Recent work on emotional regulation gives a powerful new lens through which to view the evolution across childhood and adolescence of the lived experience and clinical presentation of depression. We have a richer picture of the depressed child, and the child at risk for depression, in interaction with family and wider world. We know more about the development and the developmental psychopathology of coping strategies. These advances give provocative clues to the actual processes whereby well-established risk and protective factors might interact to produce, sustain or curtail a depressive syndrome. This in turn opens the door to treatment and prevention approaches that are truly developmentally informed. This is the philosophy behind this completely updated and comprehensive analysis of childhood depression.