Archive for the ‘Parenting for Peace’ Category
It’s hard to think of a baby being violent or destructive, but the seeds of violence may be planted before a child is born, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Research carried out there and reported last fall in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior suggests that attention to health factors during prenatal development could prevent violence in later life. Citing recent research demonstrating a biological basis of crime, article author and Penn nursing assistant professor Jianghong Liu explains, “‘Biological’ does not mean only genetic factors, but also health factors, such as nutritional deficiency and lead exposure, which influence biological processes.”
To read more, please see rest of post at mothering.com.
Source:
ScienceDaily
Image:
mahalie under its Creative Commons license
Tags: epigenetics, pregnancy, prenatal development, prenatal epigenetics, violence
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A mother’s attachment to her baby often begins long before birth. By the last trimester many mothers feel like they know their babies, having been enjoying for months their familiar, reassuring movements in the womb.
But what about fathers? What are their experiences during those wondrous nine months? How does the attachment process begin for them? Is a father’s only option to look on with wonder (and sometimes envy) at the beautiful relationship forming between his once-doting partner and this tiny interloper? 
Is it the extent of his calling to act as back-rubber, chauffeur and coach? Do these “staff support” roles reflect the monumental potential influence fathers have in their family’s life? (more…)
Tags: attachment, fatherhood, fathers, hospital birth, oxytocin, pregnancy, prenatal development, testosterone
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As I watched the solar transit of Venus this week, it was a vivid reminder of one of the most important Parenting for Peace qualities: wonder.
A fundamental need of the young child until around seven is an atmosphere in harmony with his natural impulse to celebrate beauty and feel reverence and awe about almost everything. But what does our culture do in this techno-materialist age? We foist upon even the youngest child a flat world of facts and commentary. At a time when the child most needs wonder and reverence, we explain away all sense of the miraculous (more…)
Tags: addiction, cynicsim, early education, parenting, reverence, stimulation, Venus transit, wonder
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This morning on The View they shared the story of a mother who was arrested for throttling a boy who had allegedly texted unspeakably awful things to her daughter (including — and I’m surely not getting this exactly correct, so pardon my paraphrase — “you’re so ugly I wouldn’t even rape you”). Evidently his tirade of abusive texts had been going on for some time, and the daughter had made anguished comments to her mother that hinted at possible self-harm. When Mom and daughter happened to see this boy at the mall one day…and evidently with sangfroid he reported he was not going to stop the cyber-bullying…well, if you’re a mother, you can probably imagine how she felt as she ended up with her hands around his neck.
That very ability, to imagine it — the feelings of a mother whose child is being mercilessly bullied and whose repeated attempts to get their school’s attention and help, to no avail — that is empathy: (more…)
Tags: attachment parenting, breastfeeding, Bruce Perry, bullying, cyber-bullying, empathy, sociopathy, Time magazine, violence
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Few words strike such terror in the hearts of parents as “teenager.” On my final night in London last week I gave a talk at the London College of Spirituality entitled “Nurturing Evolution: Raising Ourselves and Our Children as Peacemakers.” Since many of the attendees were young people yet to begin families, I harnessed the fact that they were not so long ago teenagers: I invited them to connect with their “inner adolescents” and together we rode on that wave (more…)
Tags: adolescent brain, adult role models, mentoring, resilience, risk-taking, teen idealism, teens
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NAOMI STADLEN
This author of What Mothers Do — Especially When It Looks Like Nothing changed the tone from the statistical, socio-biological, and clinical bent of the morning session to the immediacy of direct experience and the narrative of mothers about the “special time” in the early months after baby’s arrival. She highlights the importance of a parent’s sense-making of the early months, marked by such themes as an “extraordinary mixture of chaos and love,” “…like being inside a bubble…” “…like having a thin skin enclosing themselves and their babies buffering them from the rest of the world…” (more…)
Tags: feminist movement, interpersonal neurobiology, mothering, parenting, postpartum
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The Power of Parental Example
[Even though I refer to the “mommy” mind meld, these principles apply to whomever are the two or three connected, nurturing adults in an infant’s life — father, grandmother, consistent (not rotating) caregiver.] 
Imitation is the young child’s primary form of learning, which is why one of my first bits of guidance to parents coming to me for counseling is (more…)
Tags: brain development, epigenetics, fetal brain development, interpersonal neurobiology, mindfulness, social intelligence, striving
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How crazy does this sound? My children were both in their teens before I realized that I had experienced postpartum depression with both of them. What led to this tardy epiphany? Not the several years of deep therapeutic work with two different therapists and a variety of bodyworkers; not the many years of deep scholarly work pursuing my doctorate in early human development, including the study of pregnancy, birth and postpartum issues; and as you can probably guess, not from my own OB/GYN.
I have Brooke Shields to thank for my big ah-hah. (more…)
Tags: Brooke Shields, CCPD, postpartum depression, PPD, presence
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It’s hard to think of a baby being violent or destructive, but the seeds of violence may be planted before a child is born, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
