Lonely Child Research Articles

Crossing the line? Exploring situated, interactional negotiations of parental involvement in primary homework in England and Italy

AbstractPrimary school homework is a common practice internationally, historically viewed as an independent child activity, but more recently recognised as a family accomplishment. Parental involvement in homework has been principally discussed in relation to general and fixed typologies, with parent behaviours categorised into pre‐defined ‘types’. This paper challenges that framing by theorising homework as an interactional event. It illustrates that parental involvement is not simply determined by parents’ involvement ‘type’; rather, as an interactional exercise, homework is negotiated in‐the‐moment by parent and child, in linguistic, embodied and material ways. Based on a corpus of 74 video‐recorded homework sessions collected in England and Italy, and adopting discourse analysis, the article reveals that parents display their understanding of what counts as ‘appropriate involvement’ and, at the same time, locally negotiate this with their children, often adapting their involvement practices to meet children's explicit or implicit requests. We present this phenomenon as a ‘flexible line of involvement’ which can shift during each interaction, according to local negotiations embedded within the homework encounter. This shapes the unfolding event, as the parent's moment‐by‐moment responses to their child may result in them ‘crossing the line’. By demonstrating the locally negotiated fluidity of parental involvement, this article highlights the complexity of parent–child primary homework, moving beyond common assumptions that homework is either a lone child's activity, a task solely shaped by schools, or the result of fixed types of parental involvement.

This Book is My Best Friend by Robin Robinson

Reviewed by: This Book is My Best Friend by Robin Robinson Ally Byerly Robinson, Robin This Book is My Best Friend; written and illus. by Robin Robinson. Simon, 2023 [32p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781665906814 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781665906821 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R 3-6 yrs Sunny and Aarush have both found solace in books: for Sunny, reading fends off loneliness while they wait for their ailing mother’s prognosis at the hospital, and for Aarush, books serve as a bulwark against a chaotic home life. When both children reach for the same book on the library shelf, each child is quick to assert their rightful claim to it (and find an alternative companion for the other child). Yet as they delve deeper into the other person’s relationship with the story, the lonely children forge a bond over the pages of their favorite book. This picture book is an obvious homage to the ways literature can fulfill and inspire us, but the narrative’s resolution and setting within a bustling public library lend nuance to this theme, suggesting that, beyond its individual attributes, a book can also serve as a gateway to new communities and connections. The story’s parallel structure—the developing friendship between the protagonists mirroring their favorite book’s plot—thoughtfully [End Page 162] demonstrates that what appeals to readers can often reflect the social and emotional needs not being met in our day-to-day lives. Robinson’s iconic character design and crisp digital illustrations grant a sleek, modern feel to an otherwise quaint story, and young children will delight in the lively pace and endearing characters. This concise, dialogue-driven book would be seamlessly incorporated into a storytime, particularly those thematically centered around sharing or making friends. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Breaking Up With Jesus

Breaking Up With Jesus

The Image of a Lonely Child in a Modern Family

In today’s reality, which is constantly changing and transforming, the constant pursuit of material goods and social position is very evident. Parents often have no time for other household members. While they are mainly concerned with providing their children with the best possible material conditions, they pay too little attention to satisfying their psychological needs. Hence, the feeling of loneliness, which in contrast to solitude, is always a difficult and unpleasant psychological state, appears more and more often among children. The paper attempts to analyse the phenomenon of children’s loneliness in their parents, its sources and ways of overcoming it.

Osamotnienie dzieci i młodzieży – narastający problem społeczny współczesnych czasów

The loneliness of a child in one’s own family is an increasingly common phenomenon. This problem concerns not only dysfunctional families, but also seemingly well-functioning families. The state of loneliness of a child in his own family significantly disturbs his development in the emotional, social, educational and even moral cheese. The consequences of this problem translate into other environments of social functioning of children and adolescents, such as school, local and peer environments. The problems highlighted in the text are: What are the macrosocial and intra-family causes of loneliness of children and adolescents? What are the negative social, emotional and educational consequences of lonely children?

Collaboration and Connection

Juvenilia scholarship typically privileges a lone child author writing without adult intervention. This essay explores questions about intergenerational authorship and juvenilia through a focus on Homes: A Refugee Story, a work of “creative non-fiction” produced through the collaboration of Abu Bakr al Rabeeah and his former teacher Winnie Yeung. Homes chronicles the experience of al Rabeeah in Syria prior to his emigration with his family to Canada as a young teen. The essay authors draw on a joint interview they conducted with al Rabeeah and Yeung, who characterized their mode of collaborating as one between the young “storyteller” and adult “writer,” and discussed how they negotiated their roles in light of questions regarding agency, privacy, ethics, and trauma. The essay concludes by suggesting that fluid definitions of child writing and child agency may be particularly important when it comes to trauma narratives.

Listening for Silences: The Trap of Biased Sources

Listening for Silences: The Trap of Biased Sources

Toys and Creativity

The historical, anthropological and developmental research shows that play has been universal in all cultures, and children's play is supported by toys and play materials produced by adults. It is well known that, when properly used, quality toys provide children with a wealth of opportunities for creativity, social interaction with adults, and effective participation. However, research-based evidence on specific types of play and toys that support learning and development most effectively needs to be multiplied. Children are prepared to learn what they need to learn with passion and pleasure. This text emphasizes the aspects of toys related to creativity. Relevant to our day, the threats to the place of play and toy in the life of the increasingly lonely child are also discussed.

Participatory research in and against time

The staccato rhythms of experiential time remain obscured in much of the literature on participatory research, where time is treated as a reassuring constant – a backdrop for human activity. This article addresses the discordances between lived temporalities and existing theorisations of participatory methodologies. It takes participatory research with lone child migrants as a particularly rich case to think with, given the proliferation of contradictory and often punitive applications of time these young people encounter in their interactions with migration and welfare regimes. The core argument developed is that unless temporality is given due theoretical and methodological attention, aims of contesting and unsettling inequities through participatory research will have limited success and can wind up reproducing exclusions and oppressions. In response to these critiques, the paper temporalizes participatory research through three reconstructions: working with and against time, de-centring shared time and collectivising the time of participatory research.

Study of Efficacy and Safety of Injection Depot Medroxy Progesterone Acetate In Lactating and Non-lactating Women

Subject: This was a prospective study of efficacy and safety of injection depot medroxy progesterone acetate (DMPA) in lactating and non-lactating women. Abstract: The population of India is growing rapidly. The socio-economic problem of overpopulation is too well known. The use of safe and effective contraception is the need of the hour in India. Contraceptive advice is a vital component of good community health. Aims and Objective: The present study aims to study the establish safety and effectiveness of injection DMPA as a contraceptive method, acceptance, and continuation rate of injection DMPA in lactating mothers who had received first dose at postpartum period and non-lactating women and study the side effect of injection DMPA. Methods: A prospective study was conducted, at J K Lone mother and Child Hospital, Government Medical College Kota, Rajasthan, between April 2019 and April 2020. One hundred women were given injection DMPA 150 mg intramuscularly taken as study group and 100 women not using hormonal contraception were taken as controls group. They were followed at every 3 months. The comparison between the two groups was done using student t-test Chi-square test for calculation of p value. Results: The study was conducted to evaluate that women who were used DMPA mean age were 25.35 years. Overall accepted rate is 20%. No effect of literacy on acceptance rate. Significant menstrual irregularity found which was most common reason for attrition. Failure rate was zero among DMPA user. No significant effect on BP, blood sugar, and weight gain. No adverse effect on lactation. Conclusion: The study concludes that DMPA is a very effective contraceptive. Women accept it very easily without much degree of motivation. However, side effect decreases compliance.

Making the case for the family model in in-patient child and adolescent mental healthcare.

Within paediatrics, young children experiencing physical and emotional distress are admitted to hospital with their parents as a matter of course, recognising the trauma associated with parting children from their carers. Much of this practice is underpinned by our understanding of attachment theory, which also sits as a fundamental tenet of child psychiatry. Yet the culture in psychiatric in-patient hospitals remains to admit young children without their parents, often to units that are geographically distant from the family home. We argue that the practice of admitting lone children to psychiatric in-patient units is likely to be traumatising as well as less effective. We believe this culture requires challenge and change.

A Terapia dos Esquemas e os objetivos do tratamento para o Transtorno de Personalidade Narcisista

Este artigo objetiva apresentar, através de uma revisão narrativa da literatura, os objetivos do tratamento da Terapia dos Esquemas (TE) para pacientes com Transtorno de Personalidade Narcisista (TPN) e para o funcionamento de cada Modo Esquemático (ME) predominante no TPN. A busca por dados para a construção deste artigo, ocorreu através de consultas em plataformas digitais nacionais e internacionais, além de serem utilizados autores considerados como referências nas temáticas de TPN e TE. Como resultados, encontrou-se que os MEs predominantes em pacientes com este tipo de transtorno são Modo Criança Solitária, Modo Autoengrandecedor, Modo Provocativo e Ataque, Modo Protetor-Desligado e o Modo Autoaliviador. Ao ser discutidos os objetivos do tratamento para cada modo, conclui-se que, a partir das técnicas empregadas pelo terapeuta, o objetivo da TE para o TPN, é fortalecer o Modo Adulto Saudável, de forma que o paciente consiga adotar condutas mais adaptativas e funcionais em seu cotidiano.

Death and Fairy Tale

The music of the spectralist composer Claude Vivier is often considered through the lens of autobiography. However, from his abandonment as an infant to the circumstances of his murder at the age of thirty-four, certain aspects of Vivier’s life also seem to resist any straightforwardly autobiographical account. Borrowing the concept of “autothanatography” from Jacques Derrida and others, this essay explores how Vivier’s works inscribe a relationship to death, to the end and impossibility of autobiography, into its very origin. I argue that such an inscription occurs prominently in Vivier’s musical and dramatic portrayals of childhood, particularly those in Kopernikus: Opéra—Rituel de mort and Lonely Child. Drawing on Kathryn Bond Stockton’s writing on queer childhood and Lee Edelman’s early essay on homographesis, I further argue that this displacement of the autobiographical in Vivier’s works is also marked by his sexuality, or, more precisely, by its spectral repercussions.

The Loneliness and Isolation of the Parentified Child in the Family

Samotnośc i izolacja dziecka parentyfikowanego w rodzinie Parentyfikacja to zjawisko wystepujące w zyciu rodzinnym, ktore polega na odwroceniu rol miedzy dzieckiem a rodzicem/rodzicami (Boszormenyi-Nagy i Spark, 1973). W realizowanych przez autorke badaniach, osadzonych w paradygmacie interpretatywnym, parentyfikacja staje sie glownym przedmiotem zainteresowania. Na podstawie zgromadzonego materialu badawczego autorka wyroznia etapy dziecinstwa parentyfikowanego, a w ich ramach takie kategorie jak: odpowiedzialnośc, niedobrowolny heroizm, samoradzenie sobie i osamotnienie. W odniesieniu do dwoch ostatnich kategorii autorka konstruuje obraz osamotnionego dziecka doświadczającego odwrocenia rol w rodzinie. Na uwage zasluguje fakt, ze dochodzi tu do swoistego paradoksu – osamotnienia dziecka w rodzinie, środowisku mu najblizszym. Toczy ono samotną walke o przetrwanie i wlaściwe funkcjonowanie rodziny, zachowanie pozorow normalności, utrzymywanie rodzinnej homeostazy, zaspokojenie potrzeb swoich i bliskich.

Passing by In/Visibly: The Lone Child in the Croatian Section of the Balkan Refugee Corridor

ABSTRACT The Balkan refugee corridor was active in 2015 and 2016 in order to facilitate and control the movement of refugees towards their destination countries in the EU. In this article, the Slavonski Brod camp, a kind of obligatory stopover in the Croatian section of the Balkan corridor, is approached as a site where the concept of a “lone child” in migration was defined and re-defined in practice. After presenting a short overview of the corridor and the camp, and the genealogy of the concept of the child traveling alone, the article discusses the procedures and practices regarding the position of such a child in this unique form of the European migration regime. The article focuses on the interrelation between changing norms of the corridor and conceptualization/behavior of “lone child” in migration. In that framework we follow the transformation of child traveling alone as privileged humanitarian subject to the child traveling alone as competent social actor.

Discrimination against LGBT populations in China

Discrimination against LGBT populations in China

America's Aristocracy

In Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts,' Professor Mark Tushnet takes on America's favorite branch. Perhaps the brightest star in a movement that seems to have fizzled out,2 Tushnet is particularly well suited to play the lone child who bares to the bewildered populace the truth about their judicial emperors. After all, the Left has never been reluctant to speak (or shout) the truth to power. Tushnet requests that we reorient ourselves toward a constitutional law, in which the people and their elected representatives vindicate the Constitution and the courts have absolutely no enforcement role. To relegate the judiciary to the status of constitutional ciphers, Tushnet advocates a constitutional amendment that would provide that [t]he provisions of this Constitution shall not be cognizable by any court. With respect to his thin constitutional project, Tushnet would replace our already compact and vague Constitution with something even more nebulous and unhelpful. We may be attached to justice, the general welfare, and liberty, but that does not mean that we share many meaningful commitments. A KKK member might claim that justice entails the eradication of all racial minorities. A Communist Party cadre would find the general welfare served by the abolition of private property. As should be obvious, Tushnet's thin Constitution can be made to mean absolutely anything in practice, which signifies that it actually constitutes nothing. Such an anorexic, yet cavernous, document would neither enjoy any obvious advantages nor attract any genuine allegiance. His populist constitutional project fares much better but still falls short. Tushnet does not carry his burden of persuasion when he argues that the courts should play absolutely no role in enforcing the Constitution. His strongest argument rests on his claim that the courts are largely inconsequential because they usually follow the election returns. But if the judiciary does not really matter, he must explain why we should bother abolishing judicial review. Indeed, if the judiciary follows the election returns, perhaps we already have an unintended populist constitutional law regime. Paradoxically, his arguments might dispel the misgivings that certain quarters have about judicial review. Notwithstanding all this, Tushnet's radicalism has highlighted a fatal flaw in a system purportedly based on the principle that the people rule: America has an elitist constitutional law in which only the judgments, opinions, and perspectives of the courts matter. While we could make our constitutional law more responsive to the people by eliminating judicial review, we would thereby eliminate the benefits that flow from having an institution that specializes in interpretation and from having an independent check on the other branches. Perhaps the better means of ushering in a populist constitutional law would be to abolish life tenure for federal judges. If we eliminated life tenure, judges would no longer seem infallible and we would no longer place them on a pedestal. Nor would they have complete freedom to pursue their own agendas. Instead, we could hold them accountable for their biases, failings, and errors. Most importantly, eliminating life tenure would serve as a concrete sign that judges, like all public servants, serve at the pleasure of the people.

Monody-based Compositions: José Evangelista’s Clos de vie and Alap & Gat

José Evangelista’s Clos de vie (1983) and Alap & Gat (1998) are comparable in two ways: the compositional thinking behind the works was informed by his study on gamelan music and North Indian music, respectively, and most of the music materials stem from a long monody. In the former piece, he uses a 170-note long monody as a springboard to create a series of textures—“near unison,” “phase-shifted,” “complex,” and “complete unison.” These textures, together with a quotation from Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child, delineate each section of the piece. Another monody, which is 88 notes long, is used to generate pitch materials for different structure-bearing motives in the second work, either in its entirety or in a fragmented manner. The forms of this work were modeled after two types of North Indian compositions—“Alap” and “Gat.”

Do not overlook lonely children

The present article investigated the longitudinal influence of loneliness on peer acceptance in school through two longitudinal studies; specifically, we hypothesized a bidirectional view on the relationship between loneliness and peer acceptance. In Study 1, a total of 383 Japanese elementary school students in fourth and fifth grades (207 boys and 176 girls, aged 9–11) at three public schools in Japan participated in an 18-month longitudinal study. Through a comparison of hypothetical models, the accepted model showed a ripple effect of loneliness on peer acceptance. Subsequently, in Study 2, a total of 506 Japanese elementary school students in fourth to sixth grades (253 boys and 253 girls, aged 9–12) at two public schools in Japan participated in a 6-month longitudinal study. The statistically accepted cross-lagged model indicated a bidirectional influence between loneliness and peer acceptance. These findings indicate a strong link between loneliness and peer acceptance from a longitudinal bidirectional perspective and suggest the importance of early educational practices for lonely children to prevent them from entering this vicious cycle.

Lion by Garth Davis

110 Lion. Dir. Garth Davis. The Weinstein Company, 2016. Film. Reviewed by Marina Fedosik Lion, directed by Garth Davis, is the adoption story of Saroo, a fiveyear -old Indian boy accidentally separated from his birth family and adopted by a Tasmanian couple, Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). As an adult, Saroo (Sunny Pawar as a child and Dev Patel as an adult) locates and reunites with his Indian family. The film is based on the memoir A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley with Luke Davies. Lion has been nominated for various awards, and the majority of its reviews have recognized this story of a lost-and-found child as a “feel-good crowd-pleaser,” a contemporary Odyssey with an emotionally satisfying happy ending (Debruge). Several critics, like A. O. Scott of The New York Times, concur that the emotionally charged film “succeeds without feeling too manipulative or maudlin.” And yet a significant number of reviews, Scott’s included, remain skeptical of the narrative’s sentimental thrust, which downplays the complexities of Saroo’s story but showcases evidence of the miraculous salvation and the happy reunion facilitated by Google.1 The critics, like Scott and likely the viewers— especially those involved with adoption—remain wishing for more texture in this representation of Saroo’s experience. Saroo’s journey begins when his poor but happy life with a mother and siblings is disrupted by an accident. He follows his older brother, Guddu, to yet another odd job that helps them provide for the family, but he is too exhausted to work after a long train ride. Guddu leaves sleeping Saroo on a bench at the train station while he goes off to work, but he never comes back to pick up his younger brother because, as we find out at the end of the film, Guddu is hit by a train that night. Disoriented, Saroo boards an out-of-service train that takes him to Calcutta—hundreds of miles away from home. He does not speak Bengali, nor does he know his mother’s name; he mispronounces the name of his hometown and his own name. In short, he cannot be helped, and no one seems willing to help a lonely child wandering through the indifferent crowds at the train station and streets of Calcutta. He becomes one of India’s lost children—one of the 80,000 gone missing every year, according to the film’s credits, which invite the viewer, albeit indirectly, to help such children. The link these credits establish between the adoption story and the discourse around disadvantaged Indian children is worth considering. Sonali Bhattacharya and Sguhasheesh Bhattacharya report that between 2008 and 2010, “a total of 117,480 children were reported missing, 111 Fedosik, Davis’s Lion 74,209 were traced and 41,546 remained untraced … a 32% increase in reported missing children in a span of seven years” (55). The gruesome portrayal of Saroo’s life on the streets and the dangers he is subjected to as a working child and a lost child is representative of the plight of those children. Lost, Saroo scavenges for food, drinks dirty water, sleeps on a piece of cardboard in a tunnel, and is hunted by the police. In what seems like a stroke of luck, he is picked up by a nice woman who seems to care about him, but she hands him over to a man who seems involved in sexual trafficking. We never know for sure if he is, but Saroo knows to run to avoid the fate of numerous Indian children who are sexually abused.2 Saroo is saved from life on the streets and in an orphanage by adoption.3 And this is where it becomes important to attend to the film’s understated complexities and avoid the convenient reading of the film as a narrative of salvation by adoption. The success story of Saroo may overshadow uncomfortable truths of adoption for a viewer who is not familiar with its nuances. The sentiment maintained in the viewer throughout is unmistakably that of a happy ending in the waiting: even though we see the protagonist suffer and battle his demons...