Sibling Rivalry is a common behavior in families with more than one child. This practice has been with humans for more than centuries, however, contrary to common parents’ beliefs it could lead to serious negative consequences. In 2021, the research found that there is a strong correlation between sibling bullying and lower self-esteem and a sense of competence. Another research also discovers that sibling bullying can greatly increase the risk of depression and self-harm behavior.

    In the existence of sibling rivalry, parents’ reactions toward it are crucial. A few strategies provided by professionals are to resist comparisons and to be aware of the situation.

Every child is unique and different. Sometimes comparisons are inevitable and it was one of the greatest tools for keeping kids in order, be careful not to compare to the extent that would make one feel less than another. To be aware, be aware of your biases and how life events, and stages can affect siblings. Second, be aware of what you say and do around them, and to the greatest extent try to be equal to every child. Furthermore, many events could affect siblings, both positive and negative, not that you shouldn’t celebrate the good but try to give the other sibling some extra love too.

Finally, spend more time together as a family, and set some ground rules. However, if sibling rivalry is becoming a huge problem, talk to someone, talk to a doctor. Let in some help.

Read the full article here

Hsin-Yu Huang

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

The “clean plate club” is a common phenomenon among American households which encourages children to finish the entirety of their meals and to ensure proper nutrition.  However, can this idea of having to always eat everything on your plate be harmful when trying to build healthy habits in children?  Perhaps a better approach to building healthy eating habits in children is to practice something known as intuitive eating.  This approach to diet and nutrition emphasizes trusting your body in its hunger and fullness cues to determine when, what, and how much to eat.  Every individual starts off practicing intuitive eating when suckling from their mother or receiving formula, but once children reach the age of two, respecting natural hunger and fullness cues is heavily influenced by the environment the child lives in. 

 

Children will mould their eating habits based on what they are subjected to whether it be observing someone else’s eating habits, TV commercials, boredom, or coping.  It is crucial during childhood years for children to develop a positive relationship with food and practicing intuitive eating can kickstart the route to independence by getting to have control over food choices.  

 

Parents are encouraged to promote and assist children to eat intuitively by keeping nutritious food in the home, but allowing the child to pick which of those nutritious foods they would like to eat.  Intuitive eating relies on listening to the body’s hunger cues so make sure to allow the child to say when they are full rather than forcing them to finish the entire plate and letting them eat more than you may have expected at times.  Parents can be a great role model when it comes to intuitive eating by sharing meals often with their children and practicing what you are preaching-listening to hunger cues and enjoying sharing the meal with them.

 

As parents you can make yourself feel empowered by setting your child up for success in their relationship with food through intuitive eating while empowering your child at the same time when it comes to making food choices that are appropriate for them.

 

Read the full article here

Marissa Robarge

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, for some of us it is.  While most people look forward to the holidays as a time for catching up with family, and lavish meals, and creating and continuing traditions, for some the holidays can be a time of high stress and anxiety.  Typically, when thinking about those who experience difficulties during the holidays, we consider adults to be those most affected.  However, despite presents and the holiday spirit, children are also prone to feeling the chaos of the holidays.  

 

The holidays are known to cause stress in children due to unfamiliar environments when it comes to holiday parties, lots of people they may not know, gift giving and receiving, and sometimes traveling long distances.  Children thrive on routine and if there’s anything that tends to disrupt these routines it is the holidays.  So how can we prevent children from feeling the pressure of the holidays?

 

Experts suggest that the first step in reducing your child’s negative emotions about the holidays is by first managing your own stress as children can sense and follow the way that their caretakers are feeling.  The second most important step in keeping kids calm during the holidays is by trying to keep their routine as similar as possible to what i normally is throughout the year–getting plenty of sleep and eating enough.  Another great way to help kids cope with the stress of the holidays is setting expectations daily about what the routine is for the day and keeping them active to burn off that extra energy.

 

Let’s keep the spirit alive this holiday season both in ourselves and in our children!

 

Read the full article here

 

Marissa Robarge 

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

Research has shown that shy children are more susceptible to insecurity, peer pressure, and anxiety, and are likely to be insecure and reserved in adulthood. Encouraging a shy child to break out of their shell can be tough, given the pressure it puts on children to breach their comfort zone. However, when parents take actions that reinforce shyness, it teaches children that they do not need to be independent, which in turn may lead to increased avoidance of uncomfortable situations. 

Nonetheless, shyness in children is fixable through gentle, patient assertiveness. Psychologists suggest encouraging your child to act confident and bold. This can be done by creating a hierarchical series of steps for your child to follow, starting with something that requires a little bit of confidence and ending with something that requires a lot of confidence. Using a modeling technique, where the child would copy your actions, for each step could also prove to be beneficial for building confidence. For example, you could explain that you’re going to say “Hi,” to some friends and enact it with a handshake, and then after seeing how it’s done, the child would do the same. Some activities that you could encourage your child to engage in to help boost their confidence include, participating in class, joining a sports team, and joining clubs at school. 

There’s no set point for how long the process of confidence-building will take, as children who tend to be shyer may require longer periods of guidance. Further, moments of failure should be expected and accepted while your child works past their shyness; failure, nonetheless, is beneficial as it shows your child that while embarrassing moments happen, life goes on. Overall, the process of helping your child work through their shyness is a fulfilling process that will produce lasting benefits.

Kylie Robinshaw

Research Assistant, UConn KIDS

Read the full article here

Developing research is showing that children have an easier time navigating their environment when it’s predictable, and that unpredictable environments may affect their brain development and mental health. Predictability provides multiple benefits to growing children, one of which is establishing relationships with caregivers. Having a predictable routine with caregivers allows children to develop trust, and supports brain areas involved in emotional regulation. Child and adult brains thrive on predictable situations, as they provide us safe routines, whereas unpredictable events can be stressful. Here’s some tips on how to make your child’s environment more predictable to support their development: 

1. Develop a bedtime routine. Bedtime routines prepare the brain for sleep, and having a consistent, predictable set of procedures to complete ahead of going to bed makes it more likely for children to sleep successfully. Bedtime routines can be as simple as having dinner, washing up, brushing teeth, changing into pajamas, and then going to sleep. 
2. Eat as a family. Having a meal as a family provides children with the opportunity to connect and build secure relationships with their loved ones. 
3. Do something fun at the end of the week. Concluding the week with something fun, like going to the park, watching a movie, or having a Pizza night marks the end of the week and facilitates shifting to the weekend routine. 
4. Give your child a heads up before a transition occurs. It can be hard for children to transition between tasks, especially when they are engaged in a fun activity. Given how much children thrive off of predictability, let them know ahead of time the next task they’ll be transitioning to. This will make the transition easier since it gives a child’s brain time to prepare for another task. 
5. Let your child know about any changes in their routine. Following a routine all the time is unfeasible; sometimes, a change in a routine is needed when appointments, travel and the holidays come up. Changes in routine help children learn about how to be flexible and how to cope with change. Letting children know about any routine changes in advance can help them organize their emotions regarding the change. 

Overall, developing routines with children supports their brain development and also helps them practice mental flexibility.

Kylie Robinshaw

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant

Read more here

Most people can remember a time where their parents lectured them about the importance of not slouching or seeing videos advertising new workout equipment to build your abdominal muscles.  As silly or annoying those instances may be, they were definitely onto something!  In fact, strengthening our core muscles and maintaining proper posture is central to just about  every activity that humans do.  Encouraging your child to move and sit in ways that build that group of abdominal muscles can promote their success in and out of the classroom.

When examining children who have poor core posture, they typically have difficulty keeping their head, wrists, and shoulders positioned properly.  This can lead to difficulties when executing fine and gross motor activities like crawling and handwriting.  The deficits in fine motor skill seen as a result of poor posture can cause children to fall behind with their learning because they are unable to execute writing/drawing tasks, often need frequent breaks from fatigue of holding themselves up, and tend to move around in their seat a lot, altering their focus.  Children may also experience delays in their social-emotional development due to the inability to take part in some kinds of play such as using playground equipment during recess because they cannot support their bodies as well as not being able to support themselves during forms of rough play.

If you are worried about your child’s core strength, it is important to observe their behavior especially when seated.  If your child tends to utilize their non-dominant hand to support their head, prop themselves up against the table, slouch, or have difficulty getting up, then it may be a good idea to help them build their core strength.  

Helping your child’s core strength doesn’t mean they need to do hours of abdominal exercises everyday, in fact, you can incorporate certain activities into their playtime.  Having your child walking on all fours pretending to be different animals or even holding your child’s feet while they walk on their hands are excellent ways to help develop their abdominal muscles.

Read the full article here

 

Marissa Robarge

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

Being creative is a central part of life for children and their development. Children are able to manifest their creativity in a variety of ways, like drawing, building, and playing pretend. Parents can utilize the following strategies to help encourage their children to express their creativity.

1. Provide your child with opportunities to do arts and crafts. Arts and crafts can be done at any age, and can range from something simple to something complex. Some fun art activities that your child can do include carving something out of clay, making friendship bracelets, making a spaceship out of a cardboard box, and sewing. 
2. Limit screen time. Screen time can take up a lot of time out of a child’s day. A study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that children spend a daily average of about 7.5 hours looking at screens. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommends limiting screen time for children, suggesting no more than 1-3 hours of screen time for children aged 2 to 5 years old. Turning down the amount of screen time a child has can help encourage them to have fun and relax, and allows them to pursue and try out creative activities. 
3. Put time aside for imaginative play. Imaginative play includes any time of make-believe play, like playing with figurines or playing dress-up. Parents can also tap into their inner child and engage in pretend play with their children to encourage their creativity.

Some final tips to help foster your child’s creativity include allowing messes to happen, praising and displaying your children’s projects, and allowing your child to experiment. Encouraging your child’s creativity can help your child grow emotional and critical thinking skills, and also produces other benefits like stress reduction and identity exploration. Creativity can also help boost self-esteem within children and facilitate their fine motor skill development. Children are intrinsically creative due to their curious drive to explore about the world, and providing children resources to pursue their creativity can assist their development and promote their cognitive well-being.

Kylie Robinshaw

Research Assistant, UConn KIDS

Read the full article here

Many parents decide to create something known as a “baby box” to store things that are important to their child’s lives.  For example, some baby boxes have old photos, their first outfits, the newspaper from the day they were born, and baby blankets.  While these mementos make a great keepsake and serve as a reminder for those early years, they can also serve as a representation of the stages of child development.

A recent study examined the behavior of children in relation to their attachment objects which include those infamous baby blankets and other soft toys like stuffed animals.  This study found that the role these objects take on in a child’s life differs across the lifespan and can influence children’s preferences when it comes to an attachment object.  In general, attachment objects are used to reduce the presence of a stress response and help the child regulate their emotions.  In order to continue this though, the role of the attachment objects must change just as the child grows and changes.  

Researchers discovered that children one year old and younger are more likely to choose soft clothes as their comfort object.  Children at this age use the comfort object to replace the role of a mother’s soothing by satisfying the need for tactile touch and comfort and thus can reduce their cry response.  Children this age often satisfy these needs by using their mouth or skin on the blankets.  However, as children shift into ages two and older, the preference in attachment objects changes and the role of the attachment object is also altered.  As children age, they begin to prefer soft toys such as stuffed animals to be their attachment object.  This is believed to be because as a child ages, their language also develops allowing them to engage in pretend play.  Children have a desire to engage and talk about new experiences going on in the world around them and by personifying a stuffed animal, they find a source of companionship in which to share these new experiences. 

So, while it is nostalgic to thumb through the memories in those baby boxes, make sure to save the blankets and the toys to remind yourself of not only the good times but how much you have changed!

Read the full article here

 

Marissa Robarge

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

A child’s sense of humor can indicate a lot about their development and thought processes. What children find funny oftentimes coincides with their developmental stage; for example, toddlers who are learning potty training find humor in “potty talk,” while older children who have already learned potty training don’t think bathroom jokes are funny. 

Laughing and smiling appear to be innate human behaviors, with infants as young as twelve-hours old being able to smile and babies who are only a couple of months old knowing how to laugh. One prime aspect of infant development is realizing that they are their own person and acquiring object permanence, which is the understanding that people and objects still exist even when they are out-of-sight. Object permanence acquisition begins when a baby is around eight-months-old. During this stage of development, many babies find humor in the game peekaboo, where someone hides their face behind their hands, opens their hands and says “peekaboo!” A baby with object permanence finds peekaboo funny because they understand the game, and the fact that someone they know is behind the hands. Peekaboo can be a game of prediction for infants acquiring object permanence; they know a familiar face is hiding, they predict that the face will reappear, and feel relief when it does. 

This same concept applies to many other stages of cognitive development; two-year-olds who are learning language find gibberish talk funny because they are in the process of grasping their language and understand that gibberish is nonsense. In the same sense, when six-year-olds are comprehending logic and abstraction, they find humor in jokes that involve word-play, logical flaws and juxtapositions, like “What’s the best month for a parade?” “March,” as these jokes reflect their current cognitive development. 

Overall, the next time you’re wondering about what your child is learning about themselves and the world, look to the source of their laughter, as a child’s sense of humor often concurs with their development. 

Kylie Robinshaw

Research Assistant, UConn KIDS

Read the full article here

One of the biggest challenges of traditional learning is the sedentary lifestyle that children are required to adapt to.  Oftentimes in the classroom, students are supposed to remain seated at their desks and give their full attention to the assignment or instruction provided to them.  Most primary schools provide recess and there are specials, but could more breaks from direct instruction prove beneficial to academic performance?

A recent study examined the effects of in-classroom physical activity breaks on student’s health, academic ability, and cognitive function.  The study involved over 1000 primary school children where instruction was paused, and children participated in a physically-demanding activity throughout the day.  Researchers believe that physical breaks in the classroom setting are a great idea because it is already an environment associated with learning and the teacher can grab everyone’s attention easily.  Not to mention, physical activity is known as an indicator for academic performance.

After this study was completed, the data from this study revealed that there was a positive correlation between student’s overall physical activity levels and breaks promoted other healthy behaviors.  In regards to academic performance, students performed better on spelling tasks as well as had an easier time learning foreign languages.  They also found that there was a positive effect of physical breaks on cognitive functions such as inhibition, or blocking out other stimuli in the environment.  This can prove beneficial to the learning process as children are able to sustain their focus on the task at hand.

More studies need to be conducted on the effects of physical activity on reading and mathematical performance.  However, there are numerous effects that physical activity can have as long as the breaks are cognitively demanding.  Physical activity breaks have the potential to be a useful classroom tool.

 

Read more about breaks here

 

Marissa Robarge

Research Assistant UConn KIDS