Complaints are often made that recommendations about how to rear children are contradictory and, therefore, not helpful. In this Element we survey the history of theory and research relevant to childrearing in an attempt to show how apparent differences can be resolved.  Meer

This Element first reviews the limitations of the concepts of problems in childhood. It proposes a universal, comprehensive, and longitudinal conceptual framework of problems in childhood, their differential context, and their cyclical effects.  Meer

We discuss whole-child development, learning, and thriving through a dynamic systems theory lens that focuses on the United States and includes an analysis of historical challenges in the American public education system, including inequitable resources, opportunities, and outcomes.  Meer

This Element provides a comprehensive yet concise account of scientific research on children's religious and spiritual (RS) development. After providing a historical sketch of definitional issues in the science of RS, the first section reviews basic descriptive information on children's RS development as well as wholistic theoretical models and measures of children's RS development.  Meer

This Element describes the main theories that guide contemporary research in cognitive development along with research discoveries in several important cognitive abilities: attention, language, social cognition, memory, metacognition and executive function, and problem solving and reasoning.  Meer

Gender is a highly salient and important social group that shapes how children interact with others and how they are treated by others. In this Element, we offer an overview and review of the research on gender development in childhood from a developmental science perspective.  Meer

Although childhood depressive disorders are relatively rare, the experience of depression in children's lives is not. Developmental contextual perspectives denote the importance of considering both depressive disorder and the experience of subclinical depressive symptoms in the child and the family to fully understand the implications of depressive experience for children's developmental well-being.  Meer

This Element focuses on the development of drawing (and painting) in childhood. The author begins by examining children's representational drawing, a topic that has received quite wide attention from the nineteenth century on.  Meer

In the first decade of life, children become bilingual in different language learning environments. Many children start learning two languages from birth (Bilingual First Language Acquisition).  Meer

The focus of this Element is on the environment and how it is implicated in children's development.A very broad array of social and physical features connected to children's home life and to the neighborhoods where children live, including multiple aspects of parenting, housing characteristics and the increased prevalence of media in daily life are addressed.  Meer

Natural selection has operated as strongly or more so on the early stages of the lifespan as on adulthood. One evolved feature of human childhood is high levels of behavioral, cognitive, and neural plasticity, permitting children to adapt to a wide range of physical and social environments.  Meer

In this Element, I first introduce intelligence in terms of historical definitions. I show that intelligence, as conceived even by the originators of the first intelligence tests, Alfred Binet and David Wechsler, is a much broader construct than just scores on narrow tests of intelligence and their proxies.  Meer

Children's imagination was traditionally seen as a wayward, desire-driven faculty that is eventually constrained by rationality. A more recent, Romantic view claims that young children's fertile imagination is increasingly dulled by schooling.  Meer

The existential threat posed by climate change presents a challenge to all those concerned about the next generation. This Element reviews and discusses its implications for the development of children (ages 0-12) today and in the future, and for the parents, teachers, researchers, and professionals who have responsibility for children.  Meer

This Element addresses the factors that influence children's accuracy in reporting on events and draws implications for children's ability to serve as reliable eyewitnesses.  Meer

This Element delineates how the narrative expression of autobiographical memory develops through everyday interactions that frame the forms and functions of autobiographical remembering.  Meer