Peggy O'Mara -- a mother of four who was an absolutely integral force in starting and carrying the Attachment Parenting movement for 35 years through her magazine, Mothering -- didn't set out to change the world. But, wow, she sure did.

In a commentary published earlier this month in Nature, Harvard professor Sarah S. Richardson and six co-authors caution scientists, journalists and the public against drawing hasty conclusions from findings concerning epigenetic effects on human development.

Epigenetic effects are those that involve heritable changes to gene expression that don't arise from changes to the genotype itself. For example, a fetus's intrauterine environment can influence gene expression in later life, with some effects that extend beyond one generation.

A well-known author, Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, was less known for her activism. She was especially vocal about her views of world peace in the context of parenting.

When we think of a child in a certain way, we lock him right into the way we perceive him. Without intending to do so, we imprison children into patterns of behaving. Sometimes when others stigmatize a child, we continue enforcing the pattern, even though we don't mean to.

The thought of sending my first child to preschool always had me worried. Not because I didn't feel like I'd be ready to part with him, but because I didn't know how preschool would fit in with Attachment Parenting and the positive discipline that he was used to. Would I have to leave him there when he was crying and screaming for me to stay?

It's important to step back and look at the big picture when we find ourselves opting for quick fixes. If our goal is to raise healthy, happy, compassionate, loving human beings who are responsible citizens of the community, this could be compared to creating a masterpiece in music or art.

We want our kids to grow into caring and compassionate people. One of the ways we encourage that is by being caring and compassionate toward our children. Another way that we do that is by being caring and compassionate with ourselves. When you cut yourself slack, you teach your children how to recognize and take care of their own needs.

"Well, I was just at the height of my worry when something happened. I guess you could call it a game changer. In this case, I’m calling it a story changer. I share this experience as a means of grasping what matters in a fast-paced, overly distracted, pressure-cooker world. Whether we are lost or we are found, just a few moments with open hands and attentive eyes can turn things around."

This edition of the Bernard van Leer Foundation's biannual journal, Early Childhood Matters, addresses the theme of responsive parenting, and, in particular, the potential for responsive parenting programmes to reduce the incidence of violence against young children. Articles examine the state of research, experiences in adapting parenting programmes to new cultural contexts, and the experiences of particular projects, with contributions from Jordan, Jamaica, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Peru, Israel, Turkey, and the United States (US).

Now that my son's needs go beyond sleep, cuddles and food, it gets harder and harder to determine what he wants me to do. Which is why I began introducing sign language to him. I believe we are going to overcome many frustrations with this fresh method of talking to each other.

I needed a mommy, and so my birth mother -- with no other choice -- chose my aunt to be my mom. It may be hard to swallow, as a mom yourself, reading that and thinking about your own child. But what is best for the child? Do we ever really know?

Drowning in grief, I wrote, searching for answers. Why did she do it? What did everyone miss? What could we have done differently? I learned about the traumatic, lifelong effects of the separation of mother and child, a primal wound that we stepped into like all adoptive parents.

Mindful parenting is parenting from the depths of our hearts, rather than letting us be guided by a set of pre-fixed, often unreflected beliefs about what is right and wrong -- beliefs about thing having to be done or seen a certain way, standards and rules we might have been brought up by and that might even have been around for many generations.

A new study found that tweens who spent five days at an outdoor camp, unplugged and media-free, were better able to understand emotions than their peers, who stayed home and continued their usual media diet. Researchers determined that face-to-face interaction, coupled with time away from technology, was the difference for the girls and boys at camp; while they showed significant improvements in recognizing facial emotions and nonverbal cues, the control group revealed almost no improvement.

If Attachment Parenting in not exactly something widely known and praticed in the United States, you can imagine how it would be in Brazil, where we can find so little material available in our language and so little local support for parents. I've always thought I had to be one of the people who would help make AP known in Brazil, and then I decided it was time to prepare myself to become an API Leader.