My response is often: "Parents are often living and parenting in a manner which is very similar to the way they (couple) were parented and sometimes because they have experienced adversity in childhood, in a fight, flight or freeze mode that has not been addressed." You don’t know what you don’t know.
Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes —car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. [For more of this story, written by Erika Christakis, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/the-dangers-of-distracted-parenting/561752/]
The kind of father you become can be heavily influenced notions you don’t even know you have the day your child is born. For better or worse, it’s impossible to enter life as a parent unaffected by the framework and culture of your upbringing. It’s your starting point. I was exposed as a young boy to many different models of fatherhood from various sources on TV, at the movies, in my family, and around the neighborhood: the quiet, aloof dad who comes home from work and is left alone to sit...
"Even though I was getting A's and B's, mostly A's, in all my classes — all my honors classes — I still felt it wasn't good enough," Savannah says. No matter how well she did, someone else was doing better. "The pressure I put on myself was out of control," she says. She says she felt the pressure all around her — from peers, teachers and her parents. Newfound awareness of these kinds of struggles, has started a conversation — and new initiatives — in her community. A group of parents is...
The recent deaths of high-profile public figures and a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report on rising suicide rates have brought the topic of suicide into everyday conversations. It’s important to know some facts and to know what to do if you think someone might be at risk for self-harm. A crisis can pass with time and the most important thing is to stay safe through the crisis and get help. 5 Action Steps for Helping Someone in Emotional Pain Ask: “Are you thinking...
Mothers who ‘connect’ with their baby during pregnancy are more likely to interact in a more positive way with their infant after it is born, according to a study carried out at the University of Cambridge. Interaction is important for helping infants learn and develop. Researchers at the Centre for Family Research carried out a meta-analysis, reviewing all published studies in the field, in an attempt to demonstrate conclusively whether there was a link with the way parents think about...
In 2014, 63 percent of fathers who lived at home with a child ages 0 to 18 reported eating dinner with their child every day; an additional 27 percent reported doing the same at least several times a week. Only 8 percent of these fathers reported sharing dinner about once a week, less than once a week, or never. Positive involvement from fathers is linked to many benefits for children , including better self-esteem, lower levels of depression, and greater academic success. This involvement...
Infant mortality and mass incarceration are major issues affecting the black community. But while they are often thought of and dealt with on separate tracks, structural racism firmly connects these critical issues. Structural racism exposes black women to distinct stressors—such as contact with the criminal justice system—that ultimately undermine their health and the health of their children. Today, infants born to black mothers die at twice the rate as those born to white mothers. 1 This...
When it comes to reproductive health, it’s no secret that a pregnant mother’s choices and environment can severely impact her child’s epigenetics and health—especially mothers suffering from PTSD . But it turns out fathers who have suffered significant stress early on in their life may also epigenetically impact the physical and mental health of their offspring. It was previously thought that fathers only passed DNA to the mother’s egg during fertilization, but it was recently discovered...
Saw this great article by Jenny Anderson in Quartz this morning. Here are some excerpts (and thanks for sharing such great stuff Robin Cogan ). Read full article.
Applications due June 18. Application link included in this post
Excerpts from an excellent article by Smita Malhotra:
In the fall, Echo will be rolling out the new Training & Certification Course (TCC) for selected candidates who want to become certified in the Echo trauma-informed, nonviolent parenting curriculum. This is the first time Echo will be offering the certification course since 2016. We've been spending the intervening time systematically revising the old parenting curriculum, bringing it up-to-date with the trauma and resilience information that we are already teaching in the parenting...
Jillian Broomstein starts to cry when she talks about the day her newborn son Jeremy was taken from her by New Hampshire's child welfare agency. He was 2 weeks old. "They came into the house and said they would have to place him in foster care and I would get a call and we would set up visits," she says. "It was scary." Broomstein, who was 26 at the time, had not used heroin for months and was on methadone treatment. The clinic social worker told her that since Jeremy would test positive for...