Impact of a social skills program on children's stress: A cluster randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Most preschool children in Western industrialized countries attend child care during the day while parents work. Studies suggest that child care may be stressful to young children, perhaps because they still lack the social skills to interact daily in a group setting away from parents. This gap in social abilities may be greater for children in lower-income families, who may face more adversity at home, with fewer resources and more social isolation. METHODS: We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 2013-2014 to test whether a social skills intervention led by early childhood educators within the child care center could reduce diurnal cortisol levels to more typical patterns expected of children this age. We randomized 19 public child care centers (n = 361 children) in low-income neighborhoods of Montreal, Canada, to either: 1) the Minipally program - intervention group (n = 10 centers; 186 children), or 2) waiting list - control group (n = 9 centers; 175 children). Saliva samples for cortisol levels were collected 3 times/day, pre- and post-implementation. The Minipally puppet program consists of 2 workshops/month for 8 months for the development of social skills and self-regulation in 2-5-year-olds, with reinforcement activities between workshops. Educators received 2-days' training and 12 h' supervision in Minipally. RESULTS: Linear mixed models for repeated measures revealed a significant interaction between intervention status and time of day of cortisol sampling (ß = -0.18, p = 0.04). The intervention group showed patterns of decreasing diurnal cortisol secretion (ß = -0.32, p < 0.01), whereas the control group showed increasing slopes (ß = 0.20, p < 0.01). Moreover, family income was a moderator; children in lower-income families benefited most from the intervention. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that a social skills training program, when integrated into a preschool education curriculum, can foster an environment more conducive to typical childhood patterns of cortisol secretion.

Compromiso Deportivo a través del Clima Motivacional creado por madre, padre y entrenador en jóvenes futbolistas / Sport commitment via the motivational climate created by mother, father and coach in young football players / Compromisso desportivo através do clima motivacional criado pela mãe, pai e treinador em jovens futebolistas

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo identificar la relación entre el compromiso deportivo y el clima motivacional percibido por jóvenes practicantes de fútbol, de su madre, padre y entrenador. Los participantes fueron 913 jugadores de fútbol entre 10 y 14 a.os (M: 12.2 DE: 1.3). Los instrumentos utilizados fueron las versiones en español del Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sport (MCSYS), el Parents Initiated Motivational Questionnaire (PIMCQ-2) y el Sport Commitment Questionnaire -SCQe-. A partir de los resultados y análisis de correlación y regresión lineal, se puede apreciar la importancia que cumplen las madres, padres y entrenadores (de manera diferenciada) a la hora de generar compromiso deportivo y as. evitar abandono, por lo que es fundamental considerarlos e integrarlos en el trabajo práctico

This study aimed to identify the relationship between sport commitment and motivational climate perceived by young football players, their mother, father and coach. 913 football players aged 10 to 14 years (M: 12.2 SD: 1.3) took part. The instruments used were Spanish versions of the Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sport (MCSYS), the Parents Initiated Motivational Questionnaire (PIMCQ-2) and the Sport Commitment Questionnaire (SCQ-e). From the results and correlation and linear regression analysis, we can see the importance of mothers, fathers and coaches (each in a different way) when generating sport commitment and, therefore, avoid drop-outs, so it is essential to consider and integrate them into practical work

O presente estudo teve como objectivo identificar a relação entre o compromisso desportivo e o clima motivacional percebido por jovenspraticantes de futebol, mãe, pai e treinador. Os participantes foram 913 jogadores de futebol com idades compreendidas entre os 10 e os 14 anos (M:12.2 DP: 1.3). Os instrumentos utilizados foram as versões espanholas do Motivational Climate Scale for Youth Sport(MCSYS), do Parents InitiatedMotivational Questionnaire(PIMCQ-2) e do Sport Commitment Questionnaire-SCQe-. A partir dos resultados e análises de correlação e regressãolinear, pode-se constatar a importância que têm as mães, pais e treinadores (de forma diferenciada) no que respeita ao desenvolvimento do compromissodesportivo e assim evitar o abandono, pelo que é fundamental considerá-los e integrá-los no trabalho aplicado

[Psychotherapeutically Competent Child Guidance-General Framework and Legal Foundations]. / Psychotherapeutisch kompetente Erziehungsberatung - ihre Rahmenbedingungen und rechtlichen Grundlagen.

Assistances in education are pedagogical and therapeutic benefits connected with it. For child guidance as an assistance in education therefore psychotherapeutic competence is constitutive. The article describes the professional and legal framework of a psychotherapy in child guidance. It specifies on the one hand the composition of the multi disciplinary team (including child and youth psychotherapists and psychological psychotherapists) and the additional therapeutic qualifications acquired by the skilled employees. On the other hand it traces the judicial border between a medical psychotherapy with its scientifically recognised psychotherapy procedures and methods and a psychotherapy in child guidance. The applicability of the new law on the rights of patients with its requirements on a contract governing medical treatment (standards of medical specialists, duty to provide information, information provided for self-determination as well as documentation) on child guidance is discussed as well. The author argues for the preservation of psychotherapeutic competence in child guidance as a benefit sui generis and sees precisely in its therapeutic competence its specific contribution to the advancement of the assistances in education.

[Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Educational Counseling]. / Tiefenpsychologische fundierte Psychotherapie in der Erziehungsberatung.

The attempts to differentiate, separate and draw lines between counseling, educational counseling and psychotherapy are fundamentally flawed. There are no clear distinctions between these areas with a view to the techniques, procedures and methods used. In the context of counseling psychotherapeutic interventions are also necessary to overcome the problems. This will be shown in three case studies on the grounds of the following principles of psychodynamic psychotherapy: unconscious conflicts - defence/resistance - transference/countertransference - clarification/confrontation/interpretation.

[Children's Aggressive Behaviour and Therapeutic Interventions on the Parental Couple Level]. / Aggressives Verhalten von Kindern und Interventionen auf der elterlichen Paarebene.

Parents go to see child guidance counselling services for many different reasons. Behavioural problems or rather enraged or aggressive behaviour of children and adolescents towards their siblings or parents is a frequent issue in counselling practice. The current article takes a closer look at the range of problems around defiance, anger and aggression from a developmental and systemic point of view. The meaning of these negative affects within the family system is elaborated. Empirical studies show a clear connection between children's problem behaviour and frequent and destructive interparental conflict. So called spill-over-effects play a crucial role in explaining this connection. From a systemic perspective thus the child is seen as a symptom carrier, which shifts the focus of counselling on the interaction between parents as well. Consequently, family therapeutic sessions on the couple level are often indicated. Do parents succeed in constructively solving their conflicts, typically the aggressive behaviour of the children is reduced, too. On the basis of a compound single case such a process is illustrated.

Problem-specific racial/ethnic disparities in pathways from maltreatment exposure to specialty mental health service use for youth in child welfare.

The authors examined racial/ethnic differences in pathways from maltreatment exposure to specialty mental health service use for youth in contact with the Child Welfare system. Participants included 1,600 non-Hispanic White, African American, and Latino youth (age 4-14) who were the subjects of investigations for alleged maltreatment and participated in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Maltreatment exposure, internalizing, and externalizing problems were assessed at baseline and subsequent specialty mental health service use was assessed 1 year later. Maltreatment exposure predicted both internalizing and externalizing problems across all racial/ethnic groups, but non-Hispanic White youth were the only group for whom maltreatment exposure was linked with subsequent service use via both internalizing and externalizing problem severity. Only externalizing problems predicted subsequent service use for African American youth and this association was significantly stronger relative to non-Hispanic White youth. Neither problem type predicted service use for Latinos. Future research is needed to understand how individual-, family-, and system-level factors contribute to racial/ethnic differences in pathways linking maltreatment exposure to services via internalizing/externalizing problems.

[Educational guidance for families with mentally ill parents: a bridge between youth welfare services and psychiatric care system]. / Erziehungsberatung für Familien mit einem psychisch erkrankten Elternteil--eine Brücke zwischen Jugendhilfe und Psychiatrie.

In the last fifteen years a lot of services were established to assist children and their mentally ill parents. To improve the preventive and therapeutic interventions in favour of these families, the cooperation between all the institutions involved has to be enhanced. Family counselling centers can play an important role as a link between the psychiatric care system and the youth welfare services. By transferring the psychiatric terminology to the families' everyday language, the counsellors help the parents and the children to share their experiences with the parental illness. To implement a consultation-hour in a psychiatric clinic is an example of how educational guidance can close the gap between the two systems and strengthen the cooperation.

[Support from a single source--transitions between child guidance and family center from their users' points of view]. / Hilfen aus einer Hand--Ubergänge zwischen Erziehungsberatung und Familienzentrum aus der Sicht ihrer Nutzer.

Integrated centers which contain preventive services for families in the form of a family center as well as a child guidance are described in literature as an innovative approach to address burdened audiences. Empirical evidence for this assumption is sparse, however. The advantages and disadvantages of such a center will be explored from the perspective of the visitors of the family center, the clients of the counselling center and families who visit both parts of the institute. Each part oft the center turns out to get a positive review and the integration offers an additional benefit. The high number of people with migration background reveals that this community gets a special attention.

[Kinderpsychodrama in a child guidance centre]. / Kinderpsychodrama in der Erziehungsberatung.

Kinderpsychodrama allows conflicts of children to become apparent in a specific sheltered environment. These conflicts often arise when children's needs for relationship, self esteem and self efficacy either are not sufficiently recognized by their caregivers and/or cannot be answered in a helpful way. This can lead to internalizing disorders like loss of self reliance, social fear, and depressive withdrawal on the one hand or to externalizing symptoms like oppositional, impulsive and aggressive behavior disorders on the other hand which endanger socio-emotional development. Kinderpsychodrama is seen to cushion children's dysfunctional conflict solutions and solve them with the therapists' help. Therapists realize the themes set on the scene during the play of the children's group; they mirror the scenes and encourage children to act in a different way making use of children's creativity during play as well as the support of the group. Children's chosen role serves as a secure base allowing them to find solutions for their conflicts. The development of each child as well as his/her themes becoming evident during the course of the group are made transparent to their parents during accompanying counseling sessions. We illustrate this therapeutic method by casuistics of our children therapy group.

["Helping ourselves": the Ludwigshafen multi-family training]. / "Wir helfen uns"--Das Ludwigshafener Multifamilientraining.

Eia Asen developed multi-family-therapy (MFT) in the context of pediatric psychiatric work with predominantly poor and marginalised families from very different cultural, religious, linguistic, and social traditions in inner-city London. This work began with families affected by globalisation, migration, segregation, criminality, and other adverse social and economic effects of Thatcherism. Asen replaced the expert-led diagnostics, patterns of illness and individual medical indication of the case-by-case based model of treatment with a systemic practice developed across decades together with a large multi-professional and multicultural team, which places the family, the social, economic, and educational contexts, as well as traditions and the every-day situations of children and their parents, at the centre of the support. MFT makes particular use of the mutual solidarity, willingness to help and competence of families in comparable situations. The article describes how the child-guidance service has transferred this concept of multi-family training to the outpatient (non-residential) educational support work of the Youth Welfare Department of Ludwigshafen, a medium-sized city with above average social risks. The successes of this pilot project across two-and-a-half years are encouraging and suggest the further development and expansion of this approach.

Habilidades sociales y de liderazgo en el trastorno por déficit de atención/ hiperactividad: relación con las capacidades cognitivo-atencionales / Social and leadership abilities in attention defi cit/hyperactivity disorder: relation with cognitiveattentional capacities

Objetivo. Analizamos las habilidades sociales y de liderazgo en niños con TDAH y su relación con la ejecución de tareas que implican atención y autocontrol. Material y métodos. Análisis retrospectivo clínico de 170 pacientes con TDAH. Se evaluaron las habilidades sociales y de liderazgo medido a través del sistema de evaluación de la conducta de niños y adolescentes (BASC) y su relación con diferentes test neuropsicológicos, incluyendo la escala de Wechsler para niños-IV (WISC-IV) y el test de ejecución continuada de Conners (CPT II).Resultados. En el análisis diferencial entre el cociente intelectual, los resultados de los test y su relación con las puntuaciones del BASC, se observó una relación estadísticamente significativa entre la capacidad atencional esperada para la inteligencia del paciente, y la puntuación en los apartados habilidades sociales (según el BASC rellenado por madres y profesores) y de liderazgo (según todos los informadores).Conclusiones. Las dificultades atencionales están íntimamente relacionadas con la competencia social en pacientes con TDAH, bien por una relación causa-efecto directa o por un sustrato disejecutivo común en este trastorno (AU)

Objective. We have analyzed social and leadership abilities in children with ADHD and their relationship with execution of tasks involving sustained attention and inhibitory control. Patients and methods. A retrospective analysis of 170patients with ADHD was performed. We evaluated leadership and social abilities, measured through the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) and their relations with the results of different neuropsychological tests, including Wechsler scale for children (WISC-IV) and Conners' continuous performance (CPT II). Results. In the differential analysis between the IQ, results of the tests and their relation to BASC scores, a statistically significant relation was observed between attentional capacity expected according to the patient’s intelligence and social skills scores (according to BASC filled out by mothers and teachers) and leadership (according to all informants) sections. Conclusiones. Attention al difficulties are closely related to social competence in patients with ADHD, either by a direct cause-effect relationship or a shared dysexecutive substrate of this disorder (AU)

Mental health in low-to-moderate risk preterm, low birth weight, and small for gestational age children at 4 to 5 years: the role of early maternal parenting.

OBJECTIVES: The majority of children born preterm, with low birth weight, or small for gestational age are born with low-to-moderate risk (LTM), yet most research focuses on the high-risk group. Little is known about whether children with LTM perinatal risk are at greater risk for mental health problems, or what the role of early maternal parenting is in determining these outcomes. METHOD: Longitudinal data were from a large nationally representative Australian cohort of 5,000 children, aged 0 to 1, 2 to 3, and 4 to 5 years of age. Participants were 354 children with LTM perinatal risk born at 33 to 36 weeks, with birth weight 1,501 to 2,499 grams, or born between the first and 10th percentiles for gestational age; and 2,461 children in the normal birth weight, term comparison group. Child mental health was measured by mother-report on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Parenting irritability, warmth, self-efficacy, maternal separation anxiety, and overprotective parenting were measured when children were 0 to 1 and 2 to 3 years of age. RESULTS: Parents in the LTM perinatal risk group were more likely to experience parenting difficulties on one of eight parenting measures (irritable parenting at age 0-1 year) when adjusting for socio-demographic differences (odds ratio = 1.43; 95% confidence interval = 1.05, 1.95, p < .02). This group difference was no longer apparent by age 2 to 3 years. Compared with healthy-term peers, there were small increases in Emotional Symptoms and Total Difficulties on the SDQ for the LTM perinatal risk group at age 4 to 5 years. When accounting for maternal-specific and socio-demographic factors, LTM perinatal risk group continued to predict Emotional Symptoms but not Total Difficulties at age 4 to 5 years. CONCLUSIONS: Children with LTM perinatal risk were at a small increased risk for emotional difficulties but did not differ significantly from other children of similar social backgrounds in their risk for generalized mental health problems. These findings support a biological and socio-economic, rather than parenting, pathway to psychological risk in children born with LTM perinatal risk.

Combating school bullying through developmental guidance for positive youth development and promoting harmonious school culture.

Bullying and violence, which can bring detrimental effects, are situations which young people have to face in their process of development. Though school bullying has been a spreading and explicit problem in Hong Kong schools, most of the programs or guidelines dealing with the problem lack citywide, recognized initiatives and the effectiveness of these programs is unknown due to the lack of evaluation. The present paper discusses preventing school bullying from a developmental guidance perspective, using the positive youth development paradigm and promoting the values of harmony and forgiveness at the whole-school level to cultivate a harmonious school culture as a way of combating school bullying.

How well do evidence-based universal parenting programs teach parents about psychological maltreatment?: a program review.

OBJECTIVE: Psychological maltreatment (PM) is a widespread form of child maltreatment both in high-risk and maltreating families as well as in the general population of parents, yet there are no intervention programs that target it directly. The current study was designed as the first step in a larger program of research concerning educating parents about PM. In this study we evaluated the content of universal parenting programs to assess whether they include content on PM. Three questions were addressed: (1) Which types, if any, of PM were included in the content of these programs? (2) Which programs, if any, have content about each of the types of PM? (3) What are the implications for the development of PM curricula for parents? METHOD: Ten evidence-based, manualized, universal parenting programs identified from SAMHSA or a comparable model program registry were rated on how well their content covered 18 types of psychological maltreatment (PM), as defined by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, APSAC (Bingelli, Hart, & Brassard, 2001; Hart & Brassard, 1995). Each type of PM was coded along several dimensions which resulted in two summary scores: (1) Does the program contain content designed to teach parents what not to do in regards to the 18 psychologically maltreating behaviors and (2) Does the program contain content designed to teach parents what to do instead? RESULTS: Content related to most PM types were not included in the curricula, especially regarding "what not to do" and not one program was rated as having content related to teaching all 18 types of PM. CONCLUSIONS: Existing parenting programs do not currently cover content for teaching community parents about psychological maltreatment.

Los niños son sociólogos / Children are sociologists

Investigaciones recientes han mostrado que los niños pequeños son muy sensibles a las características de las personas de las que obtienen o reciben información. Prefieren buscar y respaldar la información de los informantes con los que ya están familiarizados o de los que han demostrado ser fiables en el pasado. En este artículo se presenta una serie de trabajos en esta línea de investigación en la que se pone a prueba la sensibilidad de los niños al estatus grupal del informante. A través de distintos procedimientos se ha encontrado, de manera consistente, que cuando los niños de Educación Infantil deben elegir entre dos afirmaciones diferentes, una de ellas propuesta por dos o tres personas, y la otra, por una única persona, los niños están de acuerdo con la mayoría. Este resultado es especialmente evidente cuando los miembros de la mayoría pertenecen al mismo grupo racial que el niño, más que cuando pertenecen a otro grupo racial. Además, este sesgo hacia la mayoría se generaliza a los individuos que la componen. Por ejemplo, cuando los niños se enfrentan a un conflicto entre dos informantes, uno que pertenecía anteriormente a la mayoría y uno que no, se inclinan a seguir al miembro de la mayoría. En consecuencia, se puede decir que los niños son sociólogos astutos que se fijan atentamente en las relaciones entre individuos, especialmente en las relaciones de acuerdo y desacuerdo (AU)

Recent research has established that young children are quite sensitive to the characteristics of individual informants. They prefer to seek and endorse information from informants with whom they are al-ready familiar or from informants who have proven reliable in the past. We report an elaboration of this line of research in which children’s sensitivity to an informant’s group status is probed. A consistent finding across various procedures is that when preschool children are presented with conflicting claims, one claim made by two or three people and another made by a single person, they agree with the majority. This form of endorsement is especially apparent when members of the majority belong to the same racial group as the child rather than a different racial group. Moreover, this bias toward the majority is extended to individual members of the majority. For example, when children are presented with conflicting claims by two informants, one who previously belonged to the majority and one who did not, they are inclined to endorse the member of the majority. By implication, young children are astute sociologists. They take careful note of the relationships among individuals, particularly relationships of agreement or disagreement (AU)