Children Struggle Research Articles

Internalized stigma and caregiver burden among parents of young adults with substance use disorders

AbstractObjectiveThe present study explores mediation of the link between internalized stigma and caregiver burden by difficulties regulating distress and depression among a sample of family caregivers.BackgroundCaregiver burden is a common experience among parents whose children struggle with substance use. Depression, anxiety, and difficulties regulating distress are significantly related to the strains associated with this family caregiver role; further, stigmatizing attitudes about substance use can further impact family caregivers' mental health, thus heightening caregiver burden.MethodTwo‐hundred and sixty‐four family caregivers completed online, anonymous surveys on their experiences as a parent of a young adult struggling with substance use.ResultsParallel mediation modeling indicates significant effects such that difficulty regulating distress and depression symptoms partially explain the association between internalized stigma and caregiving burden.ConclusionCaregiver experiences occur in a societal context that includes stigmatizing attitudes toward the care recipient for their substance use balanced against their emotion regulation resources to manage psychological distress.ImplicationsFamily‐centered interventions to build caregiver emotion regulation resources are recommended, as these skills buffer against negative outcomes by reducing self‐critical judgments and encouraging nonreactive responses to perceived social threats like rejection, or shame.

Peraturan Pemeliharaan Anak dalam Hukum Adat Bali Akibat Perceraian Putusan No.36/Pdt.G/2016/Pn.Ng

In Hinduism, divorce is highly avoided, because it is an act of Adharma or sin. The approach used is a doctrinal approach with the aim of knowing two main points of discussion: First, the author wants to develop child care in Balinese customary law due to divorce. Second, the writer wants to analyze the decision No.36/PDT.G/2016/PN.Ng. Based on the results of the study, it can be said that the Balinese patrilinear system is the basis for the struggle for children's rights, as a result of divorce both purusa custom, Hindu religion, and the Supreme Court decision No.36/PDT.G/2016/PN which places a man, namely the father. as a babysitter.
 Keywords: divorce; balinese customs; child care

Children's understanding of most is dependent on context

Children struggle with the quantifier “most”. Often, this difficulty is attributed to an inability to interpret most proportionally, with children instead relying on absolute quantity comparisons. However, recent research in proportional reasoning more generally has provided new insight into children's apparent difficulties, revealing that their overreliance on absolute amount is unique to contexts in which the absolute amount can be counted and interferes with proportional information. Across two experiments, we test whether 4- to 6-year-old children's interpretation of most is similarly dependent on the discreteness of the stimuli when comparing two different quantities (e.g., who ate most of their chocolate?) and when verifying whether a single amount can be described with the term most (e.g., is most of the butterfly colored in?). We find that children's interpretation of most does depend on the stimulus format. When choosing between absolutely more vs. proportionally more as depicting most, children showed stronger absolute-based errors with discrete stimuli than continuous stimuli, and by 6-years-old were able to reason proportionally with continuous stimuli, despite still demonstrating strong absolute interference with discrete stimuli. In contrast, children's yes/no judgements of single amounts, where conflicting absolute information is not a factor, showed a weaker understanding of most for continuous stimuli than for discrete stimuli. Together, these results suggest that children's difficulty with most is more nuanced than previously understood: it depends on the format and availability of proportional vs. absolute amounts and develops substantially from 4- to 6-years-old.

Paternal agency in heritage language maintenance in Australia: Polish fathers in action

ABSTRACT By adopting a tripartite FLP framework, this study aims to explore the agentive role of Polish-speaking fathers in heritage language maintenance. At the outset, it should be noted that as the theme of paternal agency has not been given much prominence in research, this paper delves into how Polish fathers of heteronormative families endeavour to maintain the minority language. More significantly, with the perspective of a new father–child relationship characterised by acknowledged paternity, presence and active involvement in a child’s life, the present article gives voice to fathers who want to engage in everyday language practices that seem to transgress the codes of hegemonic masculinity. Thus, the analysis of transcripts from semi-structured interviews disclose the informants’ ample opportunities for childcare, and most importantly, their struggle for children’s bilingual development. Fathers, as the primary agents, can have profound influence on their offspring’s beliefs, values, attitudes and behavioural patterns concerning the heritage language. The investigation underlines the fact that the gender of the minority-language speaking parent is less important in bilingual childrearing than the actual access to resources, time, and motivation. The study suggests that paternal agency exerts a significant influence on children’s linguistic orientation.

“My children do not deserve it”: Understanding how epiphanies instigate support-seeking practices among veteran families living with PTSD in Denmark

Post-deployment posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) does not merely affect veterans. A growing body of literature highlights the detrimental impact of veteran PTSD on entire families. One area less studied pertains to how PTSD affects veterans’ parenting skills and engagement with social support structures in response to family struggles. Through an interpretative phenomenological analysis, we addressed this gap by drawing on qualitative research with six Danish veteran families affected by PTSD. We applied a theoretical lens of epiphanies as turning points to explore the interface between experiences of the impact of PTSD on the family system and support-seeking practices within the families’ social networks. Aided by Denzin’s notion of epiphany, we locate and report on the occurrence of four types of epiphanies that instigate help-seeking. The epiphanies reveal details about parents’ experiences of the effect of PTSD on family life, as well as their needs and responses to struggles of parenting and children’s distress. The epiphanies also serve as critical enablers of PTSD-affected veterans and their families’ engagement in support-seeking practices. Social support services aiming to help veteran families should consider how parenting experiences and epiphanies can mobilize pathways to social support.

The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies ed. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth

Reviewed by: The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies ed. by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth Eugene J. Fisher The Memory of Goodness: Eva Fleischner and Her Contributions to Holocaust Studies. Edited by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth. Greensburg, PA Seton Hill University, 2022. Pp. 249. $19.95, paper. Anyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations should read this book. It begins with a summary of the work of Eva Fleischner (1925–2020). She was half-Jewish on her father's side and fled Europe in 1938. The book contains twelve essays by Fleischner in three parts. In the first she narrates how she became involved in Shoah studies. She discusses the challenges of teaching the Holocaust to Christians and Jews because it raises questions about the validity of Christianity since the perpetrators were Christians. She provides a summary of the history of the Christian teaching of contempt, which paved the way for racial Antisemitism. While Jews could "escape" Christian persecution by converting to Christianity, under Antisemitism one was doomed to death simply for being a Jew. The fourth essay in this section discusses the "crucial importance" of the Holocaust for Christian self-understanding, given the horror of the genocide. In the second section, "Rescue and Responsibility," Fleischner describes her interviews with those in France who hid Jews from the Vichy government and the Nazis. This is an uplifting set of stories of real people, mostly women, risking their lives to save those in peril of death. The chapter asks why there were so few, and it asks readers what they might have done in those dire circumstances. This can be the source of deep dialogue among Christians and between Christians and Jews. She goes on to speak of the struggle of Jewish children who were saved in Catholic homes and were often baptized and raised as Catholics to accept, after the war, the fact that they were actually Jews, which many of them, having been hidden when very young, never knew. Again, this is deeply moving and digs deeply into how each of us can understand who we are. The section ends [End Page 317] with a reflection of a Jew who is asked for forgiveness by a dying Nazi. The Jew does not answer but remains silent. Fleischner notes, citing Elie Wiesel, that only the victims can forgive those who harmed them, and the victims are dead. The Nazi must seek forgiveness from the God of Israel if he or she is sincerely repentant. The final section of the book deals with Jewish-Christian relations during and since the Shoah. She describes how the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions have re-thought the ancient Christian teaching of contempt toward Jews and Judaism since Auschwitz, reformulating their teachings and working to accept the reality of the irrevocable (cf. Romans 9–11) covenant between the God of Israel and the people of Israel. The covenant emphasizes the fact that Jesus lived and died a pious Jew of his time and sought to rejuvenate his people, the Jews, relying on the only Bible he knew, the Hebrew Scriptures. She delves deeply into the spirituality of Pope Pius XII, his good qualities, and the fact that he did not fully live up to the challenges of his time. The book concludes with a search into the life and works of the great Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, which helped both Jews and Christians to redefine their relationship toward a full encounter with their past and a hope for a better future for all. To do this we—Catholics and other Christians—need to encounter anew the living God in a living people, the Jews, and in their faith and lives. Eugene J. Fisher Saint Leo University, St. Leo, FL Copyright © 2022 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Why do children struggle on analogical reasoning tasks? Considering the role of problem format by measuring visual attention

Given the importance of analogical reasoning to bootstrapping children's understanding of the world, why is this ability so challenging for children? Two common sources of error have been implicated: 1) children's inability to prioritize relational information during initial problem solving; 2) children's inability to disengage from salient distractors. Here, we use eye tracking to examine children and adults' looking patterns when solving scene analogies, finding that children and adults attended differently to distractors, and that this attention predicted performance. These results provide the most direct evidence to date that feature based distraction is an important way children and adults differ during early analogical reasoning. In contrast to recent work using propositional analogies, we find no differences in children and adults' prioritization of relational information during problem solving, and while there are some differences in general attentional strategies across age groups, neither prioritization of relational information nor attentional strategy predict successful problem solving. Together, our results suggest that analogy problem format should be taken into account when considering developmental factors in children's analogical reasoning.

Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo by Janet Borland

Reviewed by: Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo by Janet Borland Kaori H. Okano (bio) Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo. By Janet Borland. Harvard University Asia Center, 2020. xx, 300 pages. $60.00, cloth; $32.00, paper. Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo is an absorbing book that presents well-documented historical research through reader-friendly narratives. The book takes a journey to Tokyo in the 1920s, covering time both before and after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake which destroyed the city. Through examination of hitherto unstudied primary sources, the book narrates the vivid and emotional stories of how children experienced and made sense of the earthquake, how teachers and other adults interpreted the children's experience, and the subsequent initiatives to develop disaster-preparedness in the public. The book is driven by three major research questions. How did Japan become one of the most well-prepared societies for coping with natural disasters? What roles did children play in this process? How were their voices used in pursuing larger political and ideological goals? The book demonstrates that children's traumatic experiences of the earthquake evoked emotional responses among the adult population. This response led them to see children as the focal point in their attempts to nurture both physical and mental resilience among the public. Schools came to be seen as potential centers of safety and shelter for children and the wider community, well beyond just a place for children's learning. The book argues that Japan became disaster-prepared both materially (through building codes and planning) and in terms of people's behaviors and attitudes (by maintaining composure and through practical evacuation skills) because of deliberate [End Page 195] and incremental efforts based on experience of disasters, and that this effort can be traced back to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The book is cohesive in its structure. Chapter 1 describes the city of Tokyo shortly before the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Tokyo in the early twentieth century included vulnerable geographical conditions and disadvantaged people; it was full of wooden residential houses and public buildings (including schools). Two years prior to the earthquake, the 1921 Asakusa Fire destroyed wooden school buildings and killed or injured many children inside them. As a result, authorities began to build primary schools of reinforced concrete. When the Great Kanto Earthquake demolished the city in 1923, these new buildings withstood the tremors and provided safe refuge for children and residents. Borland narrates initial confusion, chaos, and fear in the face of the deaths and injury of family and friends and desperation in seeking refuge (chapter 2). Drawing on children's essays and drawings, newspaper photographs, and media descriptions as primary sources, she effectively documents the graphic picture of the experience on the ground and how vulnerable children, whose voices were often absent from the narratives on the earthquake, made sense of what they encountered. Chapter 3 illuminates public sympathy and emotional response to children's struggle and loss, when reported in the media. Teachers and adults saw not only children's sadness and struggles but also resilience and resolve to overcome adversity, which gave them a sense of hope in pursuing a recovery. Teachers, government offices, and the media used this overwhelming emotional response to children's experiences as an instrument to encourage the public to move forward, by fostering hope, resilience, and reconstruction. Children were considered agents of recovery. Teachers' accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath (chapter 4) are as dense and evocative. Witnessing the destruction with shock, sorrow, and fear, teachers immediately responded as relief workers, carers, and educators; they resumed classes at ad hoc temporary schools in barracks, hoping that this would give children a sense of routine amid the chaos, even before education authorities issued instructions. These bottom-up initiatives by teachers as a collective to address children's urgent needs have been observed throughout the history of schooling, including in the case of new migrant children in recent years. Such traumatic experiences led to an acknowledgment that the society was not adequately prepared for minimizing the impact of natural disasters, in part due to moral weakness (individual selfish...

Association of public explanations of why children struggle and support for policy solutions using a national sample.

Despite evidence showing the importance of structural determinants for child well-being and the existence of policies that can promote child well-being, many communities are not adopting these policies. Limited awareness of structural determinants may explain this gap. This study establishes the public's recognition of structural determinants and their associations with support for policies that promote child well-being. Secondary analyses of survey data collected in 2019 from a random sample of 2496 adults in the United States. This survey asked why some children "struggle" (e.g., do poorly in school, use drugs, or get involved in crime). Respondents could select individual (e.g., lack of effort) and structural (e.g., low wages) explanations. Respondents were also asked about their support for policies that are supportive of children and families. Stronger beliefs of structural explanations were associated with greater support for policies that strengthen family economics, family-friendly work, and afford access to high-quality early childcare and education. Beliefs in individual explanations were inversely associated with support for these policies. These findings suggest increasing recognition of the structural determinants that hinder child development may help increase support for policies that are effective in improving children's outcomes.

Pathologies of the hearing aid under the influence of global climate change and ecology

This article discusses the pathological changes of the hearing aid in connection with the deterioration of the environmental situation around the world, presents the psychophysical features that deal with the struggle of children with hearing impairment (hard of hearing and deaf). The method of physical education in the course of classes in the wrestling section for the adaptation and harmonious physical development of hard-of-hearing children is proposed and investigated. In our opinion, exercises in wrestling contribute to the development of a number of many valuable physical and psychological qualities that are necessary for a child with hearing impairment. The hypothesis of the study is based on the assumption that the inclusion of special developed methods for wrestling will allow to achieve significant results in a short time in children with hearing impairment. The use of wrestling exercises allows you to maximize the development of the functions of these analyzers for deaf children to more effectively participate in the compensation of lost qualities as a result of impaired hearing aid.

Effectiveness of a trauma‐informed intervention in a deinstitutionalization programme in rural Rwanda

AbstractRwanda established a programme to end institutional care and transition children to family‐based care. As part of their process in a rural area of the country, caregivers who reunited with or adopted a child from institutional care received training in a trauma‐informed intervention (Trust‐Based Relational Intervention® [TBRI®]). To evaluate the potential usefulness of this training, a mixed‐methods, retrospective design was used to examine caregiver‐perceived changes among their reunited/adopted children from pre‐TBRI training to the present day. Results revealed significant decreases in perceived challenging behaviours and trauma symptoms over time. Results from the phenomenological analysis demonstrated that caregivers perceived the training to be effective at equipping them with appropriate parenting strategies and reducing their children's struggles in the home. Findings suggest that training in a trauma‐informed intervention, such as TBRI, may be useful to equip caregivers with strategies to meet the emotional needs of children who are reunited or adopted into families. Success of deinstitutionalization requires programming to support quality family‐based care that meets both the emotional and physical needs of children, and efforts must be made to ensure these resources are included when reuniting or adopting children into families.

Very Young Child Survivors' Perceptions of Their Father's Suicide: Exploring Bibliotherapy as Postvention Support.

Each year in the United States, 7000 to 30,000 children experience their parent’s suicide. Due to the stigma associated with suicide, feelings of guilt, and intense grief, surviving family members avoid talking about suicide. Over time, children struggle with confusion and intense emotions associated with their parent’s suicide. In this study, seven adults, who reported being younger than six years old at the time of their father’s suicide, participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Participants’ responses highlight the challenges that young children face due to limited memories of their deceased parent. Interviews concluded with an opportunity for participants to review and express their impressions of 10 children’s picture books. Participants offered impressions about how these books may or may not be helpful in supporting young child survivors. Implications for applied practice include considering how children’s literature may open communication and assist children in navigating Worden’s tasks of grief: (a) accepting the reality of their parent’s death; (b) facing the grief and pain; (c) adapting to life changes due to their father’s suicide, in particular adapting to altered family relationships; and (d) building memories of the deceased loved one, when possible, to ensure healthy attachment to the deceased parent. Participants’ insights provide considerations for selecting children’s literature for bibliotherapy. Due to young child survivors’ increased risk for attempting and completing suicide, supporting child survivors of parent suicide not only addresses postvention needs but aligns with suicide prevention.

Socio-emotional struggles of young children during COVID-19 pandemic: Social isolation and increased use of technologies

COVID-19 pandemic has caused young children to be isolated from their neighborhood only interacting with people living under the same roof as them, to avoid spreading the virus. Limited social interaction might have affected young children’s social and emotional development. This study aimed to explore the socio-emotional struggles of young children during the pandemic. Participants in the study were 12 mothers of young children living in West Timor, Indonesia. Data were obtained using the photovoice method. Thematic analysis resulted in four main themes, which are increased use of technologies, lack of social interaction, parents’ concerns, and boredom and increased need for stimuli. Findings in this study encourage mothers and related stakeholders to take extra precautions on maintaining children’s well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Children’s gesture use provides insight into proportional reasoning strategies

Children struggle with proportional reasoning when discrete countable information is available because they over-rely on this numerical information even when it leads to errors. In the current study, we investigated whether different types of gesture can exacerbate or mitigate these errors. Children aged 5–7 years (N = 135) were introduced to equivalent proportions using discrete gestures that highlighted separate parts, continuous gestures that highlighted continuous amounts, or no gesture. After training, children completed a proportional reasoning match-to-sample task where whole number information was occasionally pitted against proportional information. After the task, we measured children’s own gesture use. Overall, we did not find condition differences in proportional reasoning; however, children who observed continuous gestures produced more continuous gestures than those who observed discrete gestures (and vice versa for discrete gestures). Moreover, producing fewer discrete gestures and more continuous gestures was associated with lower numerical interference on the match-to-sample task. Lastly, to further investigate individual differences, we found that children’s inhibitory control and formal math knowledge were correlated with proportional reasoning in general but not with numerical interference in particular. Taken together, these findings highlight that children’s own gestures may be a powerful window into the information they attend to during proportional reasoning.

Childhood and nature in the Iranian post-war film Willow and Wind (Talebi 1999)

Mohammad-Ali Talebi’s forgotten masterpiece Beed-o Baad (Willow and Wind) () is an Iranian children film written by Abbas Kiarostami, that pays tribute to the children of the post-war generation. As in other children’s films of the period, the young hero has a mission, which he stubbornly pursues. Set in a village in Northern Iran, the story follows the boy’s efforts to repair a broken glass during very stormy weather. This article will examine the visual motives of Willow and Wind (a boy climbing a hill, single trees, wind, rain) paying particular attention to the interaction with nature. The tree and the wind alluded to in the title underline the struggle and determination of Iranian children. In line with the children’s films produced by the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (CIDCYA, aka Kanoon), it applauds the willpower of a generation with enormous responsibilities, while placing his protagonist as a role model for audiences of all ages. However, by rejecting the happy ending, the film opposes the predominant narrative model of Iranian educational films of the 1980s and 1990s while criticizing adults’ treatment of boys in post-revolutionary Iran. In this moral tale, Talebi stresses the dignity and resourcefulness of rural Iran but condemns the solitude of children, and the distance between the worlds of adults and children setting a precedent for future Iranian children’s films.

What Do Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Believe Will Facilitate Early Disclosure of Sexual Abuse?

The purpose of this study was to explore what adult survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) believe will facilitate early disclosure of sexual abuse. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 adult survivors of CSA aged 18–57 years, and analyzed the transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis. Our analysis resulted in three main themes: Adults making it possible to tell; Adults daring to consider the unthinkable; and Conveying knowledge of CSA that facilitates understanding. The findings highlighted the importance of adults facilitating disclosure and making it possible for survivors to tell about their experiences, but also the responsibility adults have to dare to consider the possibility of CSA when children struggle. Another important finding was the significance of enhancing the general population's understanding of the complexity of CSA, including why disclosure is difficult, so adults are given the tools needed to understand and know what to do when they suspect CSA. The findings also have important implications for the planning and implementation of interventions to facilitate early disclosure of CSA.

Using Data-Based Instruction to Support Struggling Elementary Writers

Writing is a critical academic and life skill, but many school-age children struggle with the complexity of written expression. Given the importance of writing, there is a clear need for a systematic approach to identifying and supporting struggling writers, including writers with learning and emotional disabilities. One such approach is known as data-based instruction (DBI). This article presents an overview of DBI and guidance on how educators can use the DBI steps with assessment data to inform their classroom writing instruction. Additional resources are shared to support teachers in using DBI with their struggling writers and writers with learning and emotional disabilities.

Normative tensions in filial caring for a mother with dementia: A narrative perspective.

This article aims to gain insight in the normative struggles of adult children caring for their ageing mother living with dementia. Two Dutch autobiographical books written by siblings recording their own caregiving experience were analysed using a narrative design. Children appear to understand their normative concerns through six fields of tension. Our analysis shows that filial caregivers describe two distinct approaches to deal with these normative tensions. One approach aims to preserve the child's pre-existing personal beliefs and values, but also causes the child to demonstrate rigid and uncompromising behaviour at odds with the needs of their parent. The other approach is more reflective and flexible, prioritizing the needs of the vulnerable person over previously held values, providing an opportunity for better care. We conclude that caregiving children have to find their way between being faithful to their principles and showing moral flexibility.

Supporting School Aged Children to Train Their Vision by Using Serious Games

Several children struggle with vision difficulties caused by problematic coordination between their left and right eye muscles, i.e., oculomotor dysfunction (OMD). Many OMDs can be improved by training the eyes via physical exercises defined and supervised by vision experts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing Serious Games (SGs) and eye-tracking technologies (ETs) for training the eyes of children having OMD. Via these activities, a trainee can, with her eye gaze, follow objects which are moving, change their directions and speed, or pop up on the screen. The results present mapping the current physical training goals to activities for SGs using input from ETs, and illustrate this correspondence for designing and developing six games. The games’ feasibility evaluation is done via semistructured interviews and evaluating user experiences. Three vision teachers (VTs) were involved in design and development, ensuring achievement of training goals, and five VT students in evaluations. The findings demonstrate the potential of using SGs and ETs to train OMD and point to future needs for improvements.

How are uncertain prenatal genetic results perceived and managed twoyears after they were received? A qualitative interview study.

Chromosomal microarray has considerably improved our ability to identify or dismiss genetic conditions in the unborn child. However, this detailed analysis also reveals copy number variants (CNVs) of unknown or uncertain significance, in which the specific child's prognosis can be difficult to predict. Little is known about the longer-term impacts of receiving an uncertain prenatal CNV result. Our qualitative study explored how such a result was perceived and managed in everyday life, 2years after it was received. From an original sample of 16 couples, nine women participated in a semi-structured follow-up phone interview. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results show that these women did not perceive the CNV result to be a part of their everyday lives. They managed the CNV result by focusing on the child's positive development, by not sharing the CNV information in wider social networks, and by emphasizing parental values such as taking life as it comes, welcoming human variation, and accepting that dealing with a child's struggles is an inherent part of parenthood. Overall, the women expressed a positive attitude toward prenatal genetic information about serious disorders but considered 'their' CNV to be close to normal; several women suggested that such findings should not be reported. However, they also recognized the difficulties in making such decisions, given variable penetrance and that couples' definitions of 'serious' could vary significantly. The diagnostic process during pregnancy was remembered as being highly stressful, and many expressed a need for more control in a future pregnancy. Our study provides insight into how mothers reconfigure CNV results to fit their values and everyday lives. When delivering uncertain CNV results in a prenatal setting, genetics healthcare providers should present and discuss long-term coping strategies with expecting parents.