Family dynamics and the individual differences of each family member can impact their stress. For families in the military, stress occurs regularly due to factors such a reassignments, deployments, and the frequency of changes. For some families, the stress that occurs over time helps family members to develop resiliency. Learning to cope with stress can teach skills in adapting to stressful lifestyle factors (e.g., mobility and relocation). Members of many military families develop these skills, while other families need a strong supportive network to facilitate their adjustment to military lifestyle stress. This is a review of the literature on the issues of how families and their children cope with and adapt to the stress of the military lifestyle. Suggestion are given for how families and school can work together to support children in military families to adapt to the military lifestyle. These suggestions can be applied to other types of transient families.

Higher education is rapidly changing and university instructors are presented with new types of students for whom technology is a significant influence. They perceive technology as a way of life and express a need to feel connected at all times. With increasingly diverse university classroom, technology integration is both a challenge and an opportunity. Supportive communication is important in the promotion of relationships and essential in a university classroom.  A convenience sample of 390 students was surveyed to investigate the perceived influences of technology on relationships, including preferences, usage and time with technologies. Results indicated that technology makes communication easier, allows students to stay in touch with more people, and have relationships that would otherwise not be possible.  Implications of this study suggest positive influences of technology on academic work, performance and maintenance of relationships, but disadvantages such as increased stress, addictive feelings toward technologies, and increased misunderstandings in relationships and conflict.

Factors influencing the selection and purchase of toys for children's use were investigated. Subjects were 73 parents or adult friends of normally developing or handicapped preschool children. In addition to providing demographic information about themselves, the subjects rated the importance of 17 factors influencing their selection and purchase of toys. Contrary to previous research, the sex of the child was reported to be of only minor importance in toy selection, as was the picture on the toy package. Two factors, safety and teaching new skills, were rated as extremely important. There were no significant differences in ratings as a result of sex, ethnicity, or whether or not the subjects were parents of a handicapped child. The findings suggest a substantial degree of agreement among parents about what they consider important when choosing toys for children.

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