This report presents six case studies of children with difficult temperament whose parents were exposed to brief lectures and popular press parenting books focusing on temperament. Interviews and observations indicated that parent and child cognitions and behaviors underwent changes much like those that occurred during more traditional clinical…

Discusses diagnostic and functional classification, assessment, and treatment approaches for school refusal behavior. Diagnostic classification focuses on separation anxiety disorder, specific phobia, social phobia, depression, and truancy. Functional classification focuses on the maintaining consequences of the behavior, such as avoidance of…

Responds to a letter from a parent facing serious problems in putting her child to sleep at night. Suggests that a child's eagerness to spend as much time as possible with his or her parents can create problems at bedtime. Proposes increasing shared time, and putting the child to bed, but handing over to the child responsibility for sleeping. (AA)

Assessed children's adjustment at clinic intake and six months later, and sampled children's saliva before and after a conflict-oriented parent-child interaction. Increases in salivary cortisol predicted children's internalizing problem behaviors and anxiety disorders at follow-up. High adrenocortical reactivity at intake and follow-up was…

Demonstrates an alternative method (nondirective child-centered therapy) in treating enuresis and encopresis resulting from emotional disturbances. Examines various etiologies and approaches to treating these conditions. Provides a case study example. Claims that professionals must differentiate between primary and secondary occurrences of these…

Includes a review of known and potential risk factors related to violence in schools, followed by an examination of several prevention programs developed to address the problem. These programs typically do not address specific risk factors, are of short duration, and do not contain an evaluation component. Proposes more comprehensive violence…

Judicial decisions have set boundaries on the ability of educational institutions to write rules governing student conduct and have defined the necessary components of a fair procedure to be used to assess disciplinary sanctions. This legal evolution affirms the respect shown students as citizens of the academic community. (Author)

This introductory article discusses the requirement under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that practitioners being using functional behavioral assessment (FBA) to develop positive behavioral interventions for children with problem behavior and identified disabilities. The definition of FBA is summarized, along with following…

Investigated how conflict management of boys in Head Start related to disruptive behavior and peer rejection in the Fall and Spring of the preschool year. Found that boys who engaged in higher rates of conflict and exhibited greater aggression and avoidance during peer conflicts tended to be rejected by peers and perceived as disruptive by…

This prospective study found that self-reported attitudes toward peer aggression among 403 middle school students were both internally consistent and stable over time (7 months). Aggressive attitudes were correlated with four outcome criteria for aggressive behavior: student self-report of peer aggression; peer and teacher nominations of bullying;…

Twenty suggestions for building community and empowering students stress the role of community in facilitating inclusion, influence, and openness. Suggestions include mapping the community, finding common threads, conducting community interviews, matching compelling literature with student characteristics, conducting classroom meetings, providing…

This article presents a detailed example of how faculty and staff at one middle school implemented team-based functional behavioral assessment (FBA) planning procedures with a student exhibiting recurring minor problems. Insets list tasks and considerations for an FBA, a sample formatted antecedent-behavior-consequence summary of team member…

Provides a wide range of information for 100 articles published from January 1980 through July 1999 that describe the functional assessment (FA) of behavior in school settings. Results indicate that FA is useful for ascertaining the variables that control high-frequency problem behaviors in students with low-incidence disabilities and for…

Scores for academic performance, adaptive functioning, DSM-oriented scales, and empirically based scales on the Teacher's Report Form were compared for demographically similar samples of 7- to 16-year-old students assessed in 1981, 1989, and 1999. Problem scores increased from 1981 to 1989 and decreased from 1989 to 1999, with all effect sizes…

This article reviews research on the use of strategies by children with autism to repair communicative breakdowns and discusses the possible links between communicative breakdowns and the emergence of problem behavior in children with autism. Strategies for decreasing risk of communicative breakdown and teaching repair strategies are considered.…