Blog

We Need You! The Mount Sinai Parenting Center - in collaboration with partners like Zero to Three, HealthySteps, the Brazelton Touchpoints Center, Reach Out and Read, and many more - is embarking on a project to recruit families across the country to create a video series that reaches parents at each of their primary care visits. And we need your help to make sure all parents are heard. Click on the buttons below to download a flyer you can hang in your clinic for families or submit your...

By Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post, July 9, 2021 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer detain most pregnant, nursing and postpartum women for deportation, reversing a Trump-era rule that permitted officials to jail thousands of immigrants in those circumstances, according to a new policy released Friday. ICE’s new policy is even more expansive than it was during the Obama era, when President Biden was vice president. The Obama administration generally exempted pregnant...

By Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post, July 13, 2021 If all goes well, the IRS will start depositing monthly payments this week into the bank accounts of millions of American families, many of whom are struggling to put food on the table. Look for these child tax credit payments to show up on July 15. This money couldn’t come at a more opportune time, given the news that the consumer price index rose 5.4 percent in June compared to the same period a year ago. The last time families saw...

I am excited to announce a special edition, free pop-up workshop for July! Register for Affirmation Hour by clicking here . Everyone will find something for them during Affirmation Hour - show up as you are, and bring your children if you'd like! Please invite other folks to join us for this meaningful time together. July 22nd at 11am PT/2pm ET. Visit Rise to Resilience for more information and events. Image description: a gray background with bright blue text that reads POP UP WORKSHOP...

A Child's Early Experiences & Brain Development As a primary care provider, promoting strong parent-child relationships and positive parenting behaviors is critical to your role. Research tells us that a child's early experiences, and the environment in which they are raised, dramatically affect how the brain, and thus the child, develops. See the following clip to learn more about early brain development from expert Dan Siegel, MD: From the Keystones of Development Secure Attachment...

By Elissa Strauss, CNN Health, July 5, 2021 I'll begin with a confession. Or maybe it's a warning. I like playing with my kids. I don't play with them every day, nor, consistently, every week. But when I do play with them things happen in my brain and body, positive things that counter the oppressive rigidity and repetition of adult life. This happens through all kinds of play, including family-wide games of charades, pretending plants can talk and impromptu lip-sync and dance parties.

By Dwayne Curry, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 16, 2021 My wife and I have been married since 2019, but we’ve known each other since we were 14-year-olds. We are raising a blended family. She has a daughter who is 9 and a 7-year-old son. I have a son who is 8, and together we have a 2-year-old son. The pandemic has profoundly shaped my parenting experience in numerous ways. I had to transform my house into a combined virtual school, daycare, and work setting. The last year has...

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN, June 28, 2021 Physical punishment does not appear to improve a child's positive behavior or social competence over time, according to a review of 69 studies from the US, Canada, China, Colombia, Greece, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The review, published Monday in the journal Lancet , found physical punishment such as spanking is "harmful to children's development and well-being," said senior author Elizabeth Gershoff, a professor in human...

Do your child’s public tantrums leave you hesitant to go to the grocery store? You’ve probably noticed by now that the words “calm down” do little to relax an overwrought toddler. If you want a less stressful parenting experience, teaching your children to identify and manage their feelings is vital. Here are eight smart ways to teach your children emotional regulation and help them succeed in life. 1. Work It Out People often talk about the fight-or-flight response to stress, but in...

At the outset of a Zoom visit with 7-week-old son James in my behavioral pediatrics practice, his mother Sondra explained to me that he is “stiff because of my medication.” While feeding him a bottle she told me she was unable to breastfeed due to the effects of MAT (medicated assisted treatment, now called medication for opioid use disorder, or MOUD.) It was not concern about her current use of methadone, which is widely considered to be safe for breastfeeding, but rather the in-utero...

From Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, June 2020 How is ongoing, severe stress and adversity in early childhood connected to chronic disease in adults? And, what can we do about it? In this animated video, narrated by Center on the Developing Child Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., learn what the latest science tells us about how early experiences affect not only early learning and school readiness, but also lifelong health. Understand the effects of adversities such as...

Katie and Jason came to me at their wits’ end over four-year-old Mabel’s frequent meltdowns. “She’s been like this from birth,” Katie explained at our first visit. She described needing to nurse Mabel as an infant in a dark, quiet room because she was so easily distracted by sights and sounds. When I asked them to tell me about a recent specific moment of disruption, they described a visit to a county fair. Mabel was clearly so hungry that she was falling apart, yet despite the abundance of...