Cindy Dell Clark – författare

Adults were once children, yet a generational gap can present itself when grown-ups seek to know children's lives, in research. In A Younger Voice discloses how qualitative research, tailored to be child-centered, can shrink the gap of generational unintelligibility. The volume invites and instructs researchers who want to explore children's vantage points as social actors. Its suggested tool kit draws from both academic and applied research, based on the author's lifelong career as a child-centered qualitative researcher. World round, research in knowing children has grown recently in anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, cultural psychology and a host of applied fields. This book draws widely from the trending child-centered research movement, taking stock of methods for fulfilling its aims.In A Younger Voice provides mature researchers with a kid-savvy guide to learning effectively about, from, and with children. The highlighted methods' are steadfastly child-attuned, "thinking smaller" in order to free children to participate with empowerment. From fieldwork and observation, to focus groups and depth interviews, to the use of photography, artwork, and metaphors, viable methods are discussed with an old-hand's acumen for making the procedures practical with children in the field. Whether an investigator is at the beginning of a project (designing from scratch procedures to involve and reveal the young) or at the final stages (conducting interpretations and analysis true to children's meanings) In A Younger Voice gives know-how for a challenging area of inquiry. Playfully interviewing children as young as five years old, as well as empowering teenagers to tell it like it is, are tasks revealed to be both doable and essential. For adults seeking to overcome generational-cultural myopia, these methods are invaluable.

Is it "right" for children to believe in myths? By encouraging such myths, are parents lying to children? Moreover, do these imaginary figures undermine religious faith and encourage materialism in children? This text explores how the children themselves give meaning to Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Through interviews conducted during holiday periods and in real-life settings ranging from homes to shopping malls, it examines whether believing in these figures is good or bad for children. Using the childrens' own insights, it offers interpretations on topics, such as tooth loss, Christmas and Easter customs (including the Easter egg hunt) in contemporary America.

When players play, there is a transactional process at work, whether for children on a teeter-totter or pandas playing with peers. In this edited volume, nine experts on play show how play transactions are an important dynamic of play across cultures, age groups, even species. A rich array of play contexts is evident across the nine chapters, encompassing varied continents, age groups, and sorts of players. The play processes of giant pandas, of home-visiting therapists, of Polynesian women, and of autistic kids are included here. The healthy interchange of ideas about play, one of the hallmarks of the Association for the Study of Play, is a process that is cultivated in this new volume.

For children who live with a chronic illness, each day is filled with endless treatments, painful symptoms, confusion, and embarrassment. How can an eight-year old girl understand diabetes let alone explain to her schoolmates why she has to leave class to have her blood tested? How can the father of a child with asthma ever sleep soundly through the night with the fear that his son may suffocate in the next room.In In Sickness and in Play, Cindy Dell Clark tells the stories of children who suffer from two common illnesses that are often underestimated by those not directly touched by them-asthma and diabetes. She describes how play, humor, and other expressive methods, invented by the kids themselves, allow families to cope with the pain. Clark’s work is one of the few studies to focus on maladies that kids must learn to live with rather than die from. Her interviews with forty-six families give readers an understanding of how children comprehend their illnesses and how parents struggle daily to care for their kids while trying to give them a “normal” childhood. Chronically ill children are at a greater risk of developing mental health or social adjustment problems than their peers, and asthma has been gaining ground in both incidence and fatality in recent years. Clark’s eye-opening work emphasizes the importance of improving the lives of these kids by understanding their perspectives, both imagined and real.In Sickness and in Play is part of the Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies edited by Myra Bluebond-Langer.

In a hard driving society like the United States, holidays are islands of softness. Holidays are times for creating memories and for celebrating cultural values, emotions, and social ties. All Together Now considers holidays that are celebrated by American families: Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Halloween, and the December holidays of Christmas or Chanukah. This book shows how entire families bond at holidays, in ways that allow both children and adults to be influential within their shared interaction.  The decorations, songs, special ways of dressing, and rituals carry deep significance that is viscerally felt by even young tots. Ritual has the capacity to condense a plethora of meaning into a unified metaphor such as a Christmas tree, a menorah, or the American flag. These symbols allow children and adults to co-opt the meaning of symbols in flexible and age-relevant ways, all while the symbols are still treasured and shared in common.