Kim’s public health blog

In the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Benjamin Lahey and his team from the University of Chicago examined how much mothers stimulated their baby intellectually, how responsive they were to the child’s demands, and the use of spanking or physical restraint. Child conduct problems in later childhood included cheating, telling lies, trouble getting on with teachers, being disobedient at home and/or at school, bullying and showing no remorse after misbehaving. The findings support the hypothesis that “interventions focusing on parenting during the first year of life would be beneficial in preventing future child conduct problems…Greater emphasis should be placed on increasing maternal cognitive stimulation of infants in such early intervention programs, taking child temperament into consideration.” Comment: This finding should not be surprising and should encourage better training for child rearing in schools, and possibly for better assistance for new mothers by a team of public health and child care workers similar to the family visitors in the UK system.