Far from egocentric, infants and toddlers advance significantly in their understanding of others' feelings, desires, goals, intentions, preferences, and views during the first 2 years of life. In so doing, they establish the foundation for later social and emotional understanding. This article surveys those accomplishments, speculates about how…

This article was excerpted from the author's "Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life", published in 2007 by "ZERO TO THREE." In the "Families Through Time" longitudinal study, James P. McHale and a number of colleagues met with expectant couples and then followed the families when the infants were 3…

For thousands of years military children have been faced with many challenges that result from the combat deployment of their parents. These challenges are likely to be particularly burdensome to infants, toddlers, and preschoolers because of their emotional and cognitive immaturity, their reliance on magical thinking, and their dependence upon…

The Executive Committee at "ZERO TO THREE" created a Task Force on Culture and Development to deepen our understanding of the role of culture in child development and to guide the organization through a self-assessment process to better understand how staff and board members address the issue of culture in their work. The task force's literature…

Pediatric primary care provides an enormous window of opportunity to offer families information and support on their child's social-emotional well-being and on their growth as a family in a nonstigmatizing environment. With new technology, such as the Internet, and advances in the scientific study of early childhood development, parents face an…

This article focuses on the remarkable story of a deeply disorganized child, Rachel, and her experience in foster care with Janet and Paul Mann, founders of the Children's Ark. Rachel and her mother were referred to the Ark, an innovative intervention center for at-risk families, when Rachel was 10 months old. After 11 months at the Ark, Rachel…

Community-based parenting education programs have a unique role to play in the promotion of infant mental health. In contrast to classes that seek to accelerate child development, the author describes enrichment programs that promote parent-child bonding and healthy social and emotional development. The ParentSource program was developed on the…

Heckman et al. discuss how cost-benefit analysis of prekindergarten education programs demonstrates that the highest per child benefits stem from programs that focus on economically disadvantaged children. Indeed, studies have shown that these children make significant gains in cognition, social-emotional development, and educational performance…

This article describes innovative service delivery models and clinical strategies that support the social-emotional development of young children and their families in the pediatric primary care setting. By understanding the trends affecting well-child care, early childhood providers will be better equipped to partner with their pediatric…

The ZERO TO THREE Policy Center has three areas of focus: good health, strong families, and positive early learning experiences. Effective policies must promote healthy functioning in all domains, including cognitive, physical, and social and emotional development. Comprehensive services are essential to meeting the needs of very young children…

This special issue focuses on infant and toddler child care. The title article, by J. Ronald Lally and others, examines the sources of problems in the management and planning of quality child care. It also explores six key components of early group experience: group size, quality of the physical environment, primary caregiving assignments,…

The five articles in this newsletter theme issue focus on the development of socioemotional and communication skills in infants and toddlers through the Partners in Parenting Education (PIPE) program. The first article, "The Partners in Parenting Education Program: A New Option in Parent Education" (Perry M. Butterfield), describes the program's…

The Kids First program at the University of Arkansas Medical School (UAMS) is an outgrowth of the Infant Health and Development Program, a randomized trial of an early intervention approach for premature, low birth weight children, which showed that intensive intervention had significant initial benefits in the cognitive development and behavior…