Archive for the ‘Parenting for Peace’ Category
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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[Excerpted from Parenting for Peace: Raising the Next Generation of Peacemakers, by Marcy Axness, PhD]
Connection and Conscience: The Foundations of Peace
Whenever a heinous, violent act is committed, there is talk of a lack of conscience in the perpetrator. The question of what builds a conscience has long engrossed philosophers, psychologists, and even Disney imagineers (who decided Pinocchio’s conscience looks a little like a cockroach, carries a watch fob and goes by the name of Jiminy Cricket). James Prescott’s massive, cross-cultural study of the root causes of violence, together with the body of bonding and attachment research, point clearly to the fact that (more…)
Tags: attachment, conscience, empathy, pleasure, social intelligence
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The subject of empathy — and whether it’s an endangered trait — has been on many people’s lips and pens in the wake of unspeakable events in the past several weeks, on US soil and US-occupied soil. As Steve Taylor wrote in Psychology Today,
To a large extent, all human brutality – all oppression, cruelty and most crime – is the result of a lack of empathy. It’s a lack of empathy which makes someone capable of attacking, (more…)
Tags: attachment, empathy, interpersonal neurobiology, violence
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In the conception chapter of Parenting for Peace, I devote a section to the 21st century issue of EMFs (electromagnetic fields) — cell phone radiation, wireless and electronic gadgetry, the whole shebang — and a discussion of how it might perturb the minute processes around conception and early embryonic development. Well, yesterday came news of a new Yale study finding ADHD-like symptoms and other brain abnormalities in mice whose pregnant mothers were exposed to cell phone radiation. (more…)
Tags: cell phones, EMFs, fetal brain development, stress
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“Building a strong foundation for healthy development in the early years of life is a prerequisite for individual well-being, economic productivity, and harmonious societies around the world.”
So reads the opening line of one of the most important articles published this year that you will most likely never read or even hear about. The article, entitled “An Integrated Scientific Framework for Child Survival and Early Childhood Development,” was published in a recent issue of Pediatrics, the prestigious journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Not exactly bedside table reading. Or what’s tops on your Kindle. (more…)
Tags: American Academy of Pediatrics, brain development, discipline, epigenetics, interpersonal neurobiology, nurturance, stress, toxic stress
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A thought occurred to me years ago on one of my maiden strolls through Costco (besides yum, those mini pizzas are good): If I were an evil genius wanting to erode the nutritional wellbeing of a civilization (not to mention the individuality of its citizens), this would be a good first step. Induce mass consumer hypnosis via the big-box store. (Will return to this point in a bit.)
In the half-decade between my son’s junior and my daughter’s freshman years in high school, I witnessed his late-night telephone confabs (on a landline, gasp, when conference calls were a cool innovation) give way to her disembodied “connectivity” with Facebook friends. (more…)
Tags: autism, cultural discourse, interpersonal neurobiology, iPhone, Siri, social intelligence, social media, Waldorf
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