When mothers arrive at Ruth Slocum’s parenting classes, she encourages them to sit on the floor and play with their babies as they talk about first foods or coping with sleep deprivation. She and her co-instructor offer bubbles to blow, and they snap pictures that the women can later turn into scrapbooks with materials they provide. During mothers-only sessions, the women talk about how to recognize and respond to a baby’s cues and how to manage “big feelings” of their own. Slocum’s immediate goal is to help them build a strong attachment with their child. But there's another, longer-term idea at work here: Research suggests that forging these bonds will ultimately prevent problems for these children that may seem a long, long way off, deep in their adulthood, problems like heart disease, stroke and depression.
Slocum’s parenting class on the Tulsa campus of Oklahoma State University isn’t meant just to help mothers weather the first uncertain weeks with a baby. It could be considered a novel form of inoculation. Medical professionals can vaccinate children against pathogens like polio or pertussis, but they have few tools to prevent the chronic illnesses that wreak havoc with so many adult lives and that cost the health care system so much to treat. What would it look like if we could somehow protect small children against those illnesses the way we vaccinate for tetanus or chicken pox? It might look something like the Legacy for Children parenting class Slocum teaches.
Public health experts know that much of what makes adults unhealthy has roots in childhood, in the adversities that children experience as they are growing up — the absence of a parent, unstable housing, or a family member’s problems with drugs or alcohol can show up later as diabetes, drug and alcohol use, obesity, cancer and anxiety. The connection between childhood and later health cuts across society: While low-income children like the ones Slocum works with may on balance experience higher levels of adversity, few people are born into families or circumstances without the kinds of challenges that can have long-lasting effects on their health.
[For more on this story by CHELSEA CONABOY, go to https://www.politico.com/agend...liency-health-000610]
Comments (0)