This article describes two health care interventions developed to support parents whose infant cries excessively. Intervention 1 consists of advice to caregivers to bring about regularity and uniformity in daily infant care and to reduce external stimuli. Intervention 2 is the same advice accompanied by instructions to swaddle during sleep. ...

Concerns about the safety and efficacy of over-the-counter cold medications have led to a recent US Food and Drug Administration public health advisory against their use in children <2 years of age. Our goal was to examine caregiver understanding of the age indication of over-the-counter cold medication labels and identify ...

The efficacy of parent-child psychotherapies is widely recognized today. There are, however, less data on predictive factors for outcome in infants and toddlers and their parents. The aim of this study was to highlight predictive factors for outcome after a brief psychotherapy in a population of 49 infants and toddlers ...

This project examined interrelations between father-mother conflict, father support of mother, maternal behavior, and infant-mother attachment within a sample of 79 African American families living in a highly stressed urban community. Father support of mother was not related to maternal parenting behavior or infant attachment. Conflicted mother-father relationships were associated ...

Occupation-centered practices with infants and children necessarily involve parents. Although the importance of parent-therapist collaboration is recognized, there is little research demonstrating how collaboration is enacted. This article describes the therapy process between Erin, a NICU therapist, and Carmen and her infant, Mikala. These findings demonstrate how Erin, through the ...

Parents of premature infants often receive infant cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training prior to discharge from the hospital, but one study showed that 27.5% of parents could not demonstrate adequate CPR skills after completing an instructor-led class. We hypothesized that parents who viewed an instructional video on infant CPR before attending ...

Parents who are at risk for giving birth to an extremely premature infant, defined as 22 to 25 weeks' gestation, can find themselves faced with urgent treatment decisions for their unborn infant that have life-altering consequences. Despite the recommendation for involving parents in decision making for these infants, there is ...

Each year consumers purchase about 95 million units of over-the-counter medications for pediatric use, an unsafe application that can cause life-threatening effects. Despite a warning from the Food and Drug Administration, many parents or caregivers continue to administer these remedies to children. This report describes the case of a 4-month-old ...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the developmental impact of surviving a sibling who dies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). STUDY DESIGN: Fourteen (13 adults, 1 adolescent) siblings of infants who died in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's NICU between 1980 and 1990 were interviewed. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and ...

OBJECT: The increase in the prevalence of nonsynostotic occipital deformational plagiocephaly in infants, which resulted from the American Academy of Pediatrics' 1992 recommendation to have healthy infants sleep supine, has been accompanied by significant controversy in diagnosis and management. The controversy was exacerbated by the 1998 FDA classification of cranial ...

The present study examines the associations between Mexican American mothers' and fathers' pregnancy intentions, fathers' participation in prenatal activities and mother-infant interactions and father engagement with 9 month-old infants in a nationally representative sample of 735 infants and their parents participating in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort. ...

AIMS: To assess neurodevelopmental outcome at 2 years for neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions compared with controls, and to trial a parent-reporting scheme. METHODS: All infants admitted to the NICU at Christchurch Women's Hospital over a 12-month period and whose parents were domiciled in a defined geographical region were ...

OBJECTIVE: To characterize parents' perception of back-transport of very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants from a regional referral neonatal intensive care unit (RR-NICU) to a community hospital (CH) for convalescent care. STUDY DESIGN: Mixed methods utilizing parental interview and medical record review. RESULT: Overall, 20% of parents selected the CH to which their ...

BACKGROUND: Having an infant hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a highly stressful event for parents. Researchers have proposed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a model to explain the psychological reaction of parents to their NICU experience. OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to examine the prevalence of PTSD ...

In this article, I examine how parents of infants with birth weight of 1000 grams or less in Iceland relate to the questions whether and when treatment for a preterm infant may be withdrawn, and who should make such a decision. Almost all the parents agreed there are categories of ...

Patterns of interaction of 34 mothers and fathers with their 7-month-old boys at familial risk for ADHD and 25 comparison families were studied during infant play with blocks. The parents were instructed to refrain from intervening as much as possible. Infants in the risk group did not differ from those ...

BACKGROUND: The Harris Infant Neuromotor Test (HINT) was developed as a screening tool for potential motor and cognitive developmental disorders in infants. Scoring on the HINT has been shown to be reliable, and several studies have supported the validity of the HINT. Normative values for the tool have been developed ...

Although the period after the birth of their infant is a difficult and complex time for first-time parents who have to attain new abilities, knowledge, and skills, parents of very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants (<1500 g) face even greater challenges. Parenting self-efficacy has been found to play a key role in the ...

BACKGROUND: Many learning needs arise in the early postpartum period and it is important to examine interventions being used to educate new parents about caring for themselves and their newborns during this time. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effects of structured postnatal education delivered by an educator to an individual or ...

The relations of infant temperament and parents' marital satisfaction to mother and father involvement in early (T1, approximately 7 months, n = 142) and later (T2, approximately 14 months, n = 95) infancy were examined. At each assessment point, mothers and fathers completed daily diaries together to measure their involvement ...

PURPOSE: To validate a 2-step infant developmental screening protocol administered by nonphysician health professionals. METHODS: The Parent Concerns Survey and the Meade Movement Checklist (MMCL) were administered during 5 community clinics. Infant scores at 4 months were compared with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II and Movement Assessment of ...

Qualitative data were analyzed to identify factors associated with adoptees' satisfactions or dissatisfactions in their contact experiences with their birth fathers. Participants were 17 women who had been adopted prior to 2 years of age and had subsequently met their birth fathers. All women completed a questionnaire and 7 also ...

We describe trends in maternal employment and leave-taking after birth of a newborn and analyze the extent to which these behaviors are influenced by parental leave policies. Data are from the June Current Population Survey (CPS) Fertility Supplements, merged with other months of the CPS, and cover the period 1987 ...

OBJECTIVES: Pediatricians routinely advise parents to seek immediate medical attention if their young infant develops a fever. Many parents rely on palpation to assess their child's temperature. Our objective was to determine the prevalence and accuracy of parental palpation for fever in young infants. METHODS: We enrolled a convenience sample ...

OBJECTIVE: To understand parents' motivations for bed sharing with their infants aged 1-6 months, their beliefs about safety concerns, and their attitudes about bed-sharing advice. METHODS: We conducted 4 focus groups with primary caregivers of infants ages 1-6 months who regularly shared beds with their infants. We recruited participants from ...

Parents of preterm-born infants need support after returning to their homes with their baby. We studied the experience of certified paediatric nurses (CPNs) with the use of videoconferencing between the neonatal intensive care unit and the families' home. Families were given a home videoconferencing unit, which allowed them to contact ...

The purpose of this systematic review was to explore and describe the experience of parents with an infant in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). A literature search covering the period 1998-2008 was conducted. Fourteen articles reporting qualitative studies describing parental experiences and meeting the inclusion criteria were evaluated and ...

This study examines predictors of a cumulative measure of high-risk births, rather than single risks separately, as in prior research. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort survey, we incorporate data from fathers and mothers to assess characteristics associated with births subsequent to a focal child's birth within high-risk circumstances. ...

This study describes perceptions of African American mothers related to infant health care. The study s significance arises from the increased incidence of SIDS and disparity in infant mortality among African Americans. SIDS disproportionately affects African American infants and failure of parents to adhere to supine sleep is offered as ...

In this column, reviewers offer perspectives and comments on a variety of new media resources for childbirth educators and for expectant and new parents. The DVDs and books reviewed in this issue's column address the following topics: cultural views of labor and birth, as portrayed in the U.S. media; natural, ...

More than 500,000 premature infants are born in the United States every year. Preterm birth results in a multitude of negative adverse outcomes for children, including extended stays in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), developmental delays, physical and mental health/behavioral problems, increased medical utilization, and poor academic performance. In ...

The authors assessed the effectiveness of a home visitation program in enhancing the early parenting history of infants born at medical risk--a population that is at risk for mistreatment. A randomized clinical trial design was used to compare the effects of a cognitively based extension of the Healthy Start home ...

In the current study, latent growth modeling (LGM) was used to: (1) identify the developmental trajectories of infant negative emotions (NE) and regulatory capacity (RC) from 4 to 12 months of age, (2) examine maternal and family factors that may affect NE and RC trajectories, (3) examine transactional associations between ...

Many species that engage in parental behavior exhibit infanticide under certain circumstances. The neural signals regulating the transition from infant care giver to infant killer and back remain unclear. Previously we demonstrated that progesterone (P) and its receptor (PR) have inhibitory effects on parental behavior and increase infant-directed aggression in ...

Common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) males are bi-parental non-human primates that show extensive paternal behaviour. Fathers are in direct sensory contact with their infants during the natal period. We found that fathers exposed to isolated scents of their infant displayed a significant drop in serum testosterone levels within 20min after exposure, ...

To test a transactional model of sleep-wake development in infants born preterm or low birthweight (PT LBW), which may inform clinical practice, interventions, and future research in this at risk population. One hundred and twenty-eight mother-infant dyads participated from hospital discharge to 4 months postterm. Assessments of prematurity, infant sleep-wake ...

ABSTRACTIs parental report of comprehension valid for individual words? If so, how well must an infant know a word before their parents will report it as 'understood'? We report an experiment in which parental report predicts infant performance in a referent identification task at 1 ; 6. Unlike in previous ...

The present study examined the role of prebirth parent characteristics as predictors of maternal gatekeeping (mothers' attempts to encourage or discourage fathers' interaction with their infant) and fathering behavior. Parents' idealization of their relationships within their families of origin, beliefs about the roles of fathers, and personality attributes (negative emotionality ...

Infants appear to be active participants in complex interactional sequences with their parents far earlier than previously theorized. In this report, we document the capacity of 3-month-old infants to share attention with two partners (mothers and fathers) simultaneously, and trace links between this capacity and early family group-level dynamics. During ...

When we work with families, we need to develop a strong, collaborative relationship with them in order to support the family system. We can listen to and communicate with parents and older children as they can verbalise their likes and dislikes. In order to listen to and communicate with babies, ...

Guided by a microanalytic approach to the study of relationships, we assessed parent, infant, and coparental behaviors during triadic interactions in 94 parents and their 5-month-old firstborn child. Relational behaviors in each family subsystem--mother-infant, father-infant, and coparenting--were microcoded. Marital satisfaction and infant temperament were self-reported. No differences were found in ...

Within a clinical-theoretical framework focused on transference-countertransference dynamics, the authors reflect on role-reversal and on the reasons it has been neglected for a long time in literature. This primitive inter- and intra-psychic process, often at the forefront in our practice, will be discussed in its principal aspects (patient's unconscious identification ...

This study examines early withdrawal in the coparenting system, and the utility of a brief problem-solving discussion about coparenting responsibilities as a means for evaluating such withdrawal. One hundred and fifteen couples were evaluated both prenatally and at 3 months postpartum. During prenatal assessments, parents rated their personalities and completed ...

It is well-known and documented that the premature birth of an infant and its subsequent hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is a source of considerable stress for parents. However, little is known about the parents' emotional state and functioning during the months following the infant's discharge from ...

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) occurs from the violent shaking of an infant, which may lead to brain damage or death. The goal of this study was to assess educational methods used to teach new mothers about SBS. METHODS: Forty six parents at a community hospital were selected and randomly divided ...

Predictive associations between parenting and temperament during the first year of life and child conduct problems were assessed longitudinally in 1,863 offspring of a representative sample of women. Maternal ratings of infant fussiness, activity level, predictability, and positive affect each independently predicted maternal ratings of conduct problems during ages 4-13 ...

OBJECTIVE: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to answer the following 2 questions: (a) What are the needs of parents who have infants in the neonatal intensive care unit? (b) What behaviors support parents with an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit? DATA SOURCES: Using the search ...

In addition to research applications, the measurement of perceived parental self-efficacy (PPSE) could be useful clinically in screening for parenting difficulties, targeting interventions, and evaluating outcomes. In this research we examined the psychometric properties of the Karitane Parenting Confidence Scale (KPCS), a new 15-item PPSE measure. A no-problem control group ...

AIM: This paper reports on a study to describe the development of an internet-based intervention for parents with infants and to compare the participants and hospitals at baseline. BACKGROUND: There is a need for interventions to support parenting and for more research into the use of information technology as an ...

The reliability and validity of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised was examined in a sample of 6-month-old infants and their parents. One hundred and fifteen mothers and 79 fathers completed the IBQ-R and a measure of depression and 98 infants participated in a laboratory assessment of temperament. Internal consistency reliability was ...