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"A recent narrative review has confirmed that the physical punishment of children (commonly known as 'spanking') is not effective in preventing child behavior issues, nor is it effective in promoting positive outcomes. |
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“Imagine that the world had created a new ‘dream product’ to feed and immunize everyone born on Earth. |
"Connection, closeness, responsiveness are three words that can have a very important meaning as parents, perhaps even more so during the COVID pandemic. How has this affected our lives? How are we experiencing the post-pandemic? |
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The New York Times recently published an article entitled “I Love You. |
Dr. William Sears 2020 NBJ Summit Lifetime Achievement Award Presentation Much deserved, congratulations, Dr. Sears! ~Attachment Parenting International
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"Prior research shows that teens who have more secure family relationships report higher levels of empathy for others, but little research examines whether teens with more secure family relationships actually show greater empathy when observed in... read more |
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Fairplay presents From Screen Time to Green Time: How to mitigate pandemic screen overuse by getting kids outside Featuring Richard Louv, José González, and Sharon Danks Tuesday, July 20 7:00 PM ET | 4:00 PM PT |
Child sleep problems are based more on culturally-influenced parental perceptions than actual biological reasons, and nighttime sleep issues tended to be perceived more problematic than daytime naps. |
More research is needed to identify normal sleep patterns in breastfed versus bottle-fed infants, in toddlers, on weekdays versus weekends, and as related to gender and ethnic differences. What is known is that children sleep longer at night and experience fewer night-wakings and daytime naps as they develop. |
Exclusively breastfed infants had less colic and fussiness, and slept longer. Melatonin, which promotes sleep, available only in breastmilk, showed a clear relationship to infant sleep patterns. |
More research is needed to identify what is normal when it comes to child sleep. Some of what is known is that children need longer nighttime sleep until about 9 years old. By school age, most children sleep through the night, but children up to 3 1/2 years old continue to wake at least once. Low birth-weight and pre-term infants sleep more. Infants of younger mother sleep more. All infants sleep longer at night, wake multiple times at night, and sleep longer daytime naps than young children who mostly stop taking naps by 5 years old. Girls sleep longer than boys. Children with siblings sleep less. |
As infants grew older, mothers provided less nurturing touch, patting and stroking but more tickling and static touch. |
Touch is needed for social-emotional and physical development and well-being. In addition, there are therapeutic benefits of massage. |
While maternal touch predicts mother-infant reciprocity, which is linked to positive child cognitive, language, and social-emotional development, the incidence of all forms of nurturing touch decrease through the infant’s first year, especially after six months. |
Oxytocin levels rise in both mothers and fathers who provide high levels of affectionate touch but not in parents who provide less nurturing touch. |
Skin-to-skin contact lessened the mother’s stress and postpartum depression symptoms within the first month after childbirth. |
While low-income, ethnic-minority families displayed less sensitivity overall to their children, positive father involvement and close mother-father relationships were especially beneficial in the case of maternal risk. |