https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0151729

Sports have become an absolute staple in many American children’s childhood. Whether it’s playing soccer in preschool, little league baseball over the summer, or high school football on a crisp Friday night, sports are an extremely common activity for children of all ages to engage with. With youth sports being such a fixture in American culture, one may ponder the psychological effects that youth sports have on childhood development. Researchers Christina Felfe, Michael Lechner, and Andreas Steinmayr explore this very question in their article on this phenomenon titled “Sports and Child Development”.

The good news for parents whose children engage in youth sports is that the effects on development are primarily positive. While some obvious positive effects of engaging in youth sports such as in increase in physical health and motor skills may immediately come to mind, the effects of an increase in self esteem and better communication skills are also positive effects of youth sports participation. However, negative drawbacks to exist within the context of youth sports such as the often unnecessary pressure children face in these environments that are often the result of parental overstepping.

Fortunately, as a whole youth sports assists in children meeting developmental milestones and for the most part have a positive effect on children’s psychological development. 

Parents want what is best for their children, regardless of age, socioeconomic status, and marital status. Despite this, parenting books send conflicting messages about whether tiger parenting or free-range parenting is the best approach. The one thing all of the parenting books do have in common is the fact that they all say that if your child isn’t succeeding, then you are doing something wrong. 

However, parenting isn’t about controlling a child’s future; it is much more complex than that. The speaker, Yuko Munakata, describes trying to predict how a child will turn out based on the parents’ choices as like trying to predict a hurricane from the flap of a butterfly’s wings. In reality, children can be shaped by many forces that are often intertwined, such as successful parents, successful genes, successful peers, and growing up in a culture of success.

Growing up in the same house does not make children more alike in how successful, happy, or self-reliant you are. A meta-analysis done in 2015 found a pattern across 14 million twin pairs that every single outcome they measured in the twins was heritable, meaning genes influence who children become. Environment also matters; however, it isn’t the actual parenting that has a direct influence on the child’s outcome. The same parent could shape children in different ways. Just because an event doesn’t shape people in the same way does not mean it didn’t have any affect at all. Parenting could be shaping children, but just not in ways that result in them becoming more alike! Parents have influence, not control. 

 

To watch the full Ted Talk, click here!

Alexandra Lagaros, UConn KIDS Research Assistant

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), is a program aimed to help children in disadvantaged areas by providing them with access to technology. The researchers gave laptops to some children and not to others to see how it affected their education. They looked at how the laptops impacted the children’s schoolwork and thinking skills. The study found that the laptops didn’t make a big difference in how well the children did in school or in their thinking skills. Even though they had laptops, many kids spent time playing games or doing other things instead of learning.

These results demonstrate that giving children laptops isn’t enough to help them learn. Technology can help with education, but it needs to be used the right way with good teaching and support. In addition, It’s not just about giving out laptops carelessly, it’s how they’re used and how teachers help is more significant.

To read more, click here!

Jess Vo, UConn KIDS Research Assistant

Welcome back to Trivia Tuesday!

 

 

 

 

 

The answer to last week’s Trivia Tuesday is… 1-2 months! Typically, during this age, an infant only smiles in response to another person smiling at them first. This phenomenon is called a social smile!

This week’s question is: In what stage of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development are children able to understand and take the perspectives of other people?

1. Sensorimotor 
2. Preoperational
3. Concrete Operational 
4. Formal Operational

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

In recent years, there have been advances in clinical assessment for adolescents. Many types of evidence-based assessment (EBA) have many common themes: depression, anxiety, and other clinical dysfunctional disorders in children. However, he highlights another preferrable method of assessment: patient oriented research, monitoring patients from beginning to end to note progress and find the right treatments. 

The author emphasizes the importance of psychotherapy to improve psychosocial functioning. He also mentions that the scores of tests and measures to diagnose disorders is only used to operationalize the data. He raises a good point: what if a patient was only a few points away from a diagnosis. How would this impact the quality of their life? 

To read more, click here! 

Ashley Bejar, UConn KIDS Research Assistant 

 

Alexandra is a research assistant for UConn KIDS from New Canaan, Connecticut. She is a junior Psychological Sciences major with minors in Human Development and Family Sciences and Cognitive Science. She is excited to be a part of UConn KIDS because it gives her the opportunity to be more involved with the research going on at UConn.

After graduating, she plans on pursuing a Masters in School Psychology, as she enjoys working with children. In her free time, she likes to go hiking, read, and bake!

According to the CDC, 50% of children have experienced childhood trauma. The speaker, Lisa Godwin, tells her personal story, and reveals that her teacher was the one who helped her, along with the school guidance counselor, to find her voice and speak the truth about her trauma. 

She emphasizes the importance of recognizing student’s behaviors and learning to be aware, ask questions, and pay attention to students regardless of how they’re behaving. Godwin is now a kindergarten teacher who loves her students and is actively listening to what they say or choose to omit to make sure that they’re okay. 

Developing relationships with students is one of the best ways to get to know them. It’s not just young children, adolescents of all ages can have something going on, and it’s up to the adults around them to let them know they have someone in their corner. 

To watch the full Ted Talk, click here! 

Ashley Bejar, UConn KIDS Research Assistant 

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is defined as “temperament characterized in early childhood by distress to novelty and avoidance of unfamiliar people” (2021, Fox et al.). Social anxiety is a mental health disorder where an individual fears social situations due to a host of reasons, like being judged or talked about.  

Both sound similar right? Well, behavioral inhibition is actually a well-known risk factor for social anxiety! Interestingly enough, 60% of children with BI are not diagnosed with social anxiety. The study examines how three categories of processing situations (detection, automatic control, and playful control) can affect whether or not children will develop social anxiety. 

They discover that parenting styles and socialization from their environment can impact if a child develops automatic control (increases risk for social anxiety) or playful control (decreases risk for social anxiety). 

To read more, click here! 

Ashley Bejar, UConn KIDS Research Assistant 

The answer to last week’s Trivia Tuesday is… The Primacy Effect! This term describes how people are more likely to remember the first few items on a list compared to those in the middle or at the end. The reason for this is that the first items are usually better encoded into long-term memory.

At what age do most infants start to smile in response to others’ smiles’?
A) 1-2 months
B) 3-4 months
C) 7-8 months
D) 12 months

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

 

The goal of most parents is to provide the best life for their children that they possibly can so that they are able to thrive and succeed. It has been discovered that the earliest years of life are crucial for promoting early child development. More specifically, parenting interventions in the first three years of a child’s life have remarkable impacts on their development!

Evidence has shown that children participating in these intervention programs showed significant improvements in cognitive, language, and motor skills due to the fact that many programs focus on giving parents strategies that engage their children in stimulating activities, encourage play-based learning, and strengthen communication skills

Not only did these interventions increase development in children, but they also improved parenting knowledge, practices, and the overall quality of parent-child interactions. When parents feel supported, informed, and equipped, they can create a more nurturing and responsive environment. This could result in parents feeling less stressed and more confident, leading to more positive interactions with their children.

To read more, click here!

Alexandra Lagaros, UConn KIDS Research Assistant