Background: The role of the placenta in fetal programming has been recognized as a highly significant, yet often neglected area of study. We investigated placental size in relation to psychopathology, in particular attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, in children at 8 years of age, and later as adolescents at 16 years. Methodology/Principal Findings: Prospective data were obtained from The Northern Finland Birth Cohort (NFBC) 1986. Placental weight, surface area and birth weight were measured according to standard procedures, within 30 minutes after birth. ADHD symptoms, probable psychiatric disturbance, antisocial disorder and neurotic disorder were assessed at 8 years (n = 8101), and ADHD symptoms were assessed again at 16 years (n = 6607), by teachers and parents respectively. We used logistic regression analyses to investigate the association between placental size and mental health outcomes, and controlled for gestational age, birth weight, socio-demographic factors and medical factors, during gestation. There were significant positive associations between placental size (weight, surface area and placental-to-birth-weight ratio) and mental health problems in boys at 8 and 16 years of age. Increased placental weight was linked with overall probable psychiatric disturbance (at 8y, OR = 1.14 [95% CI = 1.04-1.25]), antisocial behavior (at 8 y, OR = 1.14 [95% CI = 1.03-1.27]) and ADHD symptoms (inattention-hyperactivity at 16y, OR = 1.19 [95% CI = 1.02-1.38]). No significant associations were detected among girls. Conclusions/Significance: Compensatory placental growth may occur in response to prenatal insults. Such overgrowth may affect fetal development, including brain development, and ultimately contribute to psychopathology.

Abstract This thesis focuses on an analysis of a publicly available monograph, which was chosen deliberately. It deals with an autobiographical story of a girl who grew up in institutional care since the age of four. The work is conceived as a systematically organized set of information. It consists of a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical part discusses issues concerning the child's personality, development and basic needs, including family influence on the child. It also describes the system of alternative educational care for children with emphasis on the psychosocial aspects, concerning a child living outside its own family. The empirical part presents the research itself. The aim of the thesis is to find out more about the girl´s personal experience and the way the child perceived the education outside its own family. The main research question reads: How has the institutional education affected the life of the child? This relatively broad research question was further divided into several specific questions: 1. What impact has the child's relationship with its parents had on the life of the child growing up outside its family? 2. What influence has the child's relationship with its siblings had on the life of the child growing up outside its family? 3. What effect has the child's relationship with the educators and to the children's home in which the kid lived had on the life of the child growing up outside its family? The research was conducted as a qualitative investigation on the principle of grounded theory using analysis of the monograph in the form of data collection technique. For our individual case we utilized the method of intensive study with emphasis on a categorized overview, including basic characteristics of the individual's personality, its development, significant experience and attitudes, as well as the individual´s relationships with parents, siblings and wider social environment. The detection of the personal experience and of the opinion of the child on its education outside its own family was carried out by means of qualitative research using grounded theory technique. The data was transferred into the hermeneutic matrix program ATLAS.ti and evaluated using a three-stage coding. The methodological analysis procedure was based on inductive procedures according to the grounded theory technique. In the first step, the data was reduced to the information related to the research. After that, particular codes were created through open coding. These codes were divided into individual categories. In the chapters graphics are used, formed as a part of the coding in the analytical software ATLAS.ti. The results were described, analysed and processed. By research survey, we concluded that the personal view of the child concerning the education outside its own family is positive. This thesis could be beneficial for children's homes and diagnostic institutions. The results of the research could be used to better understand the situation of children in institutional or foster care, by the members of staff and foster parents, as well as by the people who grow up or are brought up outside their own family. This paper could also represent an incentive to perform more extensive research, which would focus on the verification of the generated hypotheses.

Resumé This thesis, dealing with rights of a child and duties of a parent, is based on the fact that it is primarily the parents who have to fulfill their duties towards children while a child has primarily the right that a parent fulfills duties towards him. This condition is justified by the fact that children are in relation to adults, in this thesis towards parents, traditionally considered as a weaker "element". Because of that, the attention is firstly paid to the rights of a child in a wider context. In the very beginning we take into consideration a historical context of the child's rights development that shows the contrast between a premodern period when a child was considered as almost powerless and without rights and a "progressive " 20th century when a lot of international documents concentrate solely on rights of a child. As a follow-up to the child's rights development, the attention is aimed on explanation of the terms "best interests of the child" and "child's welfare". The thesis also deals with participatory rights in relation to the law court and in relation towards parents. Because the role of a family is very important in a development and education of a child, the thesis also focuses on juridical protection of the family and explains the term "family" in the European system of the...

Child protection is one of the most demanding fields of social protection and requires comprehensive solutions which have a major impact on the lives of children and their families. It also includes the agenda of parental conflicts and related child custody proceedings. The thesis deals with the practice of child protection social workers at the municipal authorities with extended powers in the Czech Republic in solving parental disputes. The theoretical part introduces legal, educational and competence framework of child protection and sets it into the context of specific aspects and pitfalls associated with the profession and approach of child protection social workers to solving parental conflicts. It also provides recommendations on how to solve parental conflicts followed by a case study of child protection department at the Prague 8 Municipality District Authority. It identifies attributes of best practice that contribute to the best interests of the child, including participation of families, multidisciplinary cooperation, transparency of processes and neutrality, professionalism and reflexivity of child protection social workers. The empirical part focuses on the understanding of working conditions and attitudes of child protection social workers at the municipal authorities with extended...

Child protection is one of the most demanding fields of social protection and requires comprehensive solutions which have a major impact on the lives of children and their families. It also includes the agenda of parental conflicts and related child custody proceedings. This thesis focuses on the practice of Czech social workers operating in the field of child protection at the municipal authorities with extended powers and on their approaches used to resolve parental disputes. The theoretical part is based on the conceptualization of practice from the perspective of a dynamic model of practice by Karen Healy, which builds on the interaction of several contexts, i.e. institutional contexts, formal professional base of social work, service users and their communities and framework for practice, and surveys them with regard to the agenda of parental disputes in detail. The empirical part aims to identify the variability of approaches used by Czech social workers operating in the field of child protection to resolve parental disputes. The research combines both qualitative and quantitative methodology and identifies a typology of defensive practice, reflexive practice, and intuitive practice. Individual types differ in the attitudes the child protection social workers express towards recognized...

<p>It is an unfortunate and cruel reality that both government and armed groups used child soldiers during armed conflict. Child soldiers have become an integral part of government forces as well as insurgent groups in Africa and elsewhere. Most of them are being exploited as combatants, while others perform functions, such as porters, spies who are able to enter small spaces, cooks, messengers, lookouts, and even suicide bombers. Some of the most disturbing aspects of child soldiering are that some of them are being forced to kill or are themselves killed, sexually abused and are exposed to drugs. The use of child soldiers in conflicts is not a recent phenomenon and has indeed become a common practice that characterises modern conflicts. Recruitment is usually carried out forcefully or voluntarily by both government and rebel forces. The difference between these two types of recruitment is not always clear since their decision to join is always influenced by external factors. Examples of such reasons for voluntary recruitment include the desire to revenge, adventure, peer pressure, and need for belonging and survival. Concerning the reason for survival, some argue that, the children do not actually choose freely to become combatants, but are rather forced by circumstances. There are numerous reasons for the continuous targeting of children by armed forces and armed groups. These include shortage of combatants, the fact that children are easy to train physically and psychologically, and also that children are obedient and are readily available. The recruited children are compelled to take part in brutal induction ceremonies, where they are threatened and forced to kill or witness the killing of someone they know.</p>

Cette thèse étudie l’esthétique et l’éthique du témoignage dans le nouveau africain d’expression française voire le roman de la guerre. Au centre est l’enfant comme une catégorie sociale menacée et menaçante. L’enfant africain reste « l’arme » et le « soldat » de choix dans la littérature postcoloniale tout comme il était à l’époque coloniale. Cependant, sa mission est devenue encore plus meurtrière car il est maintenant recruté pour mener des combats militaires soutenus par des idéologies dépourvues de logique. Nous examinons donc les enjeux esthétiques et éthiques du choix de donner la parole à l’enfant pour témoigner de la violence postcoloniale dans les romans d’Emmanuel Dongala, de Tierno Monénembo, et d’Ahmadou Kourouma. Que ce soit par le biais d’une confrontation qui imite la scène judiciaire (Dongala), un débat philosophique, religieux et socio-politique autours du sujet de génocide (Monénembo), ou encore de l’emploi du rire carnavalesque pour témoigner de la tragédie personnelle et collective (Kourouma), nos auteurs font de l’enfant le point de référence à partir duquel l’Afrique pense le présent et l’avenir. Ce faisant, ils démontrent une diversité conceptuelle du témoignage littéraire tant sur le plan esthétique qu’éthique, que nous qualifions de changement paradigmatique dans la littérature d’Afrique noire d’expression française. Ce qui émerge est un double témoignage, d’une part, de l’auteur en tant que témoin des traces, d’autre part, de l’enfant (personnage) comme témoin-victime et/ou comme témoin-bourreau de la violence dans la « postcolonie ». / Thesis (Ph.D, French) -- Queen's University, 2012-03-01 12:40:14.865

<p>It is an unfortunate and cruel reality that both government and armed groups used child soldiers during armed conflict. Child soldiers have become an integral part of government forces as well as insurgent groups in Africa and elsewhere. Most of them are being exploited as combatants, while others perform functions, such as porters, spies who are able to enter small spaces, cooks, messengers, lookouts, and even suicide bombers. Some of the most disturbing aspects of child soldiering are that some of them are being forced to kill or are themselves killed, sexually abused and are exposed to drugs. The use of child soldiers in conflicts is not a recent phenomenon and has indeed become a common practice that characterises modern conflicts. Recruitment is usually carried out forcefully or voluntarily by both government and rebel forces. The difference between these two types of recruitment is not always clear since their decision to join is always influenced by external factors. Examples of such reasons for voluntary recruitment include the desire to revenge, adventure, peer pressure, and need for belonging and survival. Concerning the reason for survival, some argue that, the children do not actually choose freely to become combatants, but are rather forced by circumstances. There are numerous reasons for the continuous targeting of children by armed forces and armed groups. These include shortage of combatants, the fact that children are easy to train physically and psychologically, and also that children are obedient and are readily available. The recruited children are compelled to take part in brutal induction ceremonies, where they are threatened and forced to kill or witness the killing of someone they know.</p>

The thesis deals with the problematics of interactive books and their influence on the education of preschool children, which is in the Czech Republic still one of the unexplored areas. The aim of the thesis is to compare the paper books with the interactive books in terms of their impact on the child's learning and to see if interactivity influences the better memorization of information than interaction with the kindergarten teacher and also if the children are able to work with the interactive book. There are two hypotheses H1: A child of pre-school age working with an interactive book can remember less information than a child listening to a narrative from a classical book, and H2: A pre-school child who working with an interactive book will remember better the visual rendering of the content. The examined group was composed of preschool children from two differently different kindergartens. For the research, the method of participated target group observation was used when working with interactive books, supplemented by interviews with nursery teachers who participated in the research. The development of the pre-school child's cognitive functions and the development of its interaction with the technologies is briefly described in the theoretical part one. The technologies and their role in the...

Vaterschaft mit Behinderung ist ein wenig untersuchtes Phänomen, obwohl Väter mit einer Behinderung vor ähnlichen Aufgaben und Problemen wie Väter ohne Behinderung stehen. Der persönliche Blick auf die eigene Behinderung ist bestimmend für die Haltung und das Handeln als Vater. Väter mit positivem Selbstkonzept vermuten kaum Probleme oder negative Auswirkungen der Behinderung auf das Kind. Als schwerwiegende Barrieren im Alltag erweisen sich einschränkende Rahmenbedingungen und fehlende Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten; [J1] nur ein geringer Teil von Problemen hängt ursächlich mit der Behinderung zusammen.