Presently the main research focus in our lab has been the developmental progress of children adopted to Nova Scotia from orphanages in China.  This represents an extension of my earlier work with children who had been adopted to Canada from orphanages in Romania.  Over the past number of years rates of international adoption to Canada have remained stable at approximately 2000 children per year and 51% of these adoptions are from China. Last year, 48 children were adopted from China to Nova Scotia making this province fourth behind only Ontario and Quebec and British Columbia in the number of children adopted from China. Despite the stable rate of international adoptions across Canada, little research has examined the impact of these adoptions on Canadian families. Clearly, international adoptees from China comprise a sizeable sector of our population of young children so it is important to evaluate the physical, behavioral, and social emotional needs of international adoptees and their families with the goal of promoting and supporting all aspects of their healthy development and providing much needed information not only for families who have adopted children internationally but for families who will be adopting in the future.  We are presently conducting interviews with families who have adopted children from China, asking about children’s developmental progress, the family’s adoption experience, and any concerns families have had with their children.  

A second research interest in our lab is examining parent child interaction during play and how such interaction reflects the parent child relationship.  Such an examination includes the various ways in which parents and preschool children interact together during play and how they negotiate daily events that may be considered stressful for young children.  For example, we have focused on the ways in which different children cope with brief separations from their caregivers and on the strategies that parents use when attempting to entice preschoolers to “clean up” after a play session.  We are ultimately interested in examining whether children’s behavior in the context of their primary relationships extends to their behavior within the preschool peer group.