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Evaluated "Talking about Touching" program (designed to increase children's knowledge about sexual abuse, ways to resist abuse, and where to get help) in five elementary schools. Found that children made statistically significant gains in knowledge about sexual abuse, teachers felt the program was needed and had few negative side effects, and parents were generally supportive of program. (Author/NB)

Worldwide, prevalence rates of students experiencing mental health difficulties are growing, with only one in five receiving treatment. The role of teachers in collaborative efforts both to identify and to provide effective services for these students is an essential one. However, scant research has explored the mental health literacy of pre-service teachers. In the present study, 186 pre-service teachers completed a vignette-based measure (Child or Adolescent version based on each teacher's experience) in order to assess their mental health literacy, comprised of beliefs and knowledge. Results indicate that participants expressed lower efficacy when teaching children or adolescents with externalizing as compared to internalizing behaviours but believed that a child or adolescent experiencing behaviours indicative of depression was of the greatest concern and in need of intervention. Pre-service teachers were able to correctly identify cases of anxiety and ADHD, but many attributed behaviours typical of depression to home life difficulties (Child version) or substance use/abuse (Adolescent version). Results are discussed in light of previous research in the field; recommendations for future research and practice are provided.

Previous research linking school disruption with mental health problems has largely relied on assessments of academic achievement to measure school disruption. Early disruptive classroom behaviour (e.g., conflict with school staff, negative attitudes toward school), however, may precipitate poor academic performance and may stem from emerging mental health concerns, particularly among young children. To address this gap in the literature, 912 clinically referred children and youth (ages 4-18 years old) were assessed using the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health (ChYMH) assessment utilizing a cross-sectional study design. The ChYMH assessment evaluates school disruption independently of academic achievement, and includes a comprehensive assessment of the child's mental health functioning, needs, and preferences. A logistic regression analysis revealed that various provisional mental health diagnoses (i.e., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, disruptive behaviour, mood disorders, and, to a lesser extent, anxiety) were associated with disruption in the classroom. Implications for school-based care planning are discussed.

Children with mild bilateral and unilateral hearing loss are now commonly identified early through newborn hearing screening initiatives. There remains considerable uncertainty about how to support parents and about which services to provide for children with mild bilateral and unilateral hearing loss. The goal of this study was to learn about parents' experiences and understand, from their perspectives, the impact of hearing loss in the mild range on the child's functioning. Parents of 20 children in Ontario, Canada, participated in the study. The median age of identification of hearing loss was 4.6 months (interquartile range: 3.6, 10.8). Parents appreciated learning early about hearing loss, but their experiences with the early process were mixed. Parents felt that professionals minimized the importance of milder hearing loss. There was substantial uncertainty about the need for hearing aids and the findings suggest that parents need specific guidance. Parents expressed concerns about the potential impact of hearing loss on their child's development, particularly at later ages.

In Canada, forces such as the media, medical discourse, and public policy work to position childhood obesity as increased body fat content or excess adiposity due to various personal, social, and economic factors. Drawing on Barad's "agential realist ontology", this article aims to inhabit-with obesity in an effort to disrupt dominant understandings of childhood obesity, as illustrated in images from three children's picture books. By troubling the positivity inherent in dominant understandings of obesity, in which obesity is a knowable entity that refers to an anatomical body with excess adiposity, we might instead foreground the matterings of the human body at play amid the dynamic intra-actions of agential matter. This article will imagine how novel orientations toward childhood obesity might be made possible if we populate the adiposity of obese bodies such that we might engage with the intra-activity of agential adiposity.

This study documented the perceived needs of therapists, specialists, and managers who work with children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and/or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and concurrent problem behaviours (PBs). Seventy-five respondents from specialized PB and early childhood programs within eight public rehabilitation centres were surveyed. They were asked to describe current practices and perceived needs in terms of assessment, intervention, and training with respect to the target population. Overall, the perceptions of staff were consistent with the results of previous studies examining families' perspectives. Salient themes include the need for specialized assessments for PBs in young children, collaboration between multiple service providers and families, and additional staff training in child development and interventions for PBs. These findings underscore the importance of offering diversified services adapted to the needs of children with PBs, their families, and their service providers.

Mental health issues continue to present barriers for Canadian children, in terms of both psychological and academic outcomes. Growing numbers of students are placed "at risk" as a result. A mental health promotion approach suggests that students can develop a number of skills and competencies, namely those related to social-emotional learning (SEL), which can reduce their chance of developing mental health difficulties. In Canada, a wide range of curricula, frameworks, initiatives, and programs have been put in place that address elements of SEL. In this paper, a sampling of these drawn from across the country is described. The emphasis on SEL apparent in many provinces and territories is evidence of the shared understanding of its importance with respect to improving student outcomes. However, a lack of evidence to support these approaches, inconsistencies in terms of terminology and practices, the lack of alignment between SEL and academics, and the piecemeal approach adopted within some provinces leave SEL and mental health promotion approaches vulnerable to being labelled "add-ons" and becoming transient initiatives.

This study examined associations between parents' attributions of culpability and their observed interventions into sibling conflict. A total of 61 primary caregivers judged who was at fault for a sibling conflict and subsequently discussed the event with their two children (aged 4-10 years). Nonunilateral fault attributions (blaming both children or neither child) were related to parents' discussion of the reasons underlying children's behavior/perspectives and were more frequent when the age gap between children was larger. Parents selectively referred to their younger child's point of view in conversation and, when the age gap was larger, selectively provided evidence in favor of their younger child. Results extend previous research by providing novel insight into how parents' conflict judgments are linked to their intervention strategies with older and younger siblings and by identifying the circumstances in which parents intervene in ways that promote children's mutual understanding and constructive conflict strategies. (Contains 3 tables and 1 footnote.)

This study investigated whether children with dyslexia differed in their performance on reading, phonological, rapid naming, motor, and cerebellar-related tasks and automaticity measures compared to reading age (RA)-matched and chronological age (CA)-matched control groups. Participants were 51 children attending mainstream English elementary schools in Quebec. All participants completed measures of IQ, word and nonword reading fluency, elision, nonword decoding, rapid naming, bead threading, peg moving, toe tapping, postural stability, and muscle tone. Results from both group contrasts and analyses at the individual case level did not provide support for claims of motor-cerebellar involvement in either typical or atypical reading acquisition. Results were more consistent with a phonological core process account of both typical reading and reading difficulty. Phonological deficits for children with dyslexia compared to RA-matched controls were, however, only evident in group contrasts. Findings thus also have important implications for identifying at-risk readers among their same-aged peers.

The article describes the findings of a pilot study of the Life Story Board (LSB), a novel visual information system with a play board and sets of magnetic cards designed to be a practical clinical tool for counsellors, therapists, and researchers. The LSB is similar to a multidimensional genogram, and serves as a platform to depict personal narrative information and catalyze verbal and nonverbal approaches in assessment and therapy. A prototype version of the LSB was pilot-tested to assess its clinical feasibility for school counsellors in Winnipeg, Manitoba, working for the most part with newcomer immigrants. Results confirmed that the visual participatory process facilitated rapport with students and elicited useful information. LSB methods may be well suited to assessment and interventions common to schools and in diverse therapeutic and assessment applications. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 2 notes.)

British Columbia (BC) is a vast province in Canada made up of several distinct geographic areas. Most of the province's population lives in a few metropolitan areas, with the greater Vancouver area being the largest. British Columbians living outside these areas must travel significant distances to see specialists of any kind. Treacherous winter driving conditions, limited and expensive air service, and costly ferry rides are a few of the challenges individuals face when accessing services only available in metropolitan areas. Although Children's Hearing and Speech Centre of BC (formerly the Vancouver Oral Centre) has provided a listening and spoken language option since 1963 for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, families who desired this option and the Centre's services were required to live in or relocate to the Vancouver area. In 2006, Children's Hearing and Speech Centre began providing direct services via telepractice to families of children birth to age 5 living outside of the greater Vancouver area. Telepractice has eliminated the constraints of geography in the choices parents make for their children with hearing loss. Both A Sound Move and Stepping Out have expanded the choices available to families from initial diagnosis through high school graduation. The telepractice initiatives at Children's Hearing and Speech Centre continue to be a work in progress with its success far surpassing the requisite glitches that come with advancing technology.

Aim: Microarray technology has a significantly higher clinical yield than karyotyping in individuals with global developmental delay (GDD). Despite this, it has not yet been routinely implemented as a screening test owing to the perception that this approach is more expensive. We aimed to evaluate the effect that replacing karyotype with array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) would have on the total cost of the workup for GDD. Method: We evaluated the cost-effectiveness of aCGH compared with karyotyping by retrospectively analysing the cost of workup in a cohort of 114 children (69 males; 45 females) representing a consecutive series of children diagnosed with GDD. Results: The average increase in cost if aCGH had been performed instead of karyotyping as a first test was $442 per individual when performed by a private company (98% confidence interval $238-604). In contrast, $106 (98% confidence interval -$17 to $195) would have been saved if aCGH was performed locally in a laboratory already possessing the required technology. The incremental cost per additional diagnosis was estimated to be $12,874 if aCGH was performed in a private laboratory, but less than $1379 if performed locally. (Costs reported in Canadian dollars, using 2010 prices.) Interpretation: aCGH would be cost-effective as a first genetic test in the clinical evaluation of individuals with GDD.

Aim: Evidence-based recommendations regarding which exercise tests to use in children and adolescents with cerebral palsy (CP) are lacking. This makes it very difficult for therapists and researchers to choose the appropriate exercise-related outcome measures for this group. This study aimed to identify a core set of exercise tests for children and adolescents with CP. Method: Fifteen experts (10 physical therapists/researchers and five exercise physiologists; three from the Netherlands, two from the USA, one from the UK, five from Canada, and four from Australia) participated in a Delphi survey which took four stages to achieve a consensus. Based on the information that was collected during the survey, a core set of measures was identified for levels I to IV of the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS). Results: For children with CP classified at GMFCS levels I and II, tests were identified for two motor skills (walking and cycling). For the subgroup of children with CP classified at GMFCS level III, the tests that were identified related to walking, cycling, and arm cranking. For children with CP classified at GMFCS level IV, the tests included in the core set were related to cycling and arm cranking. Interpretation: The core set will help physical therapists, exercise physiologists, and other health professionals who work with children and adolescents with CP to decide which test(s) to use in clinical practice or research. This will facilitate comparability of results across studies and clinical programmes.

The authors reexamine the study of generational differences in adjustment among the children of immigrants by arguing that the country of origin defines and shapes the adaptation process across generations. Using a sample of children in Toronto, the authors demonstrate that generational differences in the mental health of children occur only in families from countries of origin at the lowest levels of economic development. Among those at the lowest levels of economic development, a mental health advantage in the first generation evolves to a disadvantage in the 2.5 generation relative to third or later generational children. Children from backgrounds characterized by higher economic development show no initial or eventual differences from the native born. Using data from the Toronto Study of Intact Families, the authors are able to explain differences among children from low economic development backgrounds specifically in terms of increasing family conflict and decreasing school involvement across generations. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables, and 4 notes.)

Widespread adoption of the Internet during the past two decades has produced the first generation of digital natives. Ninety-five children (M[subscript age] = 10.4 years) completed a questionnaire that measured three clusters of variables: 1) Internet use at home and school, 2) peer, school, and home self-esteem, 3) and cognitive abilities (planning, attention, and simultaneous and successive processing). There were no gender differences in school-based Internet use and only one gender difference in home-based use. Girls were significantly more likely than boys to report using email at home. Cognitive scores predicted girls' email use at home and website access at school. Self-esteem and cognitive scores predicted boys email use at home and school and online gaming at school. From a developmental perspective, Internet use may benefit girls more than boys because of gender differences in orientation to the Internet (i.e., accomplishment versus recreation). Although girls used email more than boys, of the current sample of digital natives, boys who used email were brighter and more popular than boys who did not use email. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

Individuals with autism often experience difficulty acquiring a functional intraverbal repertoire, despite demonstrating strong mand, tact, and listener skills. This learning problem may be related to the fact that the primary antecedent variable for most intraverbal behavior involves a type of multiple control identified as a verbal conditional discrimination (VC[superscript D]). The current study is a descriptive analysis that sought to determine if there is a general sequence of intraverbal acquisition by typically developing children and for children with autism, and if this sequence could be used as a framework for intraverbal assessment and intervention. Thirty-nine typically developing children and 71 children with autism were administered an 80-item intraverbal subtest that contained increasingly difficult intraverbal questions and VC[superscript D]s. For the typically developing children the results showed that there was a correlation between age and correct intraverbal responses. However, there was variability in the scores of children who were the same age. An error analysis revealed that compound VC[superscript D]s were the primary cause of errors. Children with autism made the same types of errors as typically developing children who scored at their level on the subtest. These data suggest a potential framework and sequence for intraverbal assessment and intervention. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Although comprehensive and ecological approaches to early childhood prevention are commonly advocated, there are few examples of long-term follow-up of such programs. In this monograph, we investigate the medium- and long-term effects of an ecological, community-based prevention project for primary school children and families living in three economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Ontario, Canada. The Better Beginnings, Better Futures (BBBF) project is one of the most ambitious Canadian research projects on the long-term impacts of early childhood prevention programming to date. Bronfenbrenner's ecological model of human development informed program planning, implementation, and evaluation. Using a quasi-experimental design, the BBBF longitudinal research study involved 601 children and their families who participated in BBBF programs when children were between 4 and 8 years old and 358 children and their families from sociodemographically matched comparison communities. We collected extensive child, parent, family, and community outcome data when children were in Grade 3 (age 8-9), Grade 6 (age 11-12), and Grade 9 (age 14-15). The BBBF mandate was to develop programs that would positively impact all areas of child's development; our findings reflect this ecological approach. We found marked positive effects in social and school functioning domains in Grades 6 and 9 and evidence of fewer emotional and behavioral problems in school across the three grades. Parents from BBBF sites reported greater feelings of social support and more positive ratings of marital satisfaction and general family functioning, especially at the Grade 9 followup. Positive neighborhood-level effects were also evident. Economic analyses at Grade 9 showed BBBF participation was associated with government savings of $912 per child. These findings provide evidence that an affordable, ecological, community-based prevention program can promote long-term development of children living in disadvantaged neighborhoods and produce monetary benefits to government as soon as 7 years after program completion. (Contains 22 tables, 4 figures and 2 notes.)

This study investigated the evolving relations between peer victimization and social/emotional difficulties in middle to late childhood. Peer assessments of peer victimization and social/emotional difficulties (aggressive behavior, social withdrawal, and emotional vulnerability) were collected over 4 years for 1,035 children attending Grades 3-6 and were analyzed via cross-lagged panels and trajectory analyses. All dimensions were highly stable and significantly related initially. Peer victimization became progressively less related to aggression and increasingly associated with withdrawal. Bidirectional contributions over 1-year periods were found between withdrawal and emotional vulnerability and victimization. Trajectory analyses revealed heterogeneity in peer victimization patterns, with a small group of children (4.5%) being extremely victimized and with another group (10%), less severely, but increasingly victimized over time. Compared to nonvictimized children, these children were generally more emotional and became less aggressive but more socially withdrawn over time. These small behavioral changes were not associated with decreases in victimization. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)

Previous studies pay insufficient attention to the impact of "patriotism," a curious omission given how frequently both government officials and ordinary citizens used their love of country as a rallying cry. This article focuses on Saskatoon, whose 43,027 inhabitants made it Saskatchewan's second-largest city, and examine the way in which patriotism was nourished in the collective mind by several war-related events in the city. Through what may be called the patriotic imagination, World War II was made intense and immediate to prairie dwellers far removed from its conflict zones. Unlike a London or a Leningrad, North American cities like Saskatoon never experienced bombardment. For patriotism to flourish in such locales, the war overseas had to be imagined--and, to a degree, vicariously experienced--at home.

This study examined the unanticipated effects that children with learning disabilities have on the life of their families. Eleven parents of students aged 8 to 16 years old participated in two separate focus group interviews. Findings showed that children with learning disabilities had a range of effects on their families. These included family stress, parenting discrepancies, negative reactions from extended family members, difficulty in interacting with the school, and mixed effects upon siblings. Patterns of family coping also emerged. Recommendations for supporting families and students with learning disabilities are suggested. (Contains 1 table.)

Given today's climate of economic uncertainty and fiscal restraint, organizations providing child and youth mental health services are required to do so with limited resources. Within this context, service providers face added pressure to deliver evidence-based programs and demonstrate program effectiveness. The Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health works with organizations to meet these demands by building capacity in program evaluation. While personal instruction and mentoring are important ways of providing support, face-to-face consultations are not always cost-effective. In this article we describe the use of interactive technology and computer-based learning as an alternative and/or complementary (to face-to-face) means of delivering evaluation information and training. We discuss the process of developing these tools and share findings from our preliminary evaluation of their effectiveness in enhancing the evaluation-related supports we offer to providers of child and youth mental health services. (Contains 5 notes.)

Background: Injuries are the leading cause of death among Canadian children and are responsible for a substantial proportion of hospitalizations and emergency department visits. This investigation sought to identify the factors associated with the likelihood of sustaining an injury at school among Ottawa-area children. Methods: Children presenting to Ottawa-area hospitals and urgent care clinics from January to December 2002 (n = 24,074) were included for analysis. The frequency of school injuries by sex, age group, type of injury, and hospitalization was analyzed. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the factors associated with sustaining an injury at school. The school activities most associated with injury and the most frequent types of school injuries were assessed. Results: A total of 4287 Ottawa-area children were injured at school in 2002, representing 18% of all injuries. Children aged 5-9 years and 10-14 years were more likely to have school injuries than older children (aged 15-19 years) (OR = 3.07, 95% CI = 2.77-3.40 and OR = 3.10, 95% CI = 2.83-3.37, respectively). The most frequently encountered school injuries were fractures (n = 1132) and musculoskeletal injury (n = 907). The most frequent mechanisms of school injuries were "playing" (n = 1004) and "informal sports" (n = 1503). Conclusions: Many children get hurt at school, particularly during informal recreation activities. Environmental modification and increased supervision are strategies that may reduce school injuries. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Recollection of early childhood experiences was investigated in 225 European Canadian and 133 Chinese children (ages 8, 11, and 14) by a memory fluency task that measured accessibility of multiple early memories and elicited the earliest memory. Younger children provided memories of events that occurred at earlier ages than older children. Furthermore, Canadian children produced more memories and had an earlier age of first memory than did Chinese children, with cultural differences in both measures increasing with age. It appears that while adultlike childhood amnesia is still emerging among Canadian children, Chinese children by age 14 already resemble adults. Content of Canadian versus Chinese children's memories reflected an autonomous versus relational self-construal. Results are discussed in terms of sociocultural influences on memory.

This article stresses the quality of universality within young people's poetry. The writer uses the poetry mainly written by children of Pakistani origin living in Pitsmoor and Fir Vale in north-east Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, as a stimulus for the creative writing of children of the Mohawk nation in the reservation school of Tyendinaga Territory in Eastern Ontario, Canada. The similar qualities and themes of both sets of poems illustrate both the internationalism of the imagination, and a critical consciousness within children that stretches across oceans.

The paper presents the author's views on inspiring creative thinking among students through a folktale. The mbira metaphor is this author's interpretation of a unique African (Shona) folktale that has the potential to enrich the pedagogy of giftedness. The mbira metaphor is an informative and thought-provoking folktale originating from previous studies on Shona culture's views of giftedness. The recognition of the mbira folktale as a metaphor that has the potential to enrich gifted programming follows new thinking in research that values the contribution of sociocultural perspectives to our understanding of giftedness and creativity. The author recommends that the mbira metaphor be used in gifted programming to inspire creative thinking among students. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

Since the introduction of the first neoliberal budgets in the mid-1980s, Canadian social service workers have had ample reason to resist changes in their work lives. Drawing on literature as well as on themes emerging from an intentionally diverse subset of data collected as part of a multiyear study, this article explores the resistance strategies of female, First Nations social workers and social workers of color in relation to changing work structures and power relations in their workplaces. Given their location in ethnically specific services and programs, racialized workers have been affected differently by restructuring and have, in turn, resisted these changes with different outcomes. Indeed, rather than the deskilling common to the sector, First Nations workers and workers of color have generated new, culturally sensitive practice skills. This article analyzes how the marginalized position of many workers of color and Aboriginal workers has shaped the kinds of resistance strategies they use within their paid and unpaid work in the restructured social services arena. The article explores the issue of unpaid work as an important but contradictory form of resistance among social workers. It concludes with suggestions for teaching and practicing in the new social services.

This study uses multilevel models to examine longitudinal associations between contextual influences (neighborhood and family) assessed in 1983 in a cohort of 2,355 children, 4-16 years of age, and educational attainment in 2001. Variation in educational attainment in 2001 attributable to between-neighborhood and between-family differences was 8.17% and 36.88%, respectively. The final model explained 33.64% of the variance in educational attainment, with unique variances of 14.53% for neighborhood and family-level variables combined versus 10.94% for child-level variables. Among the neighborhood and family-level variables, indicators of status (5.29%) versus parental capacity/family process (4.03%) made comparable predictions to attainment while children from economically disadvantaged families did not benefit educationally from living in more affluent areas.

This article examines recent trends in childhood and youth policy, political socialization, and civic education in the USA and Canada since 2000. It examines some of the current trends (such as political socialization and education research findings on children and youth) as well as policy initiatives (such as the landmark federal legislation called the "No Child Left Behind" law which mandates yearly testing in reading, writing, and mathematics from grade 5 on while totally ignoring other fields critical to democratic political development (such as social studies and civics). In addition, the article broaches the subject of class and socio-economic status (SES) in the US educational system and other trends such as introducing service learning into the elementary grades. Briefly put, all measures used for evaluation to date point to SES as the principal determinant of test performance, along with race, ethnicity, urban residence, and other such background factors. Service learning is also worth discussing both for its philosophical roots (which are firmly middle class) but also for its fit with the US and Canadian volunteeristic capitalistic political cultures which stress self-reliance and individualism. The article also considers some of the counter-effectiveness research that people (such as Gerald Bracey) use to indicate that except for its elitism, the US/Canadian educational systems are not underperforming and that educational critics have a hostile anti-public policy stance because they wish to privatize everything, regardless of the consequences therefrom to a democratic society. (Contains 4 figures and 1 note.)

This Canadian study reports on the experiences of parents whose children use cochlear implants and on their perspectives prior to and following the transition to Auditory-Verbal therapy. A qualitative case study design, framed in social-ecological theory, guided this research. Data collection procedures included a family information questionnaire, observations, individual interviews and a discussion group. The study describes personal attributes that parents identified as helpful to them as they made this transition. It indicates the importance of support from family and the cochlear implant center's professionals. It highlights that funding from provincial Ministries, access to technology, therapy and speaking role models and an inclusive environment facilitate the transition to Auditory-Verbal therapy.

In this article the author explores the seamlessness between children's online and offline worlds. For children, there is no dichotomy of online and offline, or virtual and real; the digital is so much intertwined into their lives and psyche that the one is entirely enmeshed with the other. Despite early research pointing to the differences that mark the virtual as a space of "otherness", the author suggests that the fabric of children's everyday lives knows no such distinct demarcation, and that what they do in their virtual worlds significantly affects how they connect to society. Moreover, through the virtual, children are simultaneously engaging in acts of self-reflection, self-fashioning and identity formation. Using data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of children online, the author illuminates a number of case studies which support this argument. She does this by using narrative accounts based on extensive interviews with the children. (Contains 1 note and 3 figures.)

A process-oriented approach to parental divorce locates the experience within the social and developmental context of children's lives, providing greater insight into how parental divorce produces vulnerability in some children and resiliency in others. The current study involves prospectively tracking a nationally representative sample of Canadian children of ages 4-7 and living with two biological parents at initial interview in 1994 (N = 2,819), and comparing the mental health trajectories of children whose parents remain married with those whose parents divorce by 1998. Results from growth curve models confirm that, even before marital breakup, children whose parents later divorce exhibit higher levels of anxiety/depression and antisocial behavior than children whose parents remain married. There is a further increase in child anxiety/depression but not antisocial behavior associated with the event of parental divorce itself. Controlling for predivorce parental socioeconomic and psychosocial resources fully accounts for poorer child mental health at initial interview among children whose parents later divorce, but does not explain the divorce-specific increase in anxiety/depression. Finally, a significant interaction between parental divorce and predivorce levels of family dysfunction suggests that child antisocial behavior decreases when marriages in highly dysfunctional families are dissolved.

Investigated: (1) influence of maternal context on frequency and types of conflicts of sibling dyads in middle childhood, and (2) the stability of maternal and sibling interaction over 4 years. Found that maternal presence depressed conflict frequency and aggression. Earlier patterns of family interaction were related to later indices of sibling conflict and maternal interaction. (Author)

Reviews literature and reports on parenting needs identified in a Canadian study that examined parents living with HIV/AIDS. Some themes that emerged were chronic sorrow, stress and burden, stigma, secrecy, and disclosure. Parenting was found to be a source of joy, even when complicated by the special circumstances of AIDS/HIV. (BF)

The hypothesis that physical aggression in the family affects children's adjustment through both observational learning/modeling and through its impact on parenting was tested, via LISREL, using data from a sample of Canadian children (N=11,221). Results showed observational learning and disrupted parenting provide reasonable explanations of mothers' assessments of children's adjustment in families characterized by physical aggression. (BF)

Examines the use of tense, agreement, and non-tense morphemes and associated distributional contingencies in the language production of Quebec French-Speaking children with specific language impairment and normally developing language and age-matched controls. Sought to determine whether the optimal infinitive/extended optional infinitive pattern of normal and impaired developmental language in English occurs in French as well. (Author/VWL)

Describes the "Roots of Empathy" program for elementary school students in some Toronto schools, designed to teach about parenting, human development, and emotional literacy, and to nurture the growth of empathy. Focuses on development of a culture of caring, the role of perspective taking for conflict resolution, the positive neuroscience message of the program, father involvement, the importance of inclusion, and building acceptance and respect for individual differences. (KB)