Thank you to the 20 UT Dallas students who joined CCF virtual programs this spring, contributing to Play With Me, Grow With Me, and our research operations. Students were trained and practiced observing and assessing children's development, leading parenting conversations and contributing to research and entering data.

And, a special congratulations to Ina, Jashan, Alaina, Rachel, and Lydia on graduating this semester! We wish you the best!

Join the Center for Children and Families for a one-time virtual Play With Me session during Comets Giving Days! Bring your babies and toddlers, ages 0-3, and join us online from 10am - 10:30am on May 26th and 27th for music and movement activities and child development tips! The sessions are free to attend and open to the public. Register here (for Wednesday 5/26) or here (for Thursday, 5/27) to receive a link to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

The development of emotion understanding is an important aspect of young children’s social growth. When children are better able to understand the emotional experiences of other people, they are more likely to develop prosocial skills, such as helping behavior and practicing empathy. UTD doctoral student Mariam Hafiz recently produced the following tips for helping children develop emotion understanding (full version here):

When children use emotion words such as “happy,” “sad,” “scared,” and “angry,” this demonstrates an awareness of emotions. If parents identify these emotions for their children early in life, children will then have the foundational tools necessary for understanding emotions.

This will help your child become more capable of attending to their own and others’ emotions. Appropriately acknowledging and guiding children through their negative emotions will help children understand not only their own emotions, but other people’s emotions as well.

By witnessing open expression of emotions, children become more aware of other people’s emotional experiences. When children observe your laughter, joy, and sometimes even your sadness in response to life events, they are better able to connect human emotions to life experiences.

We are now recruiting parents and children ages 0-3 for our summer Play With Me sessions! Online classes run weekly from June 9th to August 5th via Microsoft Teams. Join us for music, movement activities, and parenting discussions on topics from picky eating to temper tantrums. Classes will be held from 10am - 10:45am on Wednesdays (in Spanish) and Thursdays (in English). Reserve your spot using the online registration form here and click here to download and share our information flyer.

We are wrapping up a busy spring semester and looking forward to a slightly slower pace this summer in the teaching arena and more time for research and writing. Preparations for the new CCF REU Site are well underway, and finalists for the paid internships are interviewing and selections being made for the 10 spots. We are looking forward to introducing them soon! In the meantime, we are fundraising to support the backbone of their experience, both the outreach programming in which they will train and learn, and the research projects in which they will experience developmental science in-the-making, working with us to diversity the science and the scientists. We are very eager to have these students join us in the work of the Center for Children and Families.