Climate Anxiety in Early Childhood: Mental Health, Displacement and Affective Injustice in International and European Climate Governance

Examining potential risk factors for anxiety in early childhood

Communication anxiety needs to be handled by the family from an early age because it can have an impact on the process of establishing a child's self-concept. This happens because children experience a phase of adaptation in a new environment, such as a school environment. The handling of children's communication anxiety is carried out by family communication and games. The purpose of this article is to describe the state of the art about children's communication anxiety and games using the literature review method in a scientific journal for two years (2022-2023). As a result, ten journals specifically discuss anxiety in early childhood and various media games, four journals in 2022 and eight journals in 2023. The game media used to reduce anxiety in early childhood are hand puppets, snake and ladders, puzzles, coloring and origami, and roleplaying. The game media is considered capable of overcoming the problem of child anxiety because the child world is playing so children can describe their emotions better.

As the climate crisis intensifies, young children are increasingly exposed to psychological stress linked to environmental change, manifesting in emerging forms of anxiety, sadness, and guilt. Although climate anxiety in children is gaining international recognition as a legitimate mental health concern, little is known about how these emotions specifically develop in children under the age of eight. This paper presents the first comprehensive state-of-the-art (SotA) review of research on climate anxiety in early childhood, systematically mapping current knowledge, identifying key conceptual and methodological gaps, and proposing priorities for future inquiry. Findings reveal that empirical studies in this area remain scarce, are often adapted from adult-centered frameworks, and predominantly situated within Euro-Western contexts. The review argues for developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, and interdisciplinary approaches that seriously engage with both the emotional experiences and agentic capacities of young children. By highlighting critical gaps and outlining future research directions, this review lays the foundation for a more inclusive, child-sensitive, and globally relevant research agenda on climate anxiety in early childhood.

Research on anxiety in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has burgeoned in the past 15 years. Most of the research has focused on school-age children, ages 6 to 18 years. Yet, recent studies suggest that anxiety can emerge in young children, under 6 years, with ASD. This scoping review synthesized the literature on anxiety in young children with ASD. Three domains of anxiety research were reviewed: (a) prevalence/severity, phenomenology, and course; (b) correlates; and (c) treatment. Four online databases were searched from the start of the database until March 2020. Keywords pertaining to anxiety, autism, and young children were entered. The search identified 44 articles for inclusion. These studies varied with respect to sample source, informants, and measures to assess anxiety. The overall prevalence of anxiety ranged from 1.6 to 62%. Sixteen of 17 studies found that young children with ASD had higher levels of anxiety compared to various control groups. A variety of DSM anxiety symptoms and disorders were present in young children with the most common symptoms being specific, social, and generalized fears. Correlates of anxiety included sensory over-responsivity, sleep disturbance, aggression/defiance, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Three cognitive behavioral treatment studies for anxiety and one developmental intervention targeting ASD symptoms showed promise in reducing anxiety. Findings indicate an early emergence of anxiety in some children with ASD. Further research on the measurement, pathophysiology, and treatment of anxiety in early childhood is critical to improving outcomes in children with ASD. LAY SUMMARY: This scoping review synthesizes the literature on anxiety in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Results indicate that children with ASD have higher levels of anxiety than children without ASD. Potential factors that could be contributing to anxiety include sensory, sleep, and behavioral problems. Preliminary studies show that anxiety can improve with cognitive behavioral treatment. These findings suggest that research on anxiety in young children with ASD should be prioritized to improve mental health outcomes.

Multi‐level Climate Governance: The global system and selected sub‐systems

The goal of this study was to explore the role of childcare history as a potential moderating factor in the development of anxiety in early elementary school. Data were drawn from multiple cycles of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. At Time 1, the sample included n = 3,100 children aged 4 to 5 years. Based on parent ratings at Time 1, groups of extremely anxious, aggressive, and comorbid children were identified, as well as a comparison group. Parents also reported on children's primary care experiences (e.g., centre-based care, home-based care, no care). Two years later, teachers provided ratings of child anxiety and aggression in elementary school. Results indicated an interaction between early behavioural risk group and childcare type in the prediction of later anxiety. Anxious children who participated in home-based care were significantly less anxious 2 years later than anxious children in the centre-based care or no-care groups. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of the fit between child characteristics and childcare type in the emergence of anxiety in early childhood.

The right of the child to freedom of religion belongs to a group of child's participation rights that is of exceptional importance both in terms of child's development and in the context of the identity of a child. However, this right has less legal and practical scope than other child's participation rights. The basic reason for limited range of the child's right to freedom of religion is that the mentioned right is primarily exercised within the legal space in which parents exercise the right to raise and provide education to a child. Simultaneously, the right of the child to freedom of religion has external limitations set by the rights and interests of third parties, as well as the interests of wider social environment. The child's right to freedom of religion comprises two distinctive elements which may be referred as internal and external element of the right. Thus, the internal element of the right includes freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his/her choice. On the other hand, the external component of this right involves freedom to manifest his/her religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly recognises only external element of the child's right to freedom of religion. That is why the content of this right should be primarily determined in the line with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Protocol No. 1 to this Convention and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that offer more complete approach to the right to freedom of religion. Generally, The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is more reluctant to suggest stronger application of the child's right to freedom of religion at the expense of parental responsibility comparing to cases when other participation rights of a child are at stake. To be more precisely, the closer determination of this right is left to national legislations. Therefore, three different approaches to the scope of a child's rights to freedom of religion may be distinguished in terms of national laws. The first approach may be designated as paternalistic one since the child's right to freedom of religion is primarily subordinated to parental rights to raise and provide education to a child. Unlike this approach, dogmatic standpoint implies the existence of official and dominant religion where parents are obliged to raise their child in accordance with religious rules. From the child rights-based aspect, the most adequate standpoint is to adopt participatory approach where the child of certain age is empowered to fully exercise the right to freedom of religion. Concerning parental rights to provide religious education to their children, it is important to consider case law of the European Court of Human Rights in respect to state interference with the one's right to manifest his/her religion or belief. It may be concluded that a state does not have a duty to provide educational program that will correspond to each and every parent's desire.

Manfred Liebel, ed.: Children's Rights Below: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 272 pp. $87.00 hardcover (9780230302518) Significant international scholarship has recently emerged to theorize children's participatory rights. European scholar Manfred Liebel and his colleagues Karl Hanson, Ivan Saadi and Wouter Vandenhole contribute to this area by importantly conceptualizing children's rights from Drawing on sociology, political science, and socio-legal studies this thirteen chapter volume focuses primarily on majority world children on the margins. Assuming readers with a degree of familiarity with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and surrounding debates, Liebel and his fellow contributors are able to deeply explore the possibilities and challenges of acknowledging and fostering children's rights below. While advocacy for children's rights did not begin with the CRC, work in this area inevitably grapples with this significant convention. In articulating children's rights below, Liebel and his colleagues convey mixed feelings about the CRC. On the one hand, it is a modernist document which certain groups have used to enforce a narrow, Western ideal of childhood. It was conceived by adults and it suggests that rights are bestowed above. The CRC is also frequently undermined by state and global political and economic policies which hinder possibilities for children's rights. For instance, individualized legal rights do not always work well for children on the margins for whom rights are alien, and who believe that asking for rights shows weakness or invites reprisals. On the other hand the CRC is a flexible document which has incited significant interest in children's rights, and consequently the language of rights is emerging within children's organizing and demands. It is such children's organizing within the majority world that has most captured the attention of the authors of this book. Liebel and his colleagues draw on the sociology of childhood to counter the top-down, narrowing aspects of the CRC, arguing instead that children are actively and competently involved in what Liebel and Saadi discuss as transcendant innovations, or collective actions initiated below. This is what they mean by rights below, whether such participation is framed in the language of rights or not. This more localized rights work commonly emerges within contexts of marginalization and exclusion. A strength of this text is its use of many such examples of children who successfully participate and organize, including children in child headed households and in economic cooperatives. Particularly noted for discussion is the activism of working children's movements, an area most deeply explored in the chapter by Iven Saadi. Children in these movements are making their rights manifest and advocating new ones. They advocate for work, the right to choose to work, and the right to specific conditions of work, as well as for health care and education. Their more macro-level advocacy tends to arise in coalitions with adults, however, which in turn undermines their legitimacy with organizations such as the International Labour Organization as these children are then assumed to be manipulated by adults. Saadi counters that adult assistance is needed sometimes, e.g., in renting a space, but that it is the young people who are the leaders. There is tension, within the CRC and in broader discussions of children's rights, between protection and participation. Liebel and his colleagues grapple with this tension as they explore the possibilities and challenges of children's rights below. Much child advocacy work in the twentieth century has focused on children's protection and the provision of services. Those who embrace more participatory rights worry that provision and protection rights often foster only dependency and scrutiny while limiting freedom and undermining children's capacities. …

The paper outlines a new orientation towards constructing childhood arising out of children's rights discourse, sociology of childhood and sociocultural theory. Children have traditionally lacked voice and visibility, but slowly a recognition of children's role as social actors who are active co-constructors of meaning and "experts" on childhood is emerging. The paper looks at how the childhood studies paradigm highlights the importance of participation rights for children and young people. The paper describes how these theoretical paradigms are being reflected in educational policy and practice. It analyses examples of research and practice on how children are encouraged and supported to be active participants and social actors in their early childhood, primary and secondary education settings. The paper argues that having participation rights and being a citizen are part of an ongoing learning process, and that what happens in educational settings give meaning to children's understanding of what it is to be an active and involved citizen.This paper examines the application of the new paradigm of 'children's studies' to the development of policy and practice relating to children's participation rights in education. Theory and research is used to develop a framework for the principles of effective participation, and then an example at each level (early childhood, primary and secondary) of how these principles have been put into practice in education analysed.

Predicting Response to an Internet-Delivered Parenting Program for Anxiety in Early Childhood

Fathers' challenging parenting behavior predicts less subsequent anxiety symptoms in early childhood

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to be heard in all matters that affect their participation in sports and due weight should be given to these views in accordance with a child's evolving capacity. Yet, to date, sports sociologists have paid little attention to participation rights, focusing instead on studying the violation of children's rights with regard to child labour, sexual harassment and abuse and measures for safeguarding young participants. Drawing upon data from a critical narrative study of sport for the very young in Norway (a country that has had children's rights in sport policy for nearly five decades), the article examines how actors (parents, children, coaches, managers) in sports clubs narrate the child's right to be heard. It explores what discourses/narratives of children in sport are constructed and in what ways children are positioned as rights bearers. The critical narrative discourse analysis reveals that children are seldom positioned as learning to be agentic beings, that technologies of dominance in sport work to discipline very young children into docile recipients of adult expertise, and children's right to be heard is peripheral to sports clubs’ agendas of professionalisation.

Developmental patterns of anxiety and depression symptoms in early childhood have previously been related to anxiety and mood disorders in middle childhood. In the current study, trajectories of anxiety and depression symptoms (1.5–10 years) were related to children’s broader psychosocial and school-related functioning at 10 years. We included a population-based sample of 7499 children, for whom primary caregivers reported anxiety and depression symptoms on the Child Behavior Checklist, at children’s ages of 1.5, 3, 6, and 10. Growth Mixture Modeling identified four distinct, gender-invariant, trajectories of anxiety and depression symptoms: low (82.4%), increasing (7.4%), decreasing (6.0%), and increasing symptoms up to age 6 followed by a decrease to age 10 (preschool-limited, 4.2%). Children with a non-Dutch ethnicity had lower odds to be in the increasing trajectory and higher odds to be in the decreasing and pre-school limited trajectory. Also, low maternal education predicted the decreasing and pre-school limited trajectory. Higher levels of psychopathology during pregnancy for both mothers and fathers predicted the increasing, decreasing, and preschool-limited trajectory, compared to the low trajectory. At age 10, children in the increasing and preschool-limited trajectory had diminished psychosocial outcomes (friendship-quality and self-esteem) and worse school-related outcomes (school performance and school problems). This study adds to current knowledge by demonstrating that developmental patterns of anxiety and depression symptoms in early childhood are related to broader negative outcomes in middle childhood. Child and family factors could guide monitoring of anxiety and depression symptoms in the general population and provide targets for prevention programs.

Bu araştırmanın amacı, okul öncesi öğretmenlerinin çocuk hakları ve çocuk katılım hakkına ilişkin görüşlerini belirlemektir. Durum çalışması olarak desenlenen bu araştırma, Van ilinde görev yapan 30 okul öncesi öğretmeniyle yürütülmüştür. Araştırmada veri toplama aracı olarak, yarı-yapılandırılmış görüşme formu kullanılmıştır. Elde edilen veriler betimsel analiz tekniği kullanılarak çözümlenmiştir. Araştırmanın sonucunda, öğretmenlerin çocuk hakları denilince daha çok yaşamsal haklar, gelişme hakları, korunma hakları ve katılım haklarına vurgu yaptıkları belirlenmiştir. Öğretmenlerin çocuk katılım haklarına ilişkin en çok çocukların görüşlerini serbestçe ifade etmeleri ve kendileriyle ilgili karar alma süreçlerine katılma haklarını belirttikleri sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Öğretmenlerin çocuk hakları ve çocuk katılım hakları konusundaki uygulamalarının okul öncesi dönemde öğrenmenin doğasına uygun şekilde gerçekleştiği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Öğretmenlerin çocuklara haklarını öğretirken ve çocukların katılım hakkını sağlarken en çok ailelerin geleneksel tutumundan dolayı sorun yaşadıkları belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca, okul öncesi öğretmenlerinin çocukların bilişsel/gelişimsel özellikleri, kendilerini ifade etmede zorlanmaları veya çekingen davranmalarından kaynaklı sorun yaşadıkları ortaya çıkmıştır.

Most preschool children show incapabilities of overcoming anxieties so that they have negative emotions while parting with an intimate figure. This research examined parental attachment toward early childhood children's parting anxieties. The research population consisted of 793 participants aged 5-6 years old. The sampling technique was purposive sampling. It involved 185 early childhood children (87 boys and 98 girls). The data were collected through a questionnaire. The data technique used the Parental-Child Attachment-Child Survey questionnaire to measure parental attachment to children. Separation anxiety in early childhood was measured using the Children's Separation Anxiety Disorders (CSAS) questionaire. Each question item was read by the researcher to facilitate the children. The applied analysis was a simple linear regression. It was to analyze the parental attachment toward children's separation anxiety. The result shows Fcount = 15.26 < Ftable = 3.045 with a Sig value 0.000 < 0.05. It means high parental attachment lowered children's separation anxiety at schools. This child-parent intimacy supported adaptive social quality in a peer group. It also provided a positive foundation for their further development.