Latest Research

Behavior Checker, our books, and our programs support the new public health movement of preventing toxic stress in children’s lives to improve their health, learning and behavior by helping parents and caregivers manage children’s common behavioral issues through evidence-based strategies that develop safe, stable, nurturing relationships between emotionally available, engaged, attuned adults and children.

Here are quick links to recent scientific studies in health, learning and behavior that support this movement and many of the principles forming the foundation of Behavior Checker.

Why is toxic stress is a health danger to your child and you?

Toxic stress refers to the molecular, cellular and behavioral changes brought on by significant adversity that occurs in the absence of safe, stable and nurturing relationships. Stress-induced changes then become risks factors for poor outcomes in health, education and economic productivity. Toxic stress from early childhood adversities can become biologically embedded and worsen life course trajectories. Toxic stress also explains why many of society’s most intractable disparities begin in childhood. Read more...
Preventing Childhood Toxic Stress...to Promote Relational Health

By focusing on the safe, stable and nurturing relationships that buffer adversity and build resilience, pediatric care is on the cusp of a paradigm shift...Read more.
Key positive childhood experiences can prevent and mitigate the effects of toxic stress.

Pediatricians focus on the experiences of individual children as they grow. On the basis of work conducted since the 1990s, we know that adverse childhood experiences risk harming child and adult health. At the same time, protective factors, which are sometimes overlooked, have emerged, requiring our clinical attention. Identifying, classifying, celebrating, and bolstering these experiences can and should become part of our new normal. Read more...
Positive Childhood Experiences Counteract Adverse Experiences

Positive childhood experiences—such as feeling safe and supported by one’s family and/or having supportive adults other than parents—appear to modulate or even outweigh the effects of adverse childhood experiences on adult mental health, according to a report in JAMA Pediatrics.

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How early experiences are built into our bodies and brains.

We encourage you to go to The Center on the Developing Child website, where, according to the Center, "This three-part video series from the Center and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child depicts how advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics now give us a much better understanding of how early experiences are built into our bodies and brains, for better or for worse. Learn more...
Effective Discipline to Raise Healthy Children

In a new policy statement in November 2018, The American Academy of Pediatrics warned that "aversive disciplinary strategies, including all forms of corporal punishment and yelling or shaming children are minimally effective in the short-term and not effective in the long-term. With new evidence, researchers link corporal punishment to an increased risk of negative behavioral, cognitive, psycho-social and emotional outcomes for children." Learn more...
Punishment hinders moral development

When parents spank their children for misbehavior, they stop their children at the lowest level of moral development. In Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development, at the lowest stage, children are interested in avoiding the punishment, not in doing what is good or right. Read more...
Social skills predict adult success.

An article in the July 2015 publication of The American Journal of Public Health showed that social skills were better predictors of adult success than academic skills. Learn more...
Early childhood emotional problems increase risk in adulthood.

A study by Duke Medicine researchers found that children with social and emotional problems who did not receive the proper help early in their lives were at high risk for problems as adults. Pediatricians need to help parents identify and help resolve early childhood emotional problems before they permanently handicap children. Learn more...
Elizabeth Gershoff presents research findings on the effects of spanking

Elizabeth Gershoff presents brain research findings on the effects of spanking and threats on children. Read more...
Moms want help from pediatricians on behavior issues.

A study published in Pediatrics, July 2015, showed that moms get little help from the medical community on childhood behavior problems. The study suggests that more is needed from pediatricians on how to respond to childhood behavioral issues. Learn more...
Parental Reflective Functioning

An approach to enhancing parent-child relationships in pediatric primary care

The current state of science suggests that safe, responsive, and nurturing parent-child relationships early in children’s lives promotes healthy brain and child development and protection against lifelong disease by reducing toxic stress and promoting foundational social-emotional health. Pediatric healthcare providers (HCP) have a unique opportunity to foster these relationships. However, such a role requires a shift in pediatric healthcare from a focus only on children to one that includes families and communities as well as the inclusion of children’s social and emotional health with their physical health. To foster healthy parent-child relationships, HCPs must develop the expertise to integrate approaches that support family’s socio-emotional health into pediatric primary care. This article suggests ways in which pediatric HCPs can integrate a focus on parental reflective functioning into their clinical work, helping parents to understand some of the thoughts and feelings that underlie their children’s behavior. Learn more...
Early Childhood and Mental Health

The foundation for sound mental health is built early in life, as early experiences--which include children's relationships with parents, caregivers, relatives, teachers, and peers--shape the architecture of the developing brain. Read more...
Feasibility of Behavior Checker^®, a novel, brief parenting intervention

The objective of this project was to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a novel brief program called Behavior Checker. Read more...
Behavior Checker^® Staff Training for Positive Parenting in Primary Care

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Behavior Checker® training on pediatric staff’s perceived knowledge, attitude, and confidence in educating parents about positive discipline strategies. Read more...
Harvard Research: The Effect of Spanking on the Brain

Research has long underscored the negative effects of spanking on children’s social-emotional development, self-regulation, and cognitive development, but new research published this month, shows that spanking alters children’s brain response in ways similar to severe maltreatment and increases perception of threats. Read more...
Spanking children slows cognitive development and increases risk of criminal behavior.

A new book by Murray Straus, founder and co-director of the Family Research Lab and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, brings together more than four decades of research that makes the definitive case against spanking, including how it slows cognitive development and increases antisocial and criminal behavior.

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Toxic Stress Exposure in Childhood Leads to Risky Behavior and Disease

Parenting programs and early intervention can help address the problem before children start to experience the effects of toxic stress. The long term goal is to help kids build skills so that when they have adversity, they deal with it in an effective manner. Read more...