Peer Relationships in Early Childhood Education and Care brings together fresh perspectives and research about young children’s relationships. It examines children’s rights and well-being against a backdrop of increased social movement and migration, changing family structures and work practices, and the growing prevalence of education and care services for young children. With contributors from diverse cultural, geographical and disciplinary backgrounds, this edited collection shows how educators support children’s peer relationships and use these as a basis for enhancing social and cognitive development. Themes discussed include: conflicts and negotiations friendships and play group phenomena independence and interdependence identity and belonging peer relations and children with disabilities attuning adults to young children’s relationships. This book will be highly relevant for academics, researchers and students concerned with early childhood care and education, especially those interested in relating these issues on a global scale.

Peer Relationships in Early Childhood Education and Care brings together fresh perspectives and research about young children’s relationships. It examines children’s rights and well-being against a backdrop of increased social movement and migration, changing family structures and work practices, and the growing prevalence of education and care services for young children. With contributors from diverse cultural, geographical and disciplinary backgrounds, this edited collection shows how educators support children’s peer relationships and use these as a basis for enhancing social and cognitive development. Themes discussed include: conflicts and negotiations friendships and play group phenomena independence and interdependence identity and belonging peer relations and children with disabilities attuning adults to young children’s relationships. This book will be highly relevant for academics, researchers and students concerned with early childhood care and education, especially those interested in relating these issues on a global scale.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

An interdisciplinary group of researchers from developmental, clinical and educational backgrounds identify issues and present major findings on the effects of peer relationships in childhood and adolescence. They examine social behaviour, emotional development, school performance and other issues.

"The Culture of Child Care provides a much-needed integration of research pertaining to crucial aspects of early childhood development-- attachment in non-familial contexts, peer relations among ethnically and linguistically diverse children, and the developmental importance of child care contexts during early childhood"--

A psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues joins forces with a physician and bestselling author to tackle one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time -- peers replacing parents in the lives of our children. Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behaviour. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident -- as do the solutions. Hold On to Your Kids will restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. The concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth. Something has changed. One can sense it, one can feel it, just not find the words for it. Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They seem less likely to take their cues from adults, less inclined to please those in charge, less afraid of getting into trouble. Parenting, too, seems to have changed. Our parents seemed more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on us, for better or for worse. For many, parenting does not feel natural. Adults through the ages have complained about children being less respectful of their elders and more difficult to manage than preceding generations, but could it be that this time it is for real? -- from Hold On to Your Kids

While teachers value children's play, they often do not know how to guide that play to make it more educational. This volume reflects current research in the child development and early childhood education fields.