JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting

Assistant teachers play a central role in supporting children with autism spectrum disorder in United Arab Emirates inclusive classrooms. Despite this importance, no prior study has used validated observational instruments to systematically evaluate assistant teachers’ competency profiles across classroom practice and parent interaction domains simultaneously in this cultural context.

The Asia-Pacific region faces an escalating double burden of malnutrition, with childhood obesity now affecting more than 113 million children aged 0‐19 years. A demographic of highly educated, digitally literate urban mothers—referred to in this study using the descriptive label “Alpha Mother”—increasingly draws on generative AI as a source of toddler nutrition information. Yet, whether this shift empowers or undermines quality feeding practices remains empirically untested.

Research on children’s media use has traditionally focused on risks and negative outcomes. However, screen-based media may also provide opportunities for learning and curiosity-driven exploration. As young children increasingly engage with digital media within family contexts, parental media literacy may represent an important competency associated with children’s media experiences and developmental outcomes.

Despite evidence showing that parenting interventions reduce rates of child mental health problems, their reach and engagement remain low. Daily Growth is a digital parenting program designed to improve parent and child emotion regulation using an ecological momentary intervention (EMI) approach. Daily Growth sends twice-daily prompts and delivers 3-minute videos tailored to a recent parenting situation, offering 2 program types (Emotion Coaching and Active Play) to meet different parent preferences. EMI has rarely been tested with parenting programs.

Parents are increasingly using infant feeding apps (IFAs) for information and decision-making related to breastfeeding and other aspects of their baby’s care. Few studies have explored how users conceptualize data privacy risks in relation to IFAs and how concerns are balanced with app use.

The Strong Families (SF) Program, developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is an evidence-informed family skills intervention designed to support caregivers and children in low-resourced, high-stress circumstances. Following a pilot phase, we revised the program materials according to the expert trainers’ suggestions to best reflect the needs of the target population.

Technology use by children has implications for their physical, mental, and social health and development. There are many challenges in measuring modern screen use by children. To better understand the potential impact of technology on children, it is crucial to have robust methods to measure technology use. Visual recording data may be particularly well suited to capture modern digital technology use (eg, rapid transitions, multitasking, and device switching). It would be valuable to directly compare the 2 commonly used methods (wearable camera images and room video frames) to determine what is captured best by each and how they compare when both are coded by human annotation.

Medication errors represent a major patient safety concern among hospitalized children due to developmental variability, weight-based dosing, and limited communication capacity. However, the global burden and determinants of pediatric inpatient medication errors remain insufficiently characterized.

Digital interventions for eating disorders have the potential to increase access to care and broaden the range of treatment options for adolescents. However, little is known about the characteristics of those who seek these interventions. Identifying such characteristics will help ensure that these interventions meet the needs of the target population, highlight potentially underrepresented groups, and support clinicians in assessing clinical suitability for individual patients.

Pediatric patient care portals through electronic health records (EHRs) provide opportunities to enhance patient care. However, challenges exist for making portals usable, and few studies have examined qualitative experiences of caregivers when using integrated primary care (IPC) services for their children.

Sudden and unexpected infant death is a leading cause of postneonatal death in the United States. Following recommended infant care practices such as safe sleep and breastfeeding reduces the risk of sudden and unexpected infant death. Parents use social media to help them make decisions about infant care practices.

Caregivers of children with cerebral palsy (CP) encounter unique challenges that are not common in typical families. The distress of these families starts in the diagnosis period, which is marked by a “wait and see” approach, and continues because of the lack of a clear prognosis.