The Decline of Empathy: A Hopeful Solution (www.claudiamgoldmd.blogspot.com)

Here is an excerpt from a recent blog post by Dr. Claudia M. Gold. Pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton was among the first to recognize the tremendous capacity of the newborn for complex connection and communication. Developmental psychologist Ed Tronick, drawing on this observation, designed the famous Still-Face Experiment to show the devastation, for both parent and baby, when they struggle to connect. Extensive research at the interface of developmental psychology, neuroscience, and genetics, as I document in my first book, shows the long-term benefit of investing in early parent-child relationships.

"Once you know it, you can't un-know it." My wise colleague Kyle Pruett, MD child psychiatrist, said this of the power of working with parents together with very young children to a move a family in a healthy direction.

After having recently written The Silenced Child, an admittedly dark account of how our society fails to listen to parents and children, and the potentially disastrous effects of this course of action, I am overjoyed to now be writing about a hopeful solution to this problem.  The following piece, published in our local paper on Sunday, offers a view into the work unfolding in this small rural town in Western Massachusetts. My hope is to bring this model to other communities. The aim is to offer this listening stance to all babies and families without potentially stigmatizing parents by identifying them as "at-risk."

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Dr. Gold will be here live on Tuesday, July 11th at 10AM PST / 1 PM EST for our next Parenting with ACEs online chat.