This paper synthesizes a variety of perspectives, with an emphasis on attachment theory, on the agency/communion polarity as first defined by David Bakan (1966). The question researchers sought to answer was whether or not agency/communion is best approached as a polarity--opposite and opposing forces, forces in the personality which have often…

Emotion scripts provide children with culturally meaningful emotional experiences and plans of action for managing feelings and the circumstances surrounding emotional experiences. In an effort to understand how developing children acquire these emotion scripts, two studies described here investigated how children deploy emotion scripts to manage…

While once thought to be oblivious to parental violence, child witnesses to parental violence are now considered to be at risk as victims of both chronic trauma and psychological maltreatment. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among childrens' parental violence history, cognitive skills, processing of social information,…

Although children who live in environments of violence and poverty are frequently the subjects of psychoanalysis, much less attention is given to the fears and anxieties of children from more fortunate families. In the case of one San Francisco Bay Area school, the two head teachers in the kindergarten class were going to be absent for two…

This study examined the social competence and academic achievement of 248 children who were enrolled in public schools in Washington, D.C. Of the children in the 77% recovered sample, 96 percent were African American, 68 percent had attended both prekindergarten and kindergarten, and 32 percent had attended kindergarten only. The prekindergartens…

This book discusses the emotional experiences of young children and explores the connections between emotions, socialization, and healthy relationships. The introductory chapter discusses the nature of emotion, emotional and social competence, and the study of young children's emotions. Chapter 2, "Emotional Expressiveness," describes…

This study examined possible solutions to the paradox faced by college administrators as they try to increase diversity in the student body while minimizing tensions. The study used 1994 data on 2,050 second-year college students from the National Study of Student Learning, a longitudinal investigation of factors influencing student learning and…

The increase in the number of infants and toddlers experiencing nonparental care creates an urgent need for the insights of theorists, clinicians, and researchers. These insights can help caretakers promote the mental health of infants and toddlers. Although caregivers usually provide sufficient support of babies' cognitive development, they may…

The potential for the coherent integration of the cognitive and affective aspects of student development through a constructivist approach is discussed in this paper. Educators should be concerned with students' learning with regard to developing values and characteristics, especially respect and responsibility. The obstacles that hinder the…

This practicum attempted to modify the antisocial behavior of 25 early adolescent children classified as having emotional disturbances by a training program to facilitate the development of affective skills in their mothers. The 8-month training program involved discussion groups, social activities, and individual and/or small group meetings with…

This paper focuses on pre-adolescent children and how they cope with parental divorce. It considers the case of split custody, more common among older children than younger ones, in which one parent has custody of one or more of the children and the other parent has custody of one or more of the siblings. It focuses on the sibling relationship and…

The thesis of this self-help book is that four personality aspects (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual) must be balanced if individuals are to become adults. Because each person is an individual personality that is out of balance in some way, growth is a life-long process. The initial 2 chapters, Growth And Growing Up, define what it…

This study surveyed underachieving gifted students and their parents in order to: determine the extent and sources of positive and negative attitudes toward educational acceleration, compare the views of parents and students for congruence, and compare the perceptions of successful students and their parents with the views of identified…

This study addressed the question of whether there are individual differences between children in the development of their understandings of social interactions. A total of 48 children between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age were engaged in telling stories with sequences about nice or mean peers. Children acted out stories with dolls and answered…

The newsletter of the California Association for the Gifted includes the following brief articles on parenting: "Your Challenge, Their Lives" (Barry Ziff); "Courage to Be Who I Am, Unafraid" (Elizabeth Meckstroth); "Attribution: A Key to Encouraging More Responsible Behavior in the Gifted" (Saundra Sparling); "A Parent's Perspective" (Carolyn…