A mixed‐method approach was used to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Mexico. Parents’ and children’s death‐related experiences and understanding of death were examined. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, older children were less likely to endorse that all living things die. Children also displayed coexistence of beliefs related to death that can be attributed to both their biological and spiritual understanding of death. We also found that older children were more likely to report that a child should feel sad following the death of a loved one. These findings highlight how cultural practices shape the development of cognitive and affective processes related to death.

In this chapter on preschool psychopathology, we discuss common emotional and behavioral syndromes during the preschool developmental period, including attentional, oppositional, conduct, anxiety, and mood problems. Current knowledge based on the current classification system will be summarized briefly, including rates of disorders, patterns of comorbidity, and evidence of reliability and validity (e.g., stability of disorders, associations with impairment, observed behavior, and family history). The remainder and main focus of the chapter is devoted to applying a developmental psychopathology approach to examine preschool psychopathology within a dimensional, developmental domain framework. Recent measurement advances in the dimensional operationalization of behavior in preschool‐age children are discussed. We then characterize four broad developmental domains: emotion regulation, self‐control, social engagement, and internalization of rules and standards, and discuss their expression in early childhood as a framework for advancing knowledge of the spectrum of normal to abnormal behavior. Within each domain, we describe essential developmental capacities, normative variation in behavior, and clinically concerning deviation within each domain. In addition, we highlight the central features of each domain using an exemplary syndrome and highlight how the cross‐cutting domains are relevant to other common syndromes as well. We also delineate steps for translating dimensional, developmentally sensitive measurement from research to clinical application. To conclude, we offer suggestions for future directions for research geared toward advancing multilevel, developmentally oriented conceptualization of psychopathology.

Children’s understanding of death has been a topic of interest to researchers investigating the development of children’s thinking and clinicians focusing on how children cope with the death of a loved one. Traditionally, researchers in cognitive development have studied death from a biological perspective. Current research suggests that exploring religious and spiritual conceptualizations might enrich our understanding of how children come to think about death. In this article, we review different methodological approaches that suggest that children form their understanding of death by engaging in conversations with and asking questions of family members, consuming cultural products, and participating in cultural rituals. We provide examples of how children combine different belief systems to form their understanding of death. We conclude by discussing recent research on how death‐related socialization might be related to coping and bereavement after the death of a loved one.

Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined how participants' memories of socialization regarding death might influence their self-reported coping with losses in childhood and adulthood. We recruited 318 adults to complete an online survey. Path analyses indicated that participants who remembered their parents shielding them less from issues related to death reported better coping as children and adults. Qualitative responses suggested participants wanted to receive more information about death from their parents as they went through the grieving process. We highlight the potential benefits of socializing children about death, and how it may aid in their coping with death-related events.

Cultural factors influence the development of all children. Yet, current knowledge of explicit cultural socialization processes in childhood remains limited, mainly by failing to incorporate the experiences of young children. To address this critical gap, the authors introduce the OMERS-Peds task, an observational measurement designed to systematically identify and compare the content of cultural messages passed down from caregivers to offspring during early school age years. The OMERS-Peds was administered to mothers and children (n ϭ 275) from three diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds (African American (n ϭ 153), Hispanic (n ϭ 61), and non-Hispanic White (n ϭ 61)) within the longitudinal Multidimensional Assessment of Preschoolers (MAPS) Study. The OMERS-Peds coding system was used to rate how strongly families endorsed 5 key constructs: family culture, religion, identity, ethnicity, and race. A series of 2 statistic tests were used to compare scores across racial/ethnic backgrounds, and within families (between children and their mothers). Analyses revealed that in the cultural socialization conversations occurring in early childhood, parents and children prioritize talking about their family's culture and religion. Independent of their racial/ethnic backgrounds, mothers and children seldom discussed race and ethnicity. Contrary to research with older children, differences were mainly identified