BACKGROUND: The pandemic has had a significant impact on the daily lives of children and their families, particularly the children of health care workers, due to changes in family routines as a result of their parents\' work schedules. We aimed to explore the socioemotional and behavioural (SEB) problems of children of healthcare worker mothers (HCWM) during the COVID-19 pandemic and compare them with age-matched children and their mothers from other occupations.
METHODS: A case-control study design was applied, and a snowball approach was used to enrol volunteered participants aged between 6 and 36 months of age, through a Google survey. We used the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) questionnaire to assess children\'s SEB problems and a Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) to evaluate the psychological distress of mothers. Differences in BITSEA, BSI and MSPSS scores were examined using chi-square and Mann-Whitney U tests, as appropriate. A logistic regression model was used to identify independent predictors of children\'s behavioural and emotional problems.
RESULTS: In total, 600 questionnaires were analysed. It was observed that children in the HCWM group were separated from their mothers more often and for longer periods of time than their counterparts (p < 0.010, p = 0.002). Changes in the child\'s structured outdoor activities during the pandemic period were more likely to be observed in the HCWM group (p < 0.05). The percentage of children with the BITSEA problem subscale above the subclinical cut-off, externalizing and dysregulation scores were significantly higher in the HCWM group (p = 0.044, p = 0.031, and p = 0.016). Moreover, each point increase in BSI global index scores (p < 0.001, RR:3.34, 95%CI:1.91-5.82) was found as a risk factor for clinically significant SEB problems.
CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the current study suggests HCWM\'s have experienced occupational inequality, and young children of HCWM\'s were at increased risk for externalizing and dysregulation problems during the pandemic. Maternal psychological stress had a significant impact on their children\'s socio-emotional well-being.

Inequality in hierarchical social status, especially among socially excluded children, profoundly affects preadolescents. Historically viewed through a lens of psychopathology and moral deficiencies, it challenges the education system\'s approaches and interventions. This article introduces a developmental perspective, highlighting the hierarchical social status\' role in shaping classroom cohesion, strength, and distinctiveness. This study\'s phenomenological, qualitative methodology aimed to gain preliminary insight into the children\'s perspectives. Drawing from 12 focus group discussions involving 140 latency-age (grade 5) children in Israel, it uniquely reveals the dynamic nature of hierarchical social status influenced by children\'s connections with the group. This dynamism promotes group unity, strengthens bonds, and prioritizes collective concerns, contributing to the development of a \"social self\" in the latency phase. Beyond theory, this study proposes innovative interventions to address social status disparities.

This study reviews empirical research literature that deals with existing caring approaches to nurture and educate gifted children in music. The focus on the ethics of care stems from the need to expand notions of talent development in music from a purely behaviorist focus often associated with traumatic experiences, toward a perspective that addresses socio-emotional and cultural aspects of human development across the lifespan. We employed the Preferred Reporting Systems for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews method to review literature concerning caring approaches to the upbringing and education of children gifted for music. A total of 652 records dating from the 1930s and searched via both digital databases and manually in 41 relevant journals were retrieved from which 506 were examined using our inclusion criteria. A detailed analysis process allowed the authors to include 14 studies that were organized according to sampling location, methodologies, quality appraisal, and criteria-related topics. Eleven of the studies were qualitative with a majority of these employing semi-structured interviews for data collection, while the remaining meta strategy and quantitative studies typically employed questionnaires. Salient topics covered by the selected studies included: addressing inequalities in opportunity to access gifted programs; identifying socio-emotional needs of gifted (and twice-exceptional) students; offering a nurturing environment; focusing on intrinsic motivation; developing coping strategies for overall wellbeing; and cultivating healthy attitudes toward competitions through a spirit of peer collaboration and humility. These aspects were clustered into Francoy Gagné\'s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent regarding natural abilities, environmental, intrapersonal, and developmental catalysts that are involved in nurturing talents in gifted children. Results suggest that the existing research on caring approaches to musically gifted children\'s learning and development are scarce and that current knowledge is based mostly on single one-off studies rather than systematic research, and on studies that examine a selection of aspects but not adopting a larger-scale theoretical framework. This review highlights the need for more systematic, multidisciplinary, and empirically robust studies on caring approaches to musically gifted children\'s learning and development, and for policy developments in educational settings where acceleration programs are offered for young, gifted music learners.

In this study, we adopted parenting styles as a multidimensional and latent construct that includes different aspects of parenting, rather than solely focusing on a single parenting style. In a Web-based survey with 1203 Greek parents, we identified parenting styles and their SDQ reports on their children. According to our results by Latent Profile Analysis, we must use a more complex approach concerning parenting styles. We identified a \"Highly Authoritative style\" profile with high levels of authoritative, low levels of authoritarian and middle levels of permissive parenting styles. We additionally identified a profile called \"Relaxed Authoritative style\", with still high but lower levels of authoritative style, low but slightly heightened levels of authoritarian style, and middle levels of permissive style. A further profile, named \"Permissive Focused Authoritative style\", had a mix of high levels of authoritative, moderate levels of permissive, and elevated levels of authoritarian parenting styles. Finally, in a profile named \"Inconsistent Parenting style\", we identified parents with a blend of still high, but the lowest of all four levels of authoritative and highest levels of permissive and authoritarian parenting styles. When combining the four identified parenting patterns with the SDQ results, we identified the \"highly authoritative parenting style\" profile to be the least connected to internalizing or externalizing problems of the respective children.

Drama therapy incorporates play, imaginary engagement, embodiment, and perspective taking to promote interpersonal skills and affective functioning. Existing school-based drama therapy (SBDT) research has demonstrated utility with select populations; however, much of the SBDT literature has featured disparate findings. Absent from the current literature is a thorough synthesis of the benefits of SBDT for socio-emotional development in early childhood, an age cohort that may be well suited for drama therapy due to the method\'s theoretical and practical focus on action, symbolism, and play. A scoping review was conducted to answer the research question: What is the use and potential of SBDT to enhance socio-emotional skills in early childhood? Following a thorough database and manual search, 406 articles were identified and, after screening, 16 articles met the inclusion criteria. Based on the results, practice recommendations include the use of metaphor, distance, and life-drama connection to enhance socio-emotional skills, using dramatic play as a tool to address adverse experiences, and applying SBDT to support specific clinical populations. Policy recommendations include the use of SBDT within a public health trauma approach and the need for ecological integration of SBDT into schools. Research recommendations include the need for a broad-level articulation of a scaffolded SBDT research agenda in schools focused on socio-emotional skills and recommendations specific to methodological and reporting rigor.

Social robots hold promise in augmenting education, rehabilitative care, and leisure activities for children. Despite findings suggesting various benefits of social robot use in schools, clinics, and homes, stakeholders have voiced concerns about the potential social and emotional effects of children engaging in long-term interactions with robots. Given the challenges of conducting large long-term studies of child-robot interaction (CRI), little is known about the impact of CRI on children\'s socio-emotional development. Here we summarize the literature on predictions and expectations of teachers, parents, therapists, and children regarding the effects of CRI on children\'s socio-emotional functioning and skill building. We then highlight the limited body of empirical research examining how CRI affects children\'s social behavior and emotional expression, and we provide a summary of available questionnaires for measuring socio-emotional constructs relevant to CRI. We conclude with design recommendations for research studies aimed at better understanding the effects of CRI, before social robots become ubiquitous. This review is relevant to researchers, educators, roboticists, and clinicians interested in designing and using social robots with developmental populations.

The negative impacts of COVID 19 on children\'s holistic development have been reported by researchers around the world. This qualitative study explored teachers\' and parents\' perspectives on the impact of physical/social distancing and school closure policies on children\'s socioemotional development. The study was conducted in fall 2020. The sample included four U.S. Preschools teachers (for 4-year-olds), four international preschool teachers (for 4, 5-year-olds), three U.S. Kindergarten teaches (for 5-year-olds), and 4 U.S. parents of 4 and 5-year-olds. Interviews were conducted over Zoom. Participants shared that the social deprivation experienced by children such as lack of friendships, absence of peer learning and peer communication, loss of play time, and lack of socialization impacted their children\'s socialization skills, higher order thinking development, mental health, and activity levels. Participants also shared that their children exhibited externalizing behaviors such as acting out, throwing tantrums, seeking negative attention, aggressiveness, lying, and showing disrespect. Participants reported children\'s life skills acquisition issues such as their over reliance on parents and difficulty in performing routine tasks. Participating teachers who taught 5-years-olds reported lower levels of fine motor skills among their students. The findings of the study suggest that although children have experienced severe academic learning loss during the pandemic, the post-pandemic ECE curriculum must keep a strong socio-emotional and practical life skills focus which contributes to children\'s overall well-being. Future studies may adopt a mixed method design in multi-country contexts to evaluate the impact of interventions implemented by early childhood programs on children\'s socioemotional health.

The association between low socioeconomic status (SES), migration background and psychosocial health could be various in different age stages, rare research has investigated associations in very early childhood. Cross-sectional data of SES, parental migration background, and child\'s psychosocial problems among 2149 children were collected (M age = 24.6 ± 1.8 months, 49.9% girls) from a community population. Indicators of SES included parental education level, maternal work status, and family composition. Child\'s psychosocial problems, including social-emotional problems and delay in social-emotional competence, were assessed by the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment Problem scale and Competence scale, respectively. Interaction effects between SES and maternal migration background in risk of psychosocial problems were found. Among children of a native-born mother, lower maternal and paternal education levels indicated a higher risk of social-emotional problems and competence delay, respectively. Children of a migrant mother had a higher risk of both social-emotional problems and competence delay if they had a migrant father. The results highlight psychosocial health disparities in 2-year-old children and the need for research into mechanisms underlying these associations.

Around the world, well-produced television programming can engage vulnerable, hard-to-reach audiences by offering informal education and enrichment. Akili and Me is an animated children\'s educational program available in Sub-Saharan Africa that provides age and culturally appropriate lessons. In 2018, the producers created socio-emotional and health content. This study examines the relationship between children\'s exposure to the new Akili and Me content and socio-emotional and health outcomes. Participants included low-income school children (mean age 5.32 years, SD = 0.82) from Arusha, Tanzania. Researchers conducted one-on-one baseline and post-intervention surveys with each participant. Over 12 weeks, the children attended afterschool sessions with screenings of Akili and Me, with distinct content screened on different days. The research team recorded children\'s attendance and assessed children\'s receptivity to the program through character identification. Using MLM regression models with data from 411 participants from 10 public schools, the analyses showed that a greater exposure and receptivity to Akili and Me predicted improved outcomes scores on the socio-emotional and health outcomes, controlling for sex, age, baseline scores, and general media receptivity (non-Akili and Me characters). Contributing to the literature on educational media, this study shows that exposure to an animated program can teach vulnerable preschool children socio-emotional and health content.

We examine treatment effect heterogeneity using data from the Head Start CARES study, in which a sample of preschool centers was randomly assigned to either one of three curricula interventions targeting socio-emotional (SE) skills (i.e., emotional knowledge, problem-solving skills, and executive functions) or to continue using their \"business-as-usual\" curriculum. Most existing research estimates only mean differences between treatment and control groups, and uses simple subgroup analyses to assess treatment heterogeneity, which may overlook important variation in treatment effects across the ex post outcome distribution. We use quantile treatment effects analyses to understand the impacts of these curricular interventions at various parts of the outcome distribution, from the 1st percentile to the 99th percentile, to understand who benefits most from SE curricula interventions. Results show positive impacts of the curricula interventions on emotional knowledge and problem-solving skills, but not equally across the full skill distribution. Children in the upper half of the emotional knowledge distribution and at the higher end of the problem-solving skills distribution gain more from the curricula. As in the study\'s original mean-comparison analyses, we find no impacts on children\'s executive function skills at any point in the skills distribution. Our findings add to the growing literature on the differential effects of curricula interventions for preschool programs operating at scale. Importantly, it provides the first evidence for the effects of SE curricula interventions on SE outcomes across children\'s outcome skill levels. We discuss implications for early education programs for children with different school readiness skills.