Affective disorder in the parents of a clinic sample of children with anxiety disorders

Background: Family history studies in adults reveal strong familiality for the anxiety disorders with some specificity. The aim of the current study was to establish whether there was an elevated rate of anxiety disorders in the parents of children with anxiety disorders, and whether there was intergenerational specificity in the form of disorder. Methods: The mental state of a clinic sample of 85 children with anxiety disorder and their parents was systematically assessed, together with a comparison sample of 45 children with no current disorder and their parents. Results: Compared to the rate of anxiety disorder amongst parents of comparison children, the rate of current anxiety disorder in mothers of anxious children was significantly raised, as was the lifetime rate of anxiety disorder for both mothers and fathers. The mothers of children with generalised anxiety disorder, social phobia, specific phobia and separation anxiety disorder all had raised lifetime rates of the corresponding disorder, but also raised rates of others disorders. Limitations: Only 60% of the fathers of the anxious children were assessed. Conclusions: Strong familiality of anxiety disorders was confirmed, especially between child and maternal anxiety disorder. All child anxiety disorders were associated with several forms of anxiety disorder in the mother. Some specificity in the form of anxiety disorder in the child and the mother was apparent for social phobia and separation anxiety disorder. The findings have implications for the management of child anxiety. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interpretation of ambiguity in children: a prospective study of associations with anxiety and parental interpretations

Interpretation of ambiguity is consistently associated with anxiety in children, however, the temporal relationship between interpretation and anxiety remains unclear as do the developmental origins of interpretative biases. This study set out to test a model of the development of interpretative biases in a prospective study of 110 children aged 5–9 years of age. Children and their parents were assessed three times, annually, on measures of anxiety and interpretation of ambiguous scenarios (including, for parents, both their own interpretations and their expectations regarding their child). Three models were constructed to assess associations between parent and child anxiety and threat and distress cognitions and expectancies. The three models were all a reasonable fit of the data, and supported conclusions that: (i) children’s threat and distress cognitions were stable over time and were significantly associated with anxiety, (ii) parents’ threat and distress cognitions and expectancies significantly predicted child threat cognitions at some time points, and (iii) parental anxiety significantly predicted parents cognitions, which predicted parental expectancies at some time points. Parental expectancies were also significantly predicted by child cognitions. The findings varied depending on assessment time point and whether threat or distress cognitions were being considered. The findings support the notion that child and parent cognitive processes, in particular parental expectations, may be a useful target in the treatment or prevention of anxiety disorders in children.

Poverty, HIV, and barriers to education: street children's experiences in Tanzania

This article discusses the links between poverty, HIV/AIDS, and barriers to education, based on the first-hand experiences of ‘street children’ in northern Tanzania. Within the context of national levels of poverty, ‘cost-sharing’ in health and education sectors, and the AIDS epidemic, poor families in Tanzania are under considerable pressure, and increasing numbers of girls and boys are consequently seeking a living independently on the streets of towns and cities. My research with street children shows that some children orphaned by AIDS are subject to rejection and exploitation by the extended family after the death of their parent(s). They are exposed to considerable risks of abuse, sexual violence and HIV within the street environment. Here, I discuss the links between poverty, HIV and barriers to education, which compound young people’s vulnerability, and offer some policy recommendations in response to the young people’s experiences.

Children, futurity, and value: 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

A recurrent but relatively unquestioned element in the canonisation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is that the novel is about securing a meaningful way forward for the American child. The sense is that the novel deserves to live and to have a future because it is about a child, and tied in with the need for the young nation to project and to determine its future. This might seem, to apply the terms of queer debate, to lend weight to ‘reproductive futurism’: the child and ‘American family values’ are to the fore, while sexual minorities and alternative social models are excluded. The present essay re-reads Huckleberry Finn and Twain’s other Huck narratives, using the coordinates of queer theory. The result is a more equivocal picture. Twain does use Huck to assert the rights of the white American family, but he also uses him to explore alternative ideas of social organisation. More fundamentally, Twain increasingly finds that the idea of the child is no longer a sufficient motive for believing in and projecting a future. Rather, his writing leads the reader towards the impossibility of the future, both for the nation and its child.

A new parenthood paradigm for twenty-first century family law in England and Wales?

There are few other areas in family law where incongruence between the legal and social positions is as evident as that concerning parenthood. Recent cases involving lesbian couples and known sperm donors serve to highlight the increasing tension between the respective roles of biology, intention and functional parenting in the attribution of legal parental status. As both legislative and case-law developments have shown, intention is central in some circumstances, but not in others. The main claim of this paper is that this ad hoc approach leads to incoherent and unsatisfactory law: instead of striving to identify a status, what we are really looking to do is to identify the people who assume responsibility for a child. Drawing upon recent case-law, this paper explores how a conceptual reform of the law could result in a principled framework which would place formally recognised intention at the heart of parental status in order to reconnect legal duty with social reality for as many children and parents as possible. Moreover, it would ensure that parental status would not be dictated by the mode of conception of the child (natural or assisted). The analysis identifies the objectives of reform before proposing a new model which, while recognising the social importance of the biological parentage link, would reserve legal status for functional parenthood.

Family literacy activities in the homes of successful young readers

This paper presents an account of the literacy activities engaged in by the parents of 29 children around the time that the children were about to start school at Key Stage 1. Fifteen of the children were reading fluently before they began school and the remaining fourteen were matched for age, sex, receptive vocabulary scores, preschool group attended and socio-economic family status, but not reading fluently. In order to ascertain that the fluent readers were not simply coming from homes where literacy activities were more in evidence, parents were asked to report on their own literacy activities. The data obtained indicated that there were no systematic differences in the activities of the two sets of parents. They also showed that there was a considerable amount of literacy activity evidence in the homes. It is argues that, whilst the home environment is highly instrumental in nurturing literacy development, it is not enough to account for precocious reading ability.

Implicit learning and imperceptible influence: Syncretic literacy of multilingual Chinese children.

This article reports on an ethnographic study involving the literacy practices of two multilingual Chinese children from two similar yet different cultural and linguistic contexts: Montreal and Singapore. Using syncretism as a theoretical tool, this inquiry examines how family environment and support facilitate children’s process of becoming literate in multiple languages. Informed by sociocultural theory, the inquiry looks in particular at the role of grandparents in the syncretic literacy practices of children. Through comparative analysis, the study reveals similarities and differences that, when considered together, contribute to our understanding of multilingual children’s creative forms of learning with regard to their rich literacy resources in multiple languages, the imperceptible influences of mediators, various learning styles and syncretic literacy practices.

The role of temperament and family environment in the development of anxiety disorder: two-year follow-up

Objective Behavioural inhibition (BI) in early childhood is associated with increased risk for anxiety. The present research examines BI alongside family environment factors, specifically maternal negativity and overinvolvement, maternal anxiety and mother-child attachment, with a view to providing a broader understanding of the development of child anxiety. Method Participants were 202 children classified at age 4 as either behaviourally inhibited (N=102) or uninhibited (N=100). Family environment, BI and child anxiety were assessed at baseline and child anxiety and BI were assessed again two-years later when participants were aged 6 years. Results After controlling for baseline anxiety, inhibited participants were significantly more likely to meet criteria for a diagnosis of social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder at follow-up. Path analysis suggested that maternal anxiety significantly affected child anxiety over time, even after controlling for the effects of BI and baseline anxiety. No significant paths from parenting or attachment to child anxiety were found. Maternal overinvolvement was significantly associated with BI at follow-up. Conclusions At age 4, BI, maternal anxiety and child anxiety represent risk factors for anxiety at age 6. Furthermore, overinvolved parenting increases risk for BI at age 6, which may then lead to the development of anxiety in later childhood.

Children as caregivers

Caregiving is usually associated with adults’ responsibilities. Official statistics and research have demonstrated, however, that many children and young people in the global North and South have substantial, regular caring responsibilities for family members with chronic illnesses, impairments or other care needs. This chapter conceptualises children’s roles as ‘caregivers’ and the care work they do. It then analyses the available evidence on outcomes of children’s caregiving and the factors and processes influencing their involvement. While research reveals that caregiving may have positive as well as negative outcomes for children’s well-being, formal and informal safety nets are needed, especially in resource-limited settings, to alleviate children’s care work. Children’s and families’ experiences suggest that social protection measures and support for those being cared for as well as those providing care would help to ensure that caregiving does not have long-term negative impacts on children’s personal development, education, health, family relations, peer interactions, social participation, employment opportunities and socially expected transitions to adulthood.

Do early father–infant interactions predict the onset of externalising behaviours in young children? Findings from a longitudinal cohort study

Background Factors related to parents and parenting capacities are important predictors of the development of behavioural problems in children. Recently, there has been an increasing research focus in this field on the earliest years of life, however, relatively few studies have addressed the role of fathers, despite this appearing to be particularly pertinent to child behavioural development. This study aimed to examine whether father–infant interactions at age 3 months independently predicted child behavioural problems at 1 year of age. Method A sample of 192 families was recruited from two maternity units in the United Kingdom. Father–infant interactions were assessed in the family home and coded using the Global Rating Scales. Child behaviour problems were assessed by maternal report. Hierarchical and logistic regression analyses were used to examine associations between father–infant interaction and the development of behavioural problems. Results Disengaged and remote interactions between fathers and their infants were found to predict externalising behavioural problems at the age of 1 year. The children of the most disengaged fathers had an increased risk of developing early externalising behavioural problems [disengaged (nonintrusive) interactions – adjusted Odds Ratio 5.33 (95% Confidence Interval; 1.39, 20.40): remote interactions adj. OR 3.32 (0.92, 12.05)] Conclusions Disengaged interactions of fathers with their infants, as early as the third month of life, predict early behavioural problems in children. These interactions may be critical factors to address, from a very early age in the child’s life, and offer a potential opportunity for preventive intervention.

Missionary children: The French Holy Childhood Association in European context, 1843-c.1914

In the mid-nineteenth century, thousands of children in Europe and beyond were organized into battalions of fundraisers for overseas missions. By the end of the century these juvenile missionary organizations had become a global movement, generating millions of pounds in revenue each year. While the transnational nature of the children’s missions and publications has been well-documented by historians, the focus has tended to be on the connections that were established by encounters between the young western donors, missionaries overseas and the non-western ‘other’ constructed by their work. A full exploration of the European political, social and cultural concerns that produced the juvenile missionaries movement and the trans-European networks that sustained it are currently missing from historical accounts of the phenomenon. This article looks at the largest of these organizations, the Catholic mission for children, the French Holy Childhood Association (L’Œuvre de la sainte enfance), to understand how the principles this mission sought to impose abroad were above all an expression of anxieties at home about the role of religion in the family, childhood and in civil society as western polities were modernizing and secularizing in the nineteenth century.

Emotional and behavioural problems in children with language impairments and children with autism spectrum disorders

Background: Although it is well-established that children with language impairment (LI) and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both show elevated levels of emotional and behavioural problems, the level and types of difficulties across the two groups have not previously been directly compared. Aims: To compare levels of emotional and behavioural problems in children with LI and children with ASD recruited from the same mainstream schools. Methods & Procedures: We measured teacher-reported emotional and behavioural problems using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) in a sample of 5-to-13-year old children with LI (N=62) and children with ASD (N=42) attending mainstream school but with identified special educational needs. Outcomes & Results: Both groups showed similarly elevated levels of emotional, conduct and hyperactivity problems. The only differences between the LI and ASD groups were on subscales assessing peer problems (which were higher in the ASD group) and prosocial behaviours (which were higher in the LI group). Overall, there were few associations between emotional and behavioural problems and child characteristics, reflecting the pervasive nature of these difficulties in children with LI and children with ASD, although levels of problems were higher in children with ASD with lower language ability. However, in the ASD group only, a measure of family social economic status was associated with language ability and attenuated the association between language ability and emotional and behavioural problems. Conclusions & Implications: Children with LI and children with ASD in mainstream school show similarly elevated levels of emotional and behavioural problems, which require monitoring and may benefit from intervention. Further work is required to identify the child, family and situational factors that place children with LI and children with ASD at risk of emotional and behavioural problems, and whether these differ between the two groups. This work can then guide the application of evidence-based interventions to these children.

Drug holidays from ADHD medication: international experience over the past four decades

Objective: ADHD is managed by stimulants that are effective but can cause growth retardation. Prescribers should ideally monitor children and trial a “drug holiday” to enable catch-up growth. Our aim was to map the experience of drug holidays from ADHD medication in children and adolescents. Method: A comprehensive search of the literature identified 22 studies published during the period 1972 to 2013. Results: Drug holidays are prevalent in 25% to 70% of families and are more likely to be exercised during school holidays. They test whether medication is still needed and are also considered for managing medication side effects and drug tolerance. The impact of drug holidays was reported in terms of side effects and ADHD symptoms. There was evidence of a positive impact on child growth with longer breaks from medication, and shorter breaks could reduce insomnia and improve appetite. Conclusion: Drug holidays from ADHD medication could be a useful tool with multiple purposes: assessment, management, prevention, and negotiation.