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The purpose of this study was to examine child, maternal, and family antecedents of children's early affect dysregulation within the mother-child relationship and later cognitive and socioemotional correlates of affect dysregulation. Children's affect dysregulation at 24 and 36 months was defined in the context of mother-child interactions in semistructured play and toy cleanup. Dyads were classified as dysregulated at each age based on high negative affect. Affect dysregulation was associated with less maternal sensitivity and stimulation, more maternal depressive symptoms, and lower family income over the first 36 months of life. Children with early negative mood, lower Bayley Mental Development Index scores and insecure-avoidant~15 months! or insecure-resistant attachment classifications~36 months! were more likely to be in an affect-dysregulated group. Controlling for family and child variables, affect-dysregulated children had more problematic cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten, and first grade. The findings are discussed in terms of the early role played by parents in assisting children with affect regulation, the reciprocal nature of parent-child interactions, and the contribution of affect regulation to children's later cognitive, social, and behavioral competence. This study is directed by a Steering Committee and supported by NICHD through a cooperative agreement~U10!, which calls for scientific collaboration between the grantees and the NICHD staff. Participating investigators, listed in alphabetical order, are Virginia Allhusen,

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Research Findings-Data on more than 900 children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were analyzed to examine the effect of age of entry to kindergarten on children's functioning in early elementary school. Children's academic achievement and socioemotional development were measured repeatedly from the age of 54 months through 3rd grade. With family background factors and experience in child care in the first 54 months of life controlled, hierarchical linear modeling (growth curve) analysis revealed that children who entered kindergarten at younger ages had higher (estimated) scores in kindergarten on the Woodcock-Johnson (W-J) Letter-Word Recognition subtest but received lower ratings from kindergarten teachers on Language and Literacy and Mathematical Thinking scales. Furthermore, children who entered kindergarten at older ages evinced greater increases over time on 4 W-J subtests (i.e., Letter-Word Recognition, Applied Problems, Memory for Sentences, Picture Vocabulary) and outperformed children who started kindergarten at younger ages on 2 W-J subtests in 3rd grade (i.e., Applied Problems, Picture Vocabulary). Age of entry proved unrelated to socioemotional functioning.Practice-The fact that age-of-entry effects were small in magnitude and dwarfed by other aspects of children's family and child care experiences suggests that age at starting school should not be regarded as a major determinant of children's school achievement, but that it may merit consideration in context with other probably more important factors (e.g., child's behavior and abilities).Perhaps no other issue appears so frequently and dominantly in parents' discussions of school readiness or school districts' readiness policies as that of the age at which children are eligible (or required) to start kindergarten. When parents are surveyed about their children's school readiness and enrollment, one of the most frequent questions noted is whether their child is too young to enroll (e.g., West, Hauske, & Collins, 1993). Kindergarten teachers identify age as a factor that figures prominently in definitions and beliefs about readiness for kindergarten, and age is often used as a post hoc explanation for decisions to retain children in kindergarten (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 1993a).Age of entry to school is also of considerable policy importance (Meisels, 1992(Meisels, ,1999. It is an index society uses as an eligibility or selection mechanism for access to public resources and, consequently, an index that triggers potential benefits of stimulation gained by attendance in school. Given that, within a 12-month year, older children tend to show more advanced developmental skills than younger children, changes in age of entry can have effects on the percentages of children who meet certain academic or skill standards and can boost a district's standing on certain metrics (Vecchiotti, 2001). In short, age of entry to school figures prominently in teacher ...

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (ECCRN) constructed a structural model predicting reading and mathematics achievement in first-grade children from parenting, childcare, and first-grade schooling environments, which is presented in this article. The model provided a strong fit for the data, and parenting emerged as the strongest single contextual predictor of children's achievement. Nevertheless, the child-care and firstgrade schooling contexts independently contributed to children's academic performance. There were also a number of indirect pathways of prediction that combined environmental and child factors. Overall, results confirmed that multiple factors act in concert over the school transition period to shape children's reading and mathematics skills.