Art therapy as a modality for crisis intervention: Children express reactions to violence in their community

Ten days after the Symbionese Liberation Army's shoot out in Los Angeles in 1974, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Department of Family Child Psychiatry, Thalians Community Mental Health Center, sent a crisis team of three psychotherapists to a school in the black community. The psychotherapists used an art therapy approach with a third grade classroom of 21 black children. The team's procedure helped the children ventilate their reactions to a frightening event which occurred in their neighborhood. This paper describes the art therapy techniques which were utilized, the children's vivid pictorial and verbal expressions accompanied by the psychological aspects of their responses.     

An innovative approach to selecting an executive director

As a guide for how to select a new executive director, a family agency adopted the search committee process from higher education. The approach included clarifying agency goals and the director's qualifications, a board-staff screening, and interviews held jointly with public representatives before final board selection.     

Relations among Sadness Regulation,Peer Acceptance,and Social Functioning in Early Adolescence: The Role of Gender

Using a multi‐informant approach, this study examined emotion regulation within the social context of White and Black adolescent peer groups by assessing two aspects of sadness expression management (i.e., inhibition, disinhibition) and their linkages to peer acceptance and social functioning as a function of gender and ethnicity. Seventh‐ and eighth‐grade adolescents (N = 155, 52 percent female, 54.8 percent Black) completed self‐reports and peer nominations of sadness management and sociometric ratings of peer acceptance. Parents rated their child's social competence and social problems. Results revealed specific patterns of sadness regulation across informants that were associated with social functioning and varied by gender, but not ethnicity. Boys were more likely than girls to minimize sadness displays; boys who violated this pattern had lower peer acceptance and higher parent‐rated social problems. In contrast, although girls were rated as displaying overt sadness more frequently than boys, this was unrelated to peer acceptance.     

Assessing the Concept of the ‘Insecure‐Other’ Category in the Cassidy–Marvin Scheme: Changes Between 4 and 6 Years in the English and Romanian Adoptee Study

We set out to explore the meaning of the attachment categories in the Cassidy/Marvin strange situation procedure, as employed in the home, using data from a longitudinal study of children adopted into UK families up to the age of 42 months from Romanian institutions, and of adopted children without the experience of institutional care––both groups being assessed at 4 and 6 years of age. Inter‐rater reliability was found to be good. Security (meaning the use of the parent as a secure base and no negative behavior on reunion) was the modal categorical rating in both the institution‐reared and comparison groups, but the category of anomalous non‐normative behavior (meaning a lack of any ordered attachment behavior as covered by the standard ratings), previously labeled ‘insecure‐other’, was more common in the institution‐reared children. Because this was unassociated with the usual manifestations of insecurity (such as avoidance or resistance) and because it was largely evident in interactions with the stranger, it is concluded that the adjective ‘insecure’ was not appropriate. Although this ‘insecure‐other’ category was associated with disinhibited attachment as reported by parents (meaning a lack of differentiation among adults, a willingness to go off with strangers and a lack of checking back with parents in anxiety‐provoking situations), it did not prove to be a good index of disinhibited attachment because changes over time in the ‘insecure‐other’ category were not associated with changes in the rate of disinhibited attachment. Also, whereas the rate of ‘insecure‐other’ fell markedly in the institution‐reared group between 4 and 6 years of age, it rose in the comparison group, raising queries over its meaning.     

Interplay between Friends' Aggression and Friendship Quality in the Development of Child Aggression during the Early School Years

The aim of this study was to investigate the unique and combined role of friendship quality and friends' aggression in regard to the persistence of young children's physical aggression from kindergarten to grade 2. The sample included 1555 children (808 girls) assessed annually using teacher ratings. Two theoretical perspectives (i.e., the social learning and the social bonding perspectives) served as frameworks to guide the analyses and interpret the results. In line with the social learning perspective, friends' aggression was related to a significant increase in children's physical aggression. However, in line with the social bonding perspective, good friendship quality played both a compensatory and a protective role, by, respectively, reducing children's initial level of physical aggression and by mitigating, albeit marginally, the associations between friends' and children's physical aggression. These results suggest that fostering a positive relationship between friends in the early school years may decrease physical aggression even if the friends are aggressive.     

Child custody issues and co‐occurrence of intimate partner violence and child maltreatment: controversies and points of agreement amongst practitioners

The situation of families undergoing separation in a context of co‐occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment raises certain issues related to child custody. The results presented in this paper were collected and analysed within the framework of a qualitative study aiming to identify the principal points of agreement and the main controversies amongst practitioners in several different types of organizations. Focus groups were held with a total of 43 practitioners from six different settings concerned with child custody in cases of co‐occurrence of IPV and child maltreatment. Although they agreed on the importance of ensuring the safety of victims of violence, their views diverged on three points: (1) the importance of preserving the father–child relationship; (2) collaboration between voluntary organizations and semi‐voluntary or legal agencies; and (3) consideration of cultural differences.     

Relational and Overt Aggression in Childhood and Adolescence: Clarifying Mean‐level Gender Differences and Associations with Peer Acceptance

Research on relational aggression has drawn attention to how girls may be likely to aggress, but the role of gender is not fully understood. There are opposing views regarding whether relational aggression is most common among girls. Current findings demonstrate that when gender differences in relational aggression are assessed with peer nominations, gender differences favoring girls are more likely: (1) in adolescence than childhood; and (2) when statistical overlap with overt aggression is controlled. Results also indicated that associations of relational aggression with peer acceptance depend on the aggressor's gender, the peer rater's gender, and whether overlap with overt aggression is controlled. Associations of relational aggression with lower acceptance became non‐significant when overt aggression was controlled, suggesting that relational aggression displayed in isolation may not damage acceptance. In fact, in mid‐adolescence, girls’ relational aggression predicted greater liking by boys. Reducing relational aggression among adolescent girls may be especially challenging if the behavior is linked with acceptance by boys.