Our findings provide support for the hypothesis that these two difficulties are not symptoms of separate disorders, but might rather be different manifestations of a common underlying neurodevelopmental weakness. However, there also seem to be specific developmental pathways for each domain. Besides theoretical interest, more knowledge about the relationship between these early skills might shed light upon early intervention strategies and preventive efforts commonly used with children with problems in these areas. Our findings suggest that the relationship between language and motor skills is not likely to be simple and directional but rather to be complex and multifaceted.

Associations between maternal reports of hours in child care and children’s externalizing problems at 18 and 36 months of age were examined in a population-based Norwegian sample (n = 75,271). Within a sociopolitical context of homogenously high-quality child care, there was little evidence that high quantity of care causes externalizing problems. Using conventional approaches to handling selection bias and listwise deletion for substantial attrition in this sample, more hours in care predicted higher problem levels, yet with small effect sizes. The finding, however, was not robust to using multiple imputation for missing values. Moreover, when sibling and individual fixed-effects models for handling selection bias were used, no relation between hours and problems was evident.

Background: Previous research has found that language and motor skills are closely interrelated developmental areas. This observation has led to questions about the specificity of these domains, and the nature of the associations. In this study, we investigated the longitudinal relationship between language and gross and fine motor performance from 3 to 5 years of age. Methods: We tested the prediction across and within developmental domains using cross-lagged panel models. In addition, estimates of specificity for each domain were calculated. Analyses were performed using parental reports in a sample of 11 999 children from a prospective population study. Results: Structural equation modelling revealed unique positive predictions from early language performance to later fine and gross motor skills. Neither gross nor fine early motor skills uniquely predicted later language performance. Both language and motor skills were stable from 3 to 5 years of age. Motor skills were more stable in boys than in girls. Boys had lower scores than girls on fine motor performance, but gender differences in cross-lagged associations between language and motor performance were non-significant. The variance specific to language performance decreased from 68% to 46% in relation to fine motor skills and from 61% to 46% in relation to gross motor skills from 3 to 5 years of age. Conclusion: From 3 to 5 years of age the stability within each developmental area is high, and unique prediction from one domain to the other is weak. These results implicate stable and correlated developmental pathways at this age.

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This research focuses on how practitioners in two Norwegian kindergartens interact with children during free play. The purpose of the study is to draw attention to the way the practitioners supported children’s learning through their interactions with children during free play. Through naturalistic observations of 17 practitioners, results revealed that while more than half of the day in both settings consisted of free play activities (60%), practitioners spent a significant amount of this time completely away from play situations (45.5% of free play). Of the remaining time, practitioners spent 34 percent of free playtime supporting children’s learning through joining in, commenting, instructing, or helping.