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Remember those baby boxes Finland started giving out to parents of newborns for free? They're boxes with basically everything you need to keep an infant alive, healthy, and happy: clothes, a towel, a quilt, diapers, bibs, a book, a toy. The kit even comes with a mattress, so the box itself can be used as the baby’s first crib. Unsurprisingly, Finnish parents love the baby box . Since its introduction in the late 1930s, the country has seen the infant mortality rate plummet, something...

As I move full steam ahead into my 30s, friends all around are beginning to start families and have babies.  Watching them go through pregnancies is exciting, observing them as they bond with babies is special, and experiencing them letting me bond with their babies is something I have no words for sometimes.  This past weekend I visited a friend in the hospital and snuggled her 28-hour-old little one.  It was mesmerizing. Yet one thing that is not fun to watch them do is try...

British Prime Minister David Cameron thinks parents need government-approved advice on raising kids. British parents aren't exactly thrilled with this recent proclamation. One of Cameron's new policy prescriptions, unveiled Monday with an announcement that England will pour £70 million over the next five years into “relationship support,” was state-backed parenting classes. Vouchers, he said, would help cover the enrollment of low-income families. Behind...

Could you raise four children in a homeless shelter without spanking? BALTIMORE—On a typical morning, the first to wake is 6-month-old Nathaniel. He doesn’t always sleep through the night, so by the time his mother, Cierra Thomas, sits up in the twin bed she shares with her husband, Tony Gardner, she’s already dreading the day. “I’m mad that I woke up here,” she says. “Here” is the Gardner family’s room in a 135-bed shelter for homeless...

We think of this as a problem only of the urban and suburban elite, but in traveling the country to report on this issue, I have seen that this stress has a powerful effect on children across the socioeconomic spectrum... Working together, parents, educators and students can make small but important changes: instituting everyday homework limits and weekend and holiday homework bans, adding advisory periods for student support and providing students opportunities to show their growth in...

From Anna Sutton via ACEs in Maternal Health group ... Love this table top conversation between Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter and mother. Take home message... If you're a mom, don't forget who YOU are to yourself. You weren't always a mom. Your kids need to see this part of you so that they will remember to value themselves when they become parents.  If you have a mom, remind her she's also a beautiful woman.  If you're a partner, help her to find a safe, stress free...

The aptly named Great Starts program at the Helen Ross McNabb Center in Knoxville, TN, provides a six-to-nine month residential treatment and two-year follow-up program for pregnant mothers and moms with newborns recovering from substance abuse. Earlier this year, curious about the early childhood history of its residents, the center started asking the women about their ACEs history. The results would not have been surprising to those familiar with ACEs: Of the 16 moms who filled out the...

A new toolkit is out that aims to help services providers give a survey about traumatic childhood experiences that are linked to negative effects on health and well-being. The toolkit, developed by The National Crittenton Foundation , offers recommendations about the Adverse Childhood Experiences survey, including how to talk to children and parents about the survey, track results and use the data for public education and policy advocacy. The toolkit also includes a sample protocol, case...

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Adoption is amazing. And it’s complicated. It can bring great joy. And it can bring great pain. Adoption is nuanced. And like anything else, it can be hard to see those nuances when it's not part of your life. That's particularly true when the media is so good at circulating adoption narratives that are a little problematic — like the baby left under the Christmas tree for his siblings to discover. I get why people thought it was sweet: A precious new life was placed into an...

We all need support, no matter who we are.  As a pediatrician, CEO and a mom, I am constantly juggling priorities, schedules and child care.  Some days are just plain hard and I’ve learned that the only way to get through the tough days and weeks is to practice self care.  Self care is about how we can be our best selves in order to be of support to those around us. For children to lead healthier lives, they need a healthy adult who can act as an emotional buffer to...

Emotional health, says parent coach Krissy Pozatek, means accepting the full range of human emotions, both the painful and the positive. For parents who wish their children nothing but happiness, that can be difficult. When my daughter was four, she said to me, “Mommy, I’m worried.” She had tension in her voice and fear in her eyes. Concerned, I asked, “Sweetie, what are you worried about?” With mounting frustration, she replied, “I don’t...