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The importance of social emotional learning (SEL) has been well acknowledged as a significant feature of education and emotional development across the life span. School psychologists play an important part as innovators, implementers and evaluators of resources in the social emotional domain. When it comes to the early years in the education system, social emotional aspects of the curriculum form the basis of the learning experience. Teachers utilise resources that enhance their classroom practice. Coping research and practice has had a long history in the literature, but the translation to early childhood educational practice, supported by school psychologists, is a more recent development. This article details three innovations, namely, The Early Years Coping Cards, Families Coping and the COPE-Resilience Program. Development, applications, and evaluations are considered to highlight the significant role school psychologists and trainee psychologists can play.

Objective: Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is at the heart of preschool education. Although there are many SEL programmes to guide early childhood teachers’ practice, seldom has empathy been a ...

Purpose Studies of familial coping with a child's chronic condition have highlighted psychological distress; family functioning; and quality of life; as issues that demand coping strategies. There are conflicting findings on impact and coping and a paucity of information about the specific coping challenges for parents of a child with heart disease, with few qualitative studies in this area. The purpose of the study was to explore the way parents coped with their child's heart condition as it impacted on different domains of family functioning. Design and Method In this qualitative study, interviews were held with 17 parents attending a pediatric hospital-based family support program in 2015. Fifteen of the 17 children's conditions were classified as “major”. Domains covered in the interviews included: coping challenges posed at different stages of the illness trajectory, parenting, condition management, transitions, psychological impact, social support and coping strategies. Interview transcripts were coded thematically. Results Multiple points of stress and challenges to coping were identified: coping with the diagnosis, including consideration of termination; dealing with the challenges facing their child; coping with parenting including co-parenting issues; the role of social support in coping; and identification of adaptive and maladaptive coping behaviours. Conclusion A large range of positive coping strategies were identified, as was the need for coping-focused psychological support throughout the parents' and children's journey. Practice implications. The strategies identified have formed the basis of a manualised intervention for these parents.

Families of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) can have difficulties coping with the stress of their child's condition and would benefit from assistance to cope better. To address the needs of these parents, the Australian Center for Heart Health/HeartKids Australia/Melbourne Graduate School of Education co-produced Family Coping Project was initiated. This project involved two systematic literature reviews, interviews with parents of children with CHD, and the development and piloting of a manualised parental coping program. The primary aims of the pilot study were to determine whether the program would: attract high needs families; enhance the coping self-efficacy of parents; and be acceptable to parents in terms of content and mode of delivery. The secondary aims were to investigate whether the program would impact on parental coping, parental stress and general stress. Parents completed pre-, post-program and 6-month follow up assessment measures, with parent stress scores being compared to stress scores reported for other chronic condition parent carer groups. Twenty-one parents participated and provided baseline data. They were found to be significantly more stressed than other parent carer groups. Eleven parents completed post-program data and 13 completed 6-month follow-up data. There was a significant increase in parents' coping self-efficacy from pre- to post-program, and from pre- to 6-months. Parents' use of productive coping styles increased significantly from pre- to post-program. The program was rated as highly acceptable in terms of content and delivery mode. The pilot provides strong evidence for upscaling the program in conjunction with individualized psychological support for parents to extend knowledge acquisition and attitude change into enhanced coping skills and demonstrated the benefits of a co-production process.

There are numerous ways to construe positive education in the early years, particularly as it relates to wellbeing and positive emotional outcomes. The teaching of coping skills provides tools for wellbeing within a positivist framework through emphasising the use of productive coping strategies and reducing the use of unhelpful, non-productive strategies. This chapter provides an example of teaching coping skills in early childhood: the Early Years Coping Project. The project helped young children articulate and understand coping constructs and provided tools to help parents and teachers to assess children’s coping. Visual tools facilitated the development of children’s coping skills in classroom activities. Parents were encouraged to develop their parenting skills and their own coping, utilising the emotion and coping language that is common to them and their children. The parent program was subsequently adapted in a format that was readily communicated to a culturally diverse population, using the generic frameworks and constructs of coping. Coping concepts and constructs have subsequently been incorporated into a COPE-Resilience curriculum. We highlight several applications and extensions of the curriculum. Coping skills provide a template for healthy social-emotional development that can be utilised in different contexts throughout life.

My journey in the field of stress and coping began in the mid 1980s when I was researching the rather new field of childhood depression. It was a relatively under-explored field, and as a clinical and educational psychologist it was becoming increasingly apparent that there were concerns of young people, with some of these reflected in their experiences of sadness and despair. However, as I researched and measured the depression construct, I became aware of despair as a growing phenomenon, with an increased focus and emphasis on stress, anxiety and depression. In time, the statistics would bear out the concerns, as one in four young people have identified as being or are likely to be depressed in their lifetime in some Western communities like Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom (WHO, 2018). Given the growing 'ill health' of our Western communities, something had to change. In the 1980s, young people were concerned about their future with the fear of nuclear war. As I was writing this invited retrospective in late 2019, there were widespread concerns about global warming, and in the first half of 2020 concerns arising from the pandemic of COVID-19 are dominating. Coping theory research and practice can make a significant contribution to how we cope with our world in general and the specifics of our lives in particular. This article reports a body of work in the field of coping to illustrate the value of the core constructs and their applications in diverse settings providing opportunities for helpful adaptation and development in the face of whatever circumstances arise.

Human development is a dynamic and complex process impacted by genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. Building on the earlier work of Lev Vygotsky (1962) and Jean Piaget (1952), Uri Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) socio-ecological perspective has been widely adopted and adapted since the 1970s to explain development in context. In the last two decades neuroscience or neurobiology along with epigenetics are continuing to advance our understanding of human capability and adaptation. This chapter provides an overview of the different theories in the contemporary context of early childhood development and well-being; from the age-old debate of nature versus nurture to how genes moderate environmental influences and vice versa.

As Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is central to early years curriculum, this chapter considers how Australian and international curriculum frameworks describe teaching and learning in this central area of child development. SEL programs are designed to help children gain self-awareness, regulate emotions, manage stress, solve problems responsibly and contribute to the wider community. These include focusing on being mindful of others and the importance of developing understandings of the perspective of others especially in relation to enacting respectful, non-judgemental and tactful attitudes. The chapter contrasts policy approaches, introduces a generic whole school systemic approach, as well as identifying a range of programs that are utilised in various communities across the globe.

This study compared how young people from diverse migration backgrounds (refugee, immigrant, and local) cope with interpersonal conflicts with an aim to understand how practitioners can most effect...

Introduction The risk for developing a gambling problem is greater among offspring who have a problem gambling parent, yet little research has directly examined the mechanisms by which this transmission of problem gambling occurs. For this reason, the present study sought to examine the degree to which children's expectancies and motives relating to gambling explain, at least in part, the intergenerational transmission of problem gambling. Methods Participants (N = 524; 56.5% male) were recruited from educational institutions, and retrospectively reported on parental problem gambling. Problem gambling was measured using the Problem Gambling Severity Index and a range of positive and negative expectancies and gambling motives were explored as potential mediators of the relationship between parent-and-participant problem gambling. Results The relationship between parent-and-participant problem gambling was significant, and remained so after controlling for sociodemographic factors and administration method. Significant mediators of this relationship included self-enhancement expectancies (feeling in control), money expectancies (financial gain), over-involvement (preoccupation with gambling) and emotional impact expectancies (guilt, shame, and loss), as well as enhancement motives (gambling to increase positive feelings) and coping motives (gambling to reduce or avoid negative emotions). All mediators remained significant when entered into the same model. Conclusions The findings highlight that gambling expectancies and motives present unique pathways to the development of problem gambling in the offspring of problem gambling parents, and suggest that gambling cognitions may be potential candidates for targeted interventions for the offspring of problem gamblers.

The present study explored the component structure of coping in preschoolers as measured by the Children's Coping Scale — Revised (CCS-R) through principal component analysis (PCA). The study also ...

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON a social emotional learning (SEL) program entitled COPE-R and the role of the teacher in supporting young children's developing social and emotional understandings, particularly around caring and empathy. Thirty-eight four- and five-year-old children and their teacher from an inner-Melbourne city long day preschool program participated in the research. The teacher was also a member of the research team hence the study falls within the realm of practitioner-research, which aims to shed further light on the role of the teacher in designing, implementing and evaluating challenging programs for young children. A qualitative case study methodology was employed to ensure that the voices of the children and the teacher-researcher were centrally located in the research. The data included the teacher-researcher's program plans and reflective journal notes, children's drawing-tellings and transcribed child interview data. Findings highlight the capacities of the participating children to engage in the COPE-R program and to demonstrate increased social emotional skill development—as evidenced through being able to identify and give voice to social emotional issues, enact relational empathy, demonstrate care for others and the environment, and recognise emotions in self and others. Also, the findings provide insight into the role of the teacher in implementing the COPE-R program, which enabled the participating children to give voice to a range of social and emotional issues including empathy, reciprocity, generosity, kindness and joy.

This paper reports on an innovative Early Years Productive Parenting Program, which is heavily drawn on the coping literature and incorporated learnings on proactive and productive coping for families with young children. The program focused on the delivery of a flexible parenting program offered to a group of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) parents attending a playgroup in an inner urban early childhood setting in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Participants included parents from Sudan, Somalia, Vietnam, New-Zealand and Australia. The research adopted a mixed methods approach with findings indicating that CALD parents benefit from being introduced to universally accepted parenting skills that are sensitive to a range of cultural settings. The study uncovered the efficacy of practical resources, such as Early Years Coping Cards and Parenting Tip Sheets, to support communication between parents and children especially in relation to the establishment of a shared language of coping.

Background and Objectives Although parenting practices are articulated as underlying mechanisms or protective factors in several theoretical models, their role in the intergenerational transmission of gambling problems has received limited research attention. This study therefore examined the degree to which parenting practices (positive parenting, parental involvement, and inconsistent discipline) moderated the intergenerational transmission of paternal and maternal problem gambling. Methods Students aged 12–18 years (N = 612) recruited from 17 Australian secondary schools completed a survey measuring parental problem gambling, problem gambling severity, and parenting practices. Results Participants endorsing paternal problem gambling (23.3%) were 4.3 times more likely to be classified as at-risk/problem gamblers than their peers (5.4%). Participants endorsing maternal problem gambling (6.9%) were no more likely than their peers (4.0%) to be classified as at-risk/problem gamblers. Paternal problem gambling was a significant predictor of offspring at-risk/problem gambling after controlling for maternal problem gambling and participant demographic characteristics. The relationship between maternal problem gambling and offspring at-risk/problem gambling was buffered by parental involvement. Discussion and Conclusions Paternal problem gambling may be important in the development of adolescent at-risk/problem gambling behaviours and higher levels of parental involvement buffers the influence of maternal problem gambling in the development of offspring gambling problems. Further research is therefore required to identify factors that attenuate the seemingly greater risk of transmission associated with paternal gambling problems. Scientific Significance Parental involvement is a potential candidate for prevention and intervention efforts designed to reduce the intergenerational transmission of gambling problems. (Am J Addict 2017;26:707–712)