There is increasing pressure to involve children and young people in the decisions that affect them. Presenting new research on the extent to which parents and children participate in decision making when childcare social workers are involved, particularly in child protection conferences and Child in Care reviews, Diaz argues for a radical shift in existing practices. Including a range of perspectives, this book highlights the systemic changes needed for social workers and other key professionals to ensure that children and parents participate more meaningfully in decision-making, which will improve the long term outcomes for children and their families.

This innovative collection of essays re-examines conventional ideas of the history of childhood, exploring the child's increasing prominence in eighteenth-century discourse and the establishment of the category of age as a marker of social distinction alongside race, class and gender. While scholars often approach childhood within the context of a single nation, this collection takes a comparative approach, examining the child in British, German and French contexts and demonstrating the mutual influences between the Continent and Great Britain in the conceptualization of childhood. Covering a wide range of subjects, from scientific and educational discourses on the child and controversies over the child's legal status and leisure activities, to the child as artist and consumer, the essays shed light on well-known novels like Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones, as well as on less-familiar texts such as periodicals, medical writings, trial reports and schoolbooks. Articles on visual culture show how eighteenth-century discourses on childhood are reflected in representations of the child by illustrators and portraitists. The international group of contributors, including Peter Borsay, Patricia Crown, Bernadette Fort, Brigitte Glaser, Klaus Peter Jochum, Dorothy Johnson and Peter Sabor, represent the disciplines of history, literature and art and reflect the collection's commitment to interdisciplinarity. The volume's unique range of topics makes it essential reading for students and scholars concerned with the history and representation of childhood in eighteenth-century culture.

This book offers an analysis and summary of the uses, abuses and limitations of attachment theory in contemporary child welfare practice. Analysing the primary science and drawing on the authors' original empirical work, the book shows how attachment theory can distort and influence decision-making. It argues that the dominant view of attachment theory may promote a problematic diagnostic mindset, whilst undervaluing the enduring relationships between children and adults. The book concludes that attachment theory can still play an important role in child welfare practice, but the balance of the research agenda needs a radical shift towards a sophisticated understanding of the realities of human experience to inform ethical practice.

Concern is growing about the effectiveness of television advertising regulation in the light of technological developments in the media. The current rapid growth of TV platforms in terrestrial, sattelite, and cable formats will soon move into digital transmission. These all offer opportunities for greater commercialization through advertising on media that have not previously been exploited. In democratic societies, there is a tension between freedom of speech rights and the harm that might be done to children through commercial messages. This book explores all of these issues and looks to the future in considering how effective codes of practice and regulation will develop.

These are the stories of the last generation of children raised in British India, in their own words. Over 280 contributions and 200 photographs from over 120 individuals make this a unique record of an extraordinary time and place. The experience of life in the Raj is now remote from British daily life, and yet only a few generations ago many British children lived this vibrant and colourful life.

Following the progress of Jasmine Maya, the book examines every part of baby care and development, including: bathing, changing, clothing; health and safety, immunisation; the role of the midwife and health visitor; feeding and weaning; play, stimulation, toys and books; and theories and theorists.

When can contexts and diversity be resources, rather than risks, for children's developmental pathways? Scholars, policy makers, and practitioners increasingly realize that middle childhood matters as a time when children's pathways diverge, as they meet new and overlapping contexts they must navigate on their way to adolescence and adulthood. This volume shines new light on this important transition by tracing how these contexts -- cultural, economic, historical, political, and social -- can support or undermine children's pathways, and how children's own actions and the actions of those around them shape these pathways. With a focus on demographic changes taking place in the U.S., the volume also maps how experiences of diversity, reflecting culture, ethnicity, gender, and social class, matter for children's life contexts and options. Chapters by a team of social scientists in the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways through Middle Childhood present the fruits of ten years of research on these issues with diverse cultural and ethnic communities across the U.S. These include: *a set of models and measures that trace how contexts and diversity evolve and interact over time, with an epilogue that aligns and compares them; *surprising new findings, quantitative and qualitative, with cases showing how children and families shape and are affected by their individual, recreational, institutional, and cultural experiences; and *applications to policy and practice for diverse children and families. The importance of these new models, methods, findings, and applications is the topic of commentaries by distinguished scholars with both U.S. and international perspectives. The book is intended for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, as well as students in psychology, sociology, and education.

Child poverty is rising across affluent Western societies; how it is measured is vital to how governments act to prevent, alleviate or eliminate it. While the roots of childhood poverty are fiercely debated and contested, they are all too often misrepresented in policy and media discourses. Seeking to redress this problem, Treanor places children's experiences, needs and concerns at the centre of this critical examination of the contemporary policies and political discourses surrounding poverty in childhood. She examines a broad range of structural, institutional and ideological factors common across developed nations, and their impacts, to interrogate how poverty in childhood is conceptualised and operationalised in policy and to forge a radical pathway for an alternative future.

Potty training has never been so easy - or so much fun! Follow the twins, Jasmine and Jack, on their journey to using the potty. This charming board book is a humorous telling of the ups and downs of toilet training. It teaches hygiene practices, positive reinforcement and a reminder that it is okay when accidents happen. Time to Use the Potty helps toddlers adjust to potty training in a relatable way. This potty book includes: - A host of relatable characters - twins Jack and Jasmine, their parents/carers, and Teddy! - Covers the various steps children need to gain the confidence to use the potty, including choosing a potty, the transition from nappies to pants, and the importance of personal hygiene - Encourages positive reinforcement for the twins when they use the potty correctly - Suitable for both boys and girls with practical advice for parents - Bright and engaging illustrations with actions that children can copy It's time that Jack and Jasmine started learning how to use the potty and wearing 'big girl and boy' pants. They each have pants, but Jack just puts his on Teddy while Jasmine uses her potty as a slide for her toys! Through small steps, the twins build their confidence while learning how to use the potty. Packed with handy tips and charming illustrations, this potty book for toddlers is the perfect way to introduce toilet training to your little one. A great introduction to a new learning experience, this preschool book is ideal for parents who are wondering how to teach their kids to use the toilet.

African children develop aesthetic sensibilities at an early age, roughly from four to fourteen years. By the time they become full-fledged adolescents they may have had up to ten years experience with various art forms--masking, music, costuming, dancing, and performance. Aesthetic learning is vital to their maturation. The contributors to this volume argue that the idea that learning the aesthetics of a culture only occurs after maturity is false, as is the idea that children wearing masks is only play, and is not to be taken seriously. "Playful Performers" is a study of children's masquerades in Africa. The contributors describe specific cases of young children's masking in the areas of west, central, and southern Africa, which also happen to be the major areas of adult masquerading. The volume reveals the considerable creativity and ingenuity that children exhibit in preparing costumes, masks and musical instruments, and in playing music, dancing, singing, and acting. The book includes over 50 pages of black and white photographs, which illustrate and elaborate upon the authors' main points. The editors describe general categories of children's masquerades. In each of the three masking categories children's relationships to their parents and other adults differ, from a close relationship to some independence to almost complete independence. No other major work has covered this aspect of African children at this age level. The book offers a challenging perspective on young children, seeing them as active agents in their own culture rather than passive recipients of culture as taught by parents and other elders. It will be interesting reading for anthropologists, art historians, educators, and African studies specialists alike. Simon Ottenberg is emeritus professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington. David A. Binkley is Senior Curator for Research and Interpretation, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

The Global History of Childhood Reader provides an essential collection of chapters and articles on the global history of childhood. The Reader is structured thematically so as to provide both a representative sampling of the historiography as well as an overview of the key issues of the field, such as childhood as a social construct, commonalities and differences globally, and why the twentieth century was not the "century of the child" for most of the world s children. The Reader is divided into four parts:

Topics covered include theories and methodologies in the global history of childhood, sources for writing a global history of childhood, education, gender, disability, race, class and religion, the individual in history and emotions, violence, labour and illiteracy. With introductions that contextualize each of the four parts and the articles, further reading sections and questions; this is the perfect guide for all students of the history of childhood.

Children today are growing up in an increasingly commercialised world. But should we see them as victims of manipulative marketing, or as competent participants in consumer culture? The Material Child provides a comprehensive critical overview of debates about children's changing engagement with the commercial market. It moves from broad overviews of the theory and history of children's consumption to insightful case studies of key areas such as obesity, sexualisation, children's broadcasting and education. In the process, it challenges much of the received wisdom about the effects of advertising and marketing, arguing for a more balanced account that locates children's consumption within a broader analysis of social relationships, for example within the family and the peer group. While refuting the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is adopted by many campaigners, it also rejects the easy celebration of consumption as an expression of children's power and autonomy. Written by one of the leading international scholars in the field, The Material Child will be of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers, as well as parents, teachers and others who work directly with children.

Contents:
Introduction: Thinking Critically About Social Work with Children and Families in the Early Twenty-First Century Part One: Major Departures? Social Work with Children and Families 1990-1997 1. The 'Blueprint' for Change: The 'Looking After Children' (LAC) System 2. Examining the 'Product Champions: LAC and its Continuing Role in the Remaking of Social Work with Children and Families 3. 'Working Together' to Protect Children? Part Two: Things Can Only Get Better? New Labour and Social Work with Children and Families 4. Social Work and the Third Way: The Assessment Framework, New Labour and More New 'Tools' for Social Work with Children and Families 5. An 'Eye Catching Initiative': New Labour and Child Adoption 6. Viewing the World Through a Monochrome Lens: Social Work with Children and Families and the Dominant Approach to 'Race' and Ethnicity 7. Social Work with Children and Families in a World of 'Emergent New Professionals' Conclusion

What kinds of obligations do parents have towards their children as family life becomes more complex? Many children pass through a number of different households,living with one or both parents and later step parents and step brothers and sisters. How are the new forms of family life accommodated in the legal system? The answer is that parenthood, rather than marriage, is now emerging as the central mechanism through which moral principles are converted into legal and social obligations. This study of 250 children who do not live with both of their parents shows, however, that despite the comparative legal emptiness of marriage, the experience of living longer with both parents than is usually the case of children of cohabiting or single parents endows the child with social capital in the form of enduring involvement with the outside parent, even after divorce, and that this happens to a greater extent than for children whose parents were not married.

As Tony Blair has argued "Technology has revolutionised the way we work and is now set to transform education. Children cannot be effective in tomorrow's world if they are trained in yesterday's skills."
Cyberkids draws together research in the sociology of childhood and social studies of technology to explore children's experiences in the Information Age. The book addresses key policy debates about social inclusion and exclusion, children's identities and friendships in on-line and off-line worlds and their relationships with families and teachers. It counters contemporary moral panics about children's risk from dangerous strangers on-line, about corruption and lost innocence from adult-centred material on the web and about the addiction to life on the screen. Instead, by showing how children use ICT in balanced and sophisticated ways, the book draws out the importance of everyday uses of technology and the ways in which children's local experiences are embedded within, and in part, constitute the global.

This book presents a range of innovative analytical frameworks that can be used to approach the complexities of children's understandings and experiences of well-being in a locally oriented, context-sensitive and multi-nationally comparative way. It addresses the challenges of undertaking research on children's understandings of well-being from a multi-national qualitative perspective. Chapters in the book present results that show how children from various places all over the world conceptualize and experience well-being as well as how this is linked local, regional and national social, political and cultural contexts.

The ebook version of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and is freely available to read online. This book presents how young children's current practices when playing with tablets inform digital experiences in Denmark and Japan. Through an interdisciplinary lens and a grounded theory approach, Froes identifies and maps these practices, which compose the taxonomy of tablet play and proposes a series of theoretical concepts that complement recent theories related to play and digital literacy studies. Tablet devices bring with them not only a multitude of options, but they also help create notions of digital space and environments defining emerging territories in young children's play experiences. Young children play with these devices and have fun indulging in digital worlds, while discovering and problem-solving with a variety of narratives and interfaces encountered on these digital playgrounds. A set of tablet play characteristics, such as multimodal applications (apps) combined with tablets' physical and digital affordances shape children's digital play. The data collected through observations informed some noteworthy aspects, including how children's hands gain and perform an embodied knowledge of digital spaces. This embodied knowledge develops through digital play interactions, defining what is proposed as digital penmanship. Complementary to the penmanship, several symbols and a range of modes of use shape a rich multimodal semiotic vocabulary in children's digital play experiences. These early digital experiences set the rules for the playgrounds and assert digital tablets as twenty-first-century toys, shaping young children's playful literacy.

Brain asymmetry for speech is moderately related to handedness but what are the rules?
Are symmetries for hand and brain associated with characteristics such as intelligence, motor skill, spatial reasoning or skill at sports?
In this follow up to the influential Left, Right Hand and Brain (1985) Marian Annett draws on a working lifetime of research to help provide answers to crucial questions. Central to her argument is the Right Shift Theory - her original and innovative contribution to the field that seeks to explain the relationships between left-and right-handedness and left-and right-brain specialisation. The theory proposes that handedness in humans and our non-human primate relations depends on chance but that chance is weighted towards right-handedness in most people by an agent of right-hemisphere disadvantage. It argues for the existence of a single gene for right shift (RS+) that evolved in humans to aid the growth of speech in the left hemisphere of the brain.
The Right Shift Theory has possible implications for a wide range of questions about human abilities and disabilities, including verbal and non verbal intelligence, educational progress and dyslexia, spatial reasoning, sporting skills and mental illness. It continues to be at the cutting edge of research, solving problems and generating new avenues of investigation - most recently the surprising idea that a mutant RS+ gene might be involved in the causes of schizophrenia and autism.
Handedness and Brain Asymmetry will make fascinating reading for students and researchers in psychology and neurology, educationalists, and anyone with a keen interest in why people have different talents and weaknesses.

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This book is a genealogical foregrounding and performance of conceptions of children and their childhoods over time. We acknowledge that children's lives are embedded in worlds both inside and outside of structured schooling or institutional settings, and that this relationality informs how we think about what it means to be a child living and experiencing childhood. The book maps the field by taking up a cross-disciplinary, genealogical niche to offer both an introduction to theoretical underpinnings of emerging theories and concepts, and to provide hands-on examples of how they might play out. This book positions children and their everyday lived childhoods in the Anthropocene and focuses on the interface of children's being in the everyday spaces and places of contemporary communities and societies. In particular this book examines how the shift towards posthuman and new materialist perspectives continues to challenge dominant developmental, social constructivist and structuralist theoretical approaches in diverse ways, to help us to understand contemporary constructions of childhoods. It recognises that while such dominant approaches have long been shown to limit the complexity of what it means to be a child living in the contemporary world, the traditions of many Eurocentric theories have not addressed the diversity of children's lives in the majority of countries or in the Global South.

Childhood is increasingly saturated by technology: from television to the Internet, video games to 'video nasties', camcorders to personal computers. Children, Technology and Culture looks at the interplay of children and technology which poses critical questions for how we understand the nature of childhood in late modern society. This collection brings together researchers from a range of disciplines to address the following four aspects of this relationship between children and technology:
*children's access to technologies and the implications for social relationships
*the structural contexts of children's engagement with technologies with a focus on gender and the family
*the situatedness of children's interactions with technological objects
*the constitution of children and childhood through the mediations of technology
_ This book represents a substantial contribution to contemporary social scientific thinking both about the nature of children and childhood, the social impacts of technologies and the various relationships between the two.

The field of early childhood education and the science of psychology have a long and closely intertwined history. The study of young children's learning within school contexts provides a test of developmental theory while at the same time identifies the limits of psychology for informing practice. The purpose of this book, part of the Rutgers Invitational Symposium on Education Series, is to bring together the work of the leading researchers in the field of child development and early education to inform three issues facing the United States today:
* clarifying developmentally appropriate instruction from the perspective of cognitive developmental psychology;
* ensuring that young children's schooling adequately addresses content; and
* meeting cognitive goals while simultaneously supporting social and emotional development.
Throughout, the role of empirical inquiry in developmental psychology for the practice of early education is examined.

Small Comrades is a fascinating examination of Soviet conceptions of childhood and the resulting policies directed toward young children. This book offers some tentative answers to the questions, 'What did children make of the Revolution?' and 'What did the Revolution make of them?' This project emphasises young children as the subjects of policies and politics in their own right. It draws on work that has been done on Soviet schooling, and focuses specifically on the development of curricula and institutions, it also examines the wider context of the relationship between the family and the state, and to the Bolshevik vision of the 'children of October.'

This anthology brings together for the first time a collection of autobiographical accounts of their childhood by a range of prominent nineteenth-century literary women. These are strongly individualised descriptions by women who breached the cultural prohibitions against self writing, especially in the attention given to psychologically formative incidents and memories. Several offer detailed accounts of their inadequate schooling and their keen hunger for knowledge: others give new insights into the dynamics of Victorian family life, especially relationships with parents and siblings, the games they invented, and their sense of being misunderstood. Most contributors vividly describe their fears and fantasies, together with obsessive religious practices, and the development of an inner life as a survival strategy. This collection makes vital out-of-print material available to scholars working in the field of women's autobiography, the history of childhood, and Victorian literature. The volume will also appeal to general readers interested in biography, autobiography, the history of family life, education, and women's writing: read alongside Victorian women's novels it offers an intriguing commentary on some of their key themes.

Psychotic disorders are frequently misunderstood and/or misdiagnosed by many clinicians that deal with children, including clinical social workers, mental health counselors, child psychiatrists, and child psychologists. Many times it is difficult for a mental health professional to determine whether the problematic behaviors exhibited (such as hearing voices and seeing things that do not exist) are the result of an altered normal developmental process or the result of a serious mental disorder. Psychotic Disorders in Children and Adolescents will provide mental health professionals and students a resource that contains specific information needed to assess better the exact nature of what is affecting the young patient. The book addresses normal developmental process and cultural influences vs. psychotic disorders; normal grief vs. pathological grief vs. depression; and brief psychotic episodes vs. organic and chronic types of psychosis.