I always wanted to be a Daddy...I just never knew how much it would change me.

Father of 2, Teja McDaniel shares on API's blog about what becoming a Daddy has been like for him.

In this week’s Editor’s Pick on APtly Said, we are featuring resources from the National Association of School Psychologists that offer guidelines for dealing with the difficult subject of children and violence -- in particular, war and terrorism. In recent years, increasingly, there have been numerous heartbreaking mass shootings and terror activities in the United States and around the globe. In the aftermath of such distressing incidents, many parents are wondering how to react: 'How much information?

"A new study from Japan shows that children who receive positive attention and care from their parents have high incomes, high happiness levels, academic success, and a strong sense of morality.

"The brains of teenagers with serious antisocial behaviour problems differ significantly in structure to those of their peers, providing the clearest evidence to date that their behaviour stems from changes in brain development in early life, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge and the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" in Italy.

Sometimes I start thinking about the man I used to be before having kids, and I always get so amazed at how much I have changed during this short period of time. Considering that I am 33 years old, being a father for 3 years means that I have much more non-father time of life experience. However, I can tell with certainty that these last 3 years have been the most transformative years of my life.

"The article, titled "Beyond Survival: The Case for Investing in Young Children Globally," presents scientific evidence that extreme poverty, experiencing significant deprivation, violence, and neglect can short-circuit brain development with lifelong negative repercussions for children, limiting their ability to live healthy and productive lives, obtain gainful employment, and contribute to their communities and families.

"This Atlas was created to increase understanding of how emotions influence our lives, giving us choice, (at least some of the time) about which emotion we are experiencing, and how our emotions influence what we say and do. While emotions are central to our lives – providing the joy, alerting us to threats, a force for change, a warning against what is toxic, and calling to others for help – we don’t choose what to feel or when to feel it.

"The WHO Code is turning 35, and this vital public health policy is more critical than ever. The World Health Organization Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes was passed in 1981 to regulate predatory marketing tactics by infant formula companies. After World War II, formula sales boomed in the US, reaching their apex in the 1970s – the year I was born, just 22 percent of babies were ever breastfed. As they saturated the US market, formula companies looked overseas to expand markets for their products.

"Breast-feeding is known to offer a wealth of health benefits for babies, and a new study has just uncovered another: better long-term heart structure and function for preterm infants."

"Every working mom knows how hard it can be to juggle the demands of her job with the needs of her new baby, particularly when it comes to breast-feeding.

Now, a new study has concluded that the more hours a new mom works, the tougher it is for her to continue breast-feeding.

Mothers working 19 or fewer hours a week were much more likely to maintain breast-feeding through their babies' sixth month of life, compared to moms who had returned to full-time employment, said lead researcher Ning Xiang.

"Lamaze International Past President (Fall 2012-2016) Robin Elise Weiss, PhD, MPH, CPH, CD(DONA), CLC, LCCE, FACCE presented the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC) with the 2015 Lamaze International President’s Award earlier this year.

"These are good suggestions, but the idea that swaddling and SIDS are substantially linked is misleading.

"What are the mythical assumptions behind using cry-it-out (total extinction, unmodified extinction) or even controlled crying (graduated extinction) sleep training to get babies (0-2 years old or so) to sleep on their own? Here are several."

"Though the authors provide a rationale for sleep training by citing adverse consequences of parents deprived of sleep, they do not offer the alternative perspective of how babies’ systems are regulated by the caregiver’s physical presence throughout the day and at night. Nor do they bring in the broader baseline of human evolution over millions of years. According to our evolutionary baseline, babies who are left alone to sleep is abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous.

"The study was carried out by researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah, and concluded that as shouting by fathers was louder and more forceful, it would be associated more with anger.

They added that this could make it seem like anger is a normal or acceptable way to behave.

The study's author Laura Padillo Walker told the Times: 'Our message to dads is that it’s really important to be kind and gentle with older children — even gentler sometimes than mum.