This article emphasizes how important it is to keep families at the center of care in nursing/medical situations. Any sort of medical scenario for a child brings up a lot of stress for the child and for the family, there are so many unknowns and possibilities that we tend to spiral. This article talks about the importance of including families in medical care practices in order to decrease this anxiety and help the whole group feel more at ease. Because a child’s family is usually a constant in their life, having their family be near in such an unfamiliar situation helps the child also stay calmer. When the parents and the child are able to stay calm and collected, this helps the medical professionals provide the best care possible.  

     The article also builds on how parents know their kid best, so it is vital to have them work closely with the medical professionals giving their child care. Additionally, when the family is involved and able to give the medical professionals information that they would not know from running medical tests, this helps the medical professionals provide better care for their patient. While the nurses have to juggle many patients and many different tests, it helps to have the family be supportive and helpful. Overall, this article emphasizes how important it is to have a strong, supportive family system during any sort of medical care. It is vital to the child’s overall care that the parents and medical staff work as a healthcare team to ensure exceptional care! 

 

If you want to read more, click here! 

Jenna Coplon  

UConn KIDS Research Assistant 

Angie is a research assistant for UConn KIDS. She is a senior Psychological Sciences major, minoring in Human Development & Family Sciences in the Early Childhood Specializations program. After graduating, she plans on attending graduate school to become a counselor for young children and their families. She is involved with the University Ballet Company on campus and Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology. 

Angie is eager to be a research assistant this semester because she loves to help the supporting of children and their development, and we are so excited for her to be here! 

For children, play isn’t just fun–it’s brain-building, and the simplest everyday interactions with kids matter more than flashcards or fancy toys. Jesse Ilhardt reflects on her own experience as a preschool teacher–once focused on checklists of letters, numbers, and shapes–and explains why real learning comes through play and interactions. Research shows that playful back-and-forth interactions between children and adults actually build the brain’s architecture, especially the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for problem-solving, planning, and emotional regulation.

But many parents and teachers still avoid play because they want quick results (like memorizing letters) or feel unsure how to play. The talk highlights how simple, everyday moments, like using measuring cups and sponges at bath time instead of traditional bath toys, can become powerful brain-building opportunities. The takeaway: kids don’t need fancy toys or endless worksheets. What they need most is time to play, and caring adults who join in.

     In this article written as a master’s thesis by Courtney Lincoln, they go on to describe the differences in emotional regulation ability in children that come from different home lives and have different levels of care. Lincoln explains that children who are raised by single mothers and children who were receiving extra attention through a Head Start program had a better ability to regulate their emotions. On the contrary, children who were raised with a married mother or were not receiving attention from a program like Head Start had a harder time regulating their emotions and this was because of less attentiveness by the mother to understand her child’s emotional needs.  

     Lincoln goes on to discuss the main emotional regulation that children struggled with: emotional lability. Emotional Lability is characterized by unstable and sudden mood changes. For example, if a kid were to be enjoying a game but quickly gets very frustrated when something does not go their way, this would be emotional lability or a labile mood. Lincoln addressed this as an issue revolving around mothers’ abilities to help their child regulate their emotions. Showing a correlation between mother-child interactions and the emotional awareness that their children have.  

     Overall, this article dives deeper into how attentiveness and recognition of emotions play into how children interact with other children and adults. If parents are not encouraging work on emotional regulation, and helping their young children work through big feelings, their child will have a harder time recognizing these problems and finding ways to solve them. Parenthood is about guiding your child through this world they now must navigate and, especially when they get to school age, they need to be well prepared to understand themselves and the world around them. Lincoln does a great job of describing the key points of this study and elaborating even more on the impact of parental interactions on kids’ emotional regulation.  

 

To read more, click here! 

Jenna Coplon  

UConn KIDS Research Assistant  

The answer to last week’s question, “At what age is the brain fully developed?”  

Is 20-30 years old! 

This week’s trivia question is: 

By age 3, about how many words are children able to understand?

1. 1,500
2. 8,000
3. 12,000
4. 20,000

Tune in next week to find out the answer to this week’s question! 

Sandplay Therapy as an Emerging Intervention for Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Children

Sandplay therapy is a nonverbal, multisensory, psychodynamic treatment approach used with both children and adults. It involves sculpting a landscape in a sandbox using miniature figures and symbolic representations to model personal experiences or emotional struggles. Recent psychological research has identified sandplay therapy as a promising intervention for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

GAD affects approximately 2–6% of children worldwide. For those living with this condition, daily life is often filled with excessive worry, which can lead to physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, and muscle tension, as well as mental symptoms like restlessness, difficulty concentrating, and irritability. For young children still learning to navigate the world, these symptoms can create chronic stress and limit developmental growth.

Psychological research consistently supports the idea that expressing complex emotions through abstract and creative mediums—such as art, play, and writing—can help individuals externalize internal conflicts and access subconscious material. While not as widely known as journaling or traditional art therapy, sandplay therapy has deep historical roots. Originally influenced by Jungian psychology in the 1920s, this method is gaining renewed attention for its potential to induce neurobiological changes.

For example, in a 2020 case study by M. Foo et al., sandplay therapy produced measurable neurological and psychological changes. Following each session, researchers observed increased activity in the thalamus—a brain region linked to emotional regulation—along with a significant reduction in anxiety symptoms. According to the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale, the participant’s anxiety levels improved from “extreme” to “normal.”

This raises an important question: To what extent could sandplay therapy transform the lives of children with GAD?

Research by C. Benjamin et al. (2014) suggests that early, successful interventions—particularly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—offer lasting benefits for anxiety. If sandplay therapy produces similar long-term effects, it may present a valuable alternative for children who do not respond well to traditional CBT.

To explore more about this emerging field, click here.

Cooper Armogida
UConn KIDS, Research Assistant

Jenna is a junior Allied Health Science major with minors in Human Development & Family Science and Molecular and Cell Biology! She is on a pre-med track, and plans to go to medical school and become a Pediatrician! On campus she is involved in the UConn Dance Company, HuskyTHON, and the Pre-Med Society. Additionally, she works at the child development labs with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers!

Jenna is so excited for this opportunity with UConn KIDS to be a research assistant and we are excited to have her!

Talking to young children is more important than you’d think. Talking to infants and toddlers will help promote linguistic nutrition and mental exercise that will help build the child’s brain and intelligence. Talking to young children is something beneficial for their brain development and is something families can do despite their socioeconomic status.  

 

Hearing language is the basis of oral language skills which are fundamental to intelligence. Although babies aren’t able to talk back, it’s important that they’re hearing language around them. Oral language provides children with an important tool for thought and without fluent and structured oral language, it will be difficult for children to think as they get older.  

 

Dialogue, like narrating an infant or toddler’s play, can really help oral language development. It doesn’t have to be excessive or complicated language, rather it’s better to use simple language that corresponds to things in the child’s daily life, such as toys or changing their diaper. 

 

The first thousand days of life are a period of a vast amount of learning that families should take advantage of to empower them to help, support, and nourish their children’s brain development. Babies are born ready to learn but they’ll only achieve their full potential with support from their families. 

 

If you want to read more, click here!  

Angelina Stofka 

UConn KIDS, Research Assistant 

 

It has been found that young children can use gestures before language development begins, and these gestures can also predict future language development. The majority of previous studies that focused on gestures in young children have only observed them in neurotypical children; however, there is an increasing amount of work that also examines children who have been diagnosed with autism. One of the criteria necessary for an autism diagnosis is impairment in nonverbal communication, and it affects about 1 in 54 children in the United States. Since gestures have been proven to help aid in early identification and interventions for children who are more likely to experience language difficulties, this article looked to compare findings from both neurotypical and autistic children.

Neurotypical children are able to communicate with gestures before they are able to use spoken language. Their first gestures usually include showing or pointing, and the objects that they point to are more likely to be added to their spoken vocabulary. These gestures emerge around 10 months and by 14 months, pointing specifically at different objects actually predicts their language outcomes. Specifically, index-finger pointing and declarative pointing have been more strongly tied to vocabulary growth than whole-hand and imperative pointing. Painting has also been shown to be connected to an increase in vocabulary, with earlier and more frequent painting serving as strong predictors. Once children can combine speech and gesture (~2 years old) and they can convey meaning beyond single words, these combinations can predict syntactic development.

Children with Autism have shown a reduced amount of gesture production from infancy all the way through adolescence with declarative gestures. The findings for gesture production in children with ASD are mixed, with some studies showing lower performance and others showing similarities. Furthermore, Infants at an elevated likelihood of ASD, especially those who have an older sibling who is diagnosed, are at higher risk for language impairments. Some infants with elevated likelihood can perform as well as or better than neurotypical children, while others, mostly those who are diagnosed later, show reduced gesture use. Children with ASD and an elevated likelihood of ASD produce similar amounts of gesture types and gesture and speech combinations, which help predict language skills as well.

New research is suggesting that the quality and type of gestures may be more important than frequency. Gestures combined with vocalizations, or those used for joint attention and social interaction, are especially predictive of later language. On the other hand, gestures for behavioral regulation are not. In other words, for infants with ASD, the types of gestures rather than just the amount play a huge role in language development.

Overall, gestures allow children to convey meanings before they can do so in speech, and these early gestures consistently precede and predict vocabulary, syntax, and narrative development.

To read more, click here!

Alexandra Lagaros

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

The answer to last week’s question, “How developed is a child’s brain by age 5?”

Is 90% !!!

This week’s trivia question is:

At what age is the brain fully developed?

A. 8 years old

B. 10 years old

C. 16 years old

D. 20-30 years old

Tune in next week to find out the answer to this week’s question!