Sleep and temperament in early childhood

Sleep and temperament represent key behaviours in early childhood that reflect underlying individual constitutional differences and influence each other, and many developmental processes over time. This chapter aims to provide the reader with a basic understanding of the early childhood temperament field including definitions, history, and measurement issues. An overview of the key findings in regards to early sleep behaviours and temperament interactions across the first five years of life is provided, and the important role of the parenting environment is briefly explained. While there remain a number of challenges to overcome in the field, two key areas are further developed here. Future work should aim to increase our understanding about why early sleep and temperament are linked, and about the mechanisms involved in transactional developmental systems involving sleep, temperament, genes, and the parenting environment. Multi-disciplinary and creative modelling approaches will be needed to advance the field which should seek to create translatable research findings for the early childhood health and education sectors. Research should contribute to identifying children at the highest risk of ongoing sleep and social-emotional adjustment problems, and address these with appropriately targeted prevention and intervention strategies that support parents, educators, and health practitioners in their roles

Developmental and behavioral consequences of prenatal cocaine exposure: a review

Substance use among pregnant women continues to be a major public health concern, posing potential risk to their drug-exposed children as well as burdens on society. This review is intended to discuss the most recent literature regarding the association between in utero cocaine exposure and developmental and behavioral outcomes from birth through adolescence across various domains of functioning (growth, neurobiology, intelligence, academic achievement, language, executive functioning, behavioral regulation and psychopathology). In addition, methodological limitations, associated biological, sociodemographic and environmental risk factors and future directions in this area of research are discussed. Given the large number of exposed children in the child welfare system and the increased need for medical, mental health and special education services within this population, more definitively documenting associations between prenatal cocaine exposure and later child outcomes is essential in order to be able to prospectively address the many significant public health, economic and public policy implications