CHILDMYTHS

The "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption. See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Comments

I don't know what's going on with Blogspot today, but I seem to be able to publish people's comments but not respond to them. So...

Monday, May 23, 2011

Reactive Attachment Disorder: Mistakes in a Master's Paper

NOTE: No sooner had I posted this comment than a message forwarded to me stated that UW staff had intended to take the paper down and someho...

Saturday, May 21, 2011

What is Floor Time? Well, Folks, It Isn't Physical Restraint

I’ve just been hearing some discussion at http://www.beyondconsequences.com/aggression/audio.html . In this audio presentation, preparatory ...

Friday, May 20, 2011

Looking Backward: Sources of the "Primal Wound" Belief

Very few ideas get created out of nothing, so it’s always interesting to look for the “ancestors” of beliefs that seem to appear suddenly an...

Myths and Misunderstandings, Ages and Stages, and "Parenting Within Reason"

A month or so ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Colin Thornton of Parenting Within Reason. He was interested in issues discusse...

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

More About Infants and Eye Contact: Gaze, Words, Gestures

How and why people make “eye contact” is a source of never-ending interest, especially to parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers. Ex...

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Young Children and Prison Visits

On a listserv that deals with psychology and the law, the following question was recently asked: “how can the impact on a preschool child be...

Friday, May 13, 2011

The Newborn and the Auxiliary Ego

The anthropologist-author Ashley Montagu famously suggested that humans are characterized by “exterogestation”-- a continuation of prenatal...

Friday, May 6, 2011

Newborns, Emotions, and Adultomorphism: Sources of the Primal Wound Myth

On several occasions, I’ve argued on this blog about some exaggerated views of newborn babies as adult-like in their feelings and thoughts. ...

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Ages and Stages of Baby Emotion: A Natural History

In a recent query apparently directed to another reader, one reader of this blog asked, “when do babies start to feel grief and other emotio...

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Why Should We Worry About Maternal Depression?

It seems as if I’ve had a lot of discussions of maternal depression lately-- both the perinatal mood disorders of birth mothers and post-ad...

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Breastfeeding: Test Your Knowledge-- True or False?

The important human function of breastfeeding is the subject of many myths and misunderstandings. A fascinating meld of biological and behav...

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A Survivor of Holding Therapy Tells His Story

Please go to http://anyachaika.wordpress.com/2011.04/05/a-first-hand-account-of-holding-therapy-in-the-uk and read one boy's experience ...

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Rats and Mice and Such Small Deer: Can They Help Us Learn About Human Infants?

Over at http://marginalperspectives.blogspot.com there’s a discussion going on about research on other species. Reference has been made to a...

Do Animals Have Babysitters? An Important Aspect of Human Child Care

A recent book by the anthropologist Sarah Hrdy (“Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding”, Harvard University P...

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

From Oneborneveryminute.com: Adoption and the Corpus Callosum (no kidding)

There’s a most remarkable interview at http://www.growninmyheart.com/an-alternative-therapy-for-the-child-who-has-been-adopted . If you cons...

Reactive Attachment Disorder on the Internet: Confident, but Wrong

Reactive Attachment Disorder is a genuine diagnosis, code 313.89 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Assoc...

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Who Gave David Brooks a Psychology Book? A Threnody

Stand up, the person who encouraged the columnist David Brooks to quote bits of psychological research! I have a rod in pickle for you, or a...

Friday, March 18, 2011

Pseudosymmetry: Adoption, Attachment, Vaccination, and Misinformation

Pseudosymmetry is a useful word, invented by the anthropologist Christopher Toumey some years ago, and used to describe a maddening journa...

View web version

About Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mercer

Jean Mercer: Jean Mercer has a Ph.D in Psychology from Brandeis University, earned when that institution was 20 years old (you do the math). She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College, where for many years she taught developmental psychology, research methods, perception, and history of psychology. Since about 2000 her focus has been on potentially dangerous child psychotherapies, and she has published several related books and a number of articles in professional journals. Her CV can be seen at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/12/curriculum-vitae-jean.mercer-richard.html.

View my complete profile

Powered by Blogger.