URBANA, Ill. - Leann L. Birch, a former head of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) at University of Illinois, and internationally renowned pioneer in the study of children’s eating behaviors, passed away on May 26, in Durham, North Carolina. She was 72 years old.

URBANA, Ill. – Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015 provided federal recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States, individual state laws varied. Some states were clear on whether or not they would recognize the marriages of same-sex couples, and others were in an uncertain flux, in some instances legalizing, then backpedaling on the decision days later. Some married couples thus faced uncertainty about whether their union would continue to be legally valid.

URBANA, Ill. –The Autism Program at the University of Illinois will partner with Illinois Career Services and the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services at U of I to host a professional development training seminar aimed at helping adult individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and autism in finding employment that works for them.

The seminar is set for Wednesday, March 13, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the iHotel and Conference Center in Champaign.

URBANA, Ill. – When adolescents don’t get enough sleep or experience sleep problems over time, parents may start to see their children struggle with difficulties with emotions, behaviors, and attention. Although a number of factors are linked with sleep, new research is showing that for some kids, negative interactions with peers may be a contributing factor behind poor sleep quality.

URBANA, Ill. — Nearly half of the home-packed lunches that children brought to school each day rarely or never included vegetables, a University of Illinois researcher found in a new study of families in California.

However, the number of vegetables in kids’ lunches increased if they participated in deciding what foods to pack, said Carolyn Sutter, a postdoctoral research associate with the U. of I.’s Family Resiliency Center and the lead author of the study.

The following are reflections from LaKisha David, a PhD student in Human Development and Family Studies, on her research project, which was partially funded by an ACES International Graduate Grant: “Northern Ghana Family Reunification Project.” LaKisha's advisor is Dr. Christy Lleras.

As an only child, expectations were set high for Cagla Giray’s future career. Giray is from Ankara, Turkey, where her parents are professors at Lokman Hekim University.

Giray’s college career started at Bilkent University, where she received her bachelor’s in psychology. “During my undergraduate, the emphasis was on either clinical or cognitive psychology practices and I couldn’t envision myself as a clinical psychologist,” Giray says.

Handling a poorly timed tantrum from a toddler-such as in the middle of the grocery store-is never an easy task. It could serve as a teachable moment for a mom to help her child learn to manage his own emotions. After all, research shows that how parents react in these types of situations can play an important role in a child's emotional development.

But how does that child's negative behavior-that tantrum in the frozen food aisle-affect a mother's own stress level, and therefore, her ability to parent?

When children participated in a program designed to reduce sibling conflict, both parents benefited from a lessening of hostilities on the home front. But mothers experienced a more direct reward. As they viewed the children's sessions in real time on a video monitor and coached the kids at home to respond as they'd been taught, moms found that, like their kids, they were better able to manage their own emotions during stressful moments.