens and older children are far more likely to rely on and trust parents when […]
The Development of Attachment in Infants, part 1
Overview Attachment refers to the special feeling of connection older infants come to have for a particular person who cares for them. The deep sense of love and commitment that parents feel for their infant is called a “bond.” You may want to read our introductory article on attachment and how developmental scientists have come […]
Book Review: The Gardener and the Carpenter
Gopnik, Alison, (2016). The Gardener and The Carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN: 978-0-374-22970-2 Alison Gopnik is a professor of Psychology at U C Berkeley and has been an active researcher and instructor in the developmental sciences […]
Role Transitions: Becoming a Parent
Moving through life involves shifting through different roles, taking on new ones and stepping out of old ones. You are someone’s child, you may be a sibling, you may be an athlete, a musician, an artist, a tinkerer, someone who enjoys social media, someone who meditates. You were once a student, but you may no […]
Imperfect Parents
It is absolutely impossible to be a perfect parent. It’s even impossible to know what a perfect parent would be. Research shows that children thrive with parents’ love, nurturance, consistency and limits. There is also abundant evidence that having knowledge about children’s development enables parents to have appropriate expectations, greater competence and more confidence. This […]