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

Friday, September 30, 2011

Authority versus Evidence: Arguing About Adoption and Psychological Interventions

Off and on for a couple of years, but especially in the last few months, I’ve found myself upholding the idea that there must be an evidence...

Sunday, September 25, 2011

You Can Pick Your Friends, But You Can't Pick Your Monkeys: Origins of Attachment Theory

One of the greatest temptations in the field of psychology is the urge to leap from research on animal behavior to a conclusion about human ...

Saturday, September 17, 2011

What is Reactive Attachment Disorder? Further Discussion

I’ve made a number of statements to the effect that violent or aggressive behavior, lying, stealing, and so on, were not diagnostic of React...

Monday, September 12, 2011

What Is Attachment?

What IS attachment, anyway? This word is used constantly by parents and teachers, attorneys and judges, as well as psychologists and social ...

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Infant and Toddler Overnights: A Focus of Divorce Disagreements

When couples have children of infant and toddler age, the breakdown of marriage is often followed by intense and bitter argument over allowi...

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

An Open Letter to Nancy Verrier

Dear Nancy: As you probably know, some of your strong supporters are very mad at me for contradicting the idea that adoptees suffer from ...

Monday, August 29, 2011

Examining Unconventional Theories: More on the "Primal Wound"

Like many other unorthodox belief systems, Nancy Verrier’s “Primal Wound” theory just keeps on keeping on in spite of clear evidence that ...

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

A Russian Adoptee, Child Abuse, RAD, and MAD

In an all too common scenario, the Alaskan adoptive mother of a Russian child is on trial for child abuse, and her defense argues that the c...

Monday, August 22, 2011

When Will My Baby Understand....?

Concerned parents (and what other kind is there, really?) pore over lists of developmental milestones, checking out the average age for the ...

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Holding Therapy in the UK

For an audio account of his experiences by a young man who when in his early teens was given holding therapy in a well-known UK residential ...

Friday, August 19, 2011

Back to School, Maybe for the First Time

I recently participated in a very pleasant interview/discussion with a representative of the organization care.com. We talked about issues b...

Sunday, August 14, 2011

More on the Russia-US Adoption Treaty

When I commented a few weeks ago on the need for the conditions of foreign-adopted children to receive independent monitoring, rather than m...

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Adoption, Trust, Complacency, and the Barahona Case

While most of the nation was intensely involved with the trial of Casey Anthony in Florida, another case in the same state got much less att...

Monday, July 25, 2011

Behind the Norwegian Terrorist: The Grande Dame of Conspiracy Theory

I really don’t believe in “synchronicity”, but I made a find that startled me yesterday. I turned on my laptop and saw headlines about the N...

Monday, July 18, 2011

What About the Fathers? The Anthony Case and Danieal Kelly

I confess that I winced away from watching the Casey Anthony trial and only inadvertently picked up information from people who wanted to te...

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Eye Contact With Babies: What, When, Why, and How

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT ON THIS TOPIC, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING FIRST! IF YOU HAVE ALREADY COMMENTED AND DO NOT SEE YOUR QUERY OR MY ...

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Russian-U.S. Adoption Treaty: The Psychological Evaluation Issue

After a considerable period of discord, and a history of disasters for children adopted to the United States from Russian institutions, Russ...

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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.

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