The Importance of infant attachment

One of the first key developmental crisis for humans is to attach to a caregiver, primarily a mother. Sometimes that secure attachment doesn't occur, and then there are toddlers, children, teenagers and even adults still seeking for that security. New research found that infants who spent one night a week (or more) away from their primary caregiver (typically a mother) were less attached and therefore have an insecure attachment.

Establishing Trust With Your Infant

According to Barbara and Philip Newman infants (birth to two years old) experience the psychsocial crisis of Trust vs Mistrust. A psychosocial crisis is a predictable life tension during a certain stage in life. Psychosical in this sense draws to the point that the crisis is due to societal and cultural influences as well as psychological. Crisis in this sense refers to a normal stressor instead of an extraordinary event.

It is a crisis, in that an infant will either develop trust like attributes or will develop attributes of mistrust. It is amazing that it is at this young age that this is when trust is first developed.

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War On Boys, Part 2

From AMCAP & Deseret News

In the middle of a crowd of kids waiting for the bus in front of a westside middle school, one of the girls drops her book bag and two boys scramble to grab it, nearly bumping heads. She's 14 going on 17, all makeup-enhanced eyes and curled hair and dazzling smile. The boys are more like 14 going on 12, gangly and haphazardly dressed — and eager to get her attention.

They are the prize in the war on boys.
Read the full article at Deseret News.

War On Boys, Part 1

From AMCAP & Deseret News:

This is Jared just days before his 15th birthday: He has mostly B's and C's on his report card, but the lone F is a parent-enraging reminder that math's not his thing. He doesn't get it and he's not receiving a lot of help. He likes basketball, video games and a girl named Libby, because she's "hot," though he can't tell you much about her or how she feels about things, including him. At school he is alternately bored and lost. He'd rather play God of War than study and it was that video game his parents used as a reward to get him to bring up his grades last semester, though he couldn't get the math mark to budge.

In eighth grade, he figured he'd go to college. By ninth grade, he was leaning more toward a technical school. And midway through 10th grade in his northern Utah high school, he shrugs and says he doesn't know. Maybe he'll get a job or join the military.

Read the full article at Deseret News.

Births Outside Marriage

The Association for Mormon Counselors & Psychotherapists, usually a dormant membership (except around conference season), has been rather active in sharing news sources around the morphing society.  This is the first in a few articles they have posted on their site that I would like to share.

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It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.
Read the full article at the New York Times website.

Why Doesn't Spanking Work

A professor from my Human Ecology days that I admire has made news again.  Joan Durrant has recently been involved in a study that was released that looked at why spanking just doesn't work.  Have a read of the article here.

Brothers & Sisters: How Our Siblings Make Us Who We Are

There was a great article in the National Post (October 22) about how our relationship with our siblings make us who we are.

The author makes some great points about how the dynamics of life's longest relationship influence us as we get older.  In a sense that how we learn to interact in the playroom of our own house is how we will interact in the playroom of life.

The article ends, hollywood-like, that the author still has long lasting relationships with their siblings.  But what I always ask is just because someone still has a relationship with their sibling, does that make them nice? Of course not.  We know siblings fight.  We know personalities clash.  We know people can be toxic.  Sometimes I feel that it takes even more effort to de-friend a sibling due to toxicity than it does to maintain a relationship. So just because someone is or isn't friends with their siblings is the litmus test for being nice, it is the coping mechanisms developed, and the reactions to stress that make someone nice.

Nonetheless, as the title suggests "siblings make us who we are" despite the quality of the relationship.

How Birth Order Can Influence Childhood Development

Have you ever wondered if the order you were born in impacted your development?  Do you think the birth order of your children impacts them?  What do you think would have happened if you were the oldest or youngest in your family instead of your current position?

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