Biomental Child Development: Perspectives on Psychology and Parenting coins the novel term "biomental" to denote the interaction of the actual and gradually integrating body and mind from conception through development over infancy, childhood, and adolescence. This innovative approach presents a vision that recasts descriptions and explanations of child development to capture the inter-connectedness of the physical and the emotional experience. This book provides the reader with a basic understanding of normal or typical child, adolescent, and adult psychology that is life-positive and energetic. Concrete details--charted chronologically and thematically--of development are outlined stressing both their overlapping biological and psychological significance. In addition to a clear and succinct overview of child development in one user-friendly volume, concrete parenting strategies and numerous examples are given throughout. Time tested theories, modern problems (for example, "bullying" and toxic electronic media use), and pragmatic parenting techniques are integrated, using current findings from psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. Parents, grandparents, and other caregivers will learn techniques to help parents achieve a working understanding of child development and effective skills for each stage. The biomental perspective emphasizes that positive parenting encompasses a diversification of styles that characterize differences among both children and caregivers. Biomental Child Development highlights children's emotional development and the all too often neglected role of fathers. Bold attention is given to considerations of gender, especially fathers as males, as well as the emotions of envy, greed, jealousy, and competitiveness as they influence development and parenting. How these apparently negative emotions may be recognized and used constructively to enhance development is discussed in detail. This new understanding and approach to child development and parenting is a welcome addition to the resources on parenting currently available.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

As a developmental psychologist with a strong interest in children's re sponse to the physical environment, I take particular pleasure in writing a foreword to the present volume. It provides impressive evidence of the con cern that workers in environmental psychology and environmental design are displaying for the child as a user of the designed environment and indi cates a recognition of the need to apply theory and findings from develop mental and environmental psychology to the design of environments for children. This seems to me to mark a shift in focus and concern from the earlier days of the interaction between environmental designers and psy chologists that occurred some two decades ago and provided the impetus for the establishment of environmental psychology as a subdiscipline. Whether because children-though they are consumers of designed environments are not the architect's clients or because it seemed easier to work with adults who could be asked to make ratings of environmental spaces and comment on them at length, a focus on the child in interaction with en vironments was comparatively slow in developing in the field of environ ment and behavior. As the chapters of the present volume indicate, that situation is no longer true today, and this is a change that all concerned with the well-being and optimal functioning of children will welcome.

The focus of this Element is on the environment and how it is implicated in children's development.A very broad array of social and physical features connected to children's home life and to the neighborhoods where children live, including multiple aspects of parenting, housing characteristics and the increased prevalence of media in daily life are addressed.Attention is also given to the broader social, economic, and geographic contexts in which children live, such as neighborhood surroundings and conditions in less developed countries.There is a focus on how various aspects of the home context (e.g., crowding) and key parental characteristics, such as mental illness and substance abuse problems, affect the behavior of parents. Consideration also given to how various forms of chaos and instability present challenges for parents and children and how those circumstances are implicated in both children's development and caregiver behavior.

This fascinating book examines theories of children's perceptions of space and place and explores how these theories are applied to the world of children. The focus is on children in large real world spaces; places that children live in, explore and learn from. An international team of authors compare the experiences of children from different cultures and backgrounds. This book will appeal t o environmental and developmental psychologists and geographers, and also to planners by linking research on children's understandings and on their daily lives to recommendations for practice.