Ann Douglas sparks conversations that matter about parenting and mental health. She is the creator of Canada's bestselling series of pregnancy and parenting books, The Mother of All books series, and the author of two critically acclaimed parenting guides: Happy Parents, Happy Kids and Parenting Through the Storm. Her most recent book is Navigating The Messy Middle: A Fiercely Honest and Wildly Encouraging Guide for Midlife Women.
If you've already met Ann via one her books, you know what you can expect from one of her presentations: to be inspired, informed, and entertained. Not only will she shift your thinking about what the challenges that parents and children are facing in 2023: she'll move you to action as well. By the end of Ann's presentation, you'll be eager to embrace the important role that you have to play in supporting parents: in helping them to feel confident and capable as opposed to anxious, guilty, or overwhelmed.
Looking for strategies for supporting parents and children who are struggling? In this compassionate and idea-rich presentation, you will learn why so many parents are struggling with feelings of anxiety, guilt, and overwhelm—and how this affects both their health and their parenting; how the health of parents affects the health of kids—and vice versa—and what this means for families who are struggling with challenges both big and small; seven things the parent of a child who is struggling really needs to hear from early years professionals (and how to deliver these all-important messages in an empowering and guilt-free way); seven proven strategies for connecting with parents and building trust; and eight simple-yet-powerful ideas you can share with parents to help them to feel calmer and more confident in their parenting.
Supporting Families With Sleep While Optimising Attachment and Responsive Feeding
Lyndsey is an experienced paediatric nurse, children’s public health nurse, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach, researcher and responsive parenting advocate. She has worked in hospitals, clinics, the community and within clients’ homes for 20 years, serving within the UK NHS, in private practice and voluntarily.
The co-founder and clinical director of the Holistic Sleep Coaching program, Lyndsey regularly teaches internationally, as well as providing mentorship for newer sleep coaches. She is passionate about responsive feeding, gentle parenting and promoting parental confidence and well-being.
With Professor Amy Brown, she is the co-founder of Thought Rebellion – an education and publishing company seeking to inspire, challenge and equip professionals and writers in the parenting, lactation and perinatal space with an evidence based revolution.
Lyndsey is currently a PhD researcher at Swansea University, exploring the needs and challenges of medically complex breastfed infants and children. In 2019 she set up the Breastfeeding the Brave project to raise awareness of the unique breastfeeding needs of chronically, critically, and terminally ill children in the paediatric setting. The mother of a childhood cancer survivor, she often talks about the impact of chronic serious illness on families, and seeks to support other families living through a serious childhood illness.
Lyndsey is a respected international speaker and teacher, and regularly speaks out against the dominant sleep training culture, as well as advocating for the rights of families to receive high-quality, compassionate and expert support. She is the author of Holistic Sleep Coaching (2018), Let’s talk about your new family’s sleep (2020), Still Awake (2021), Breastfeeding the Brave (2022) and co-author of The Writing Book (2022).
Topic: Breastfeeding Children with Cancer - [View Abstract]
Topic: More Support in a Coffee Shop Than in the Hospital: Experiences of Breastfeeding Children With Medical Complexity - [View Abstract]
Topic: Supporting Families With Sleep While Optimising Attachment and Responsive Feeding - [View Abstract]
Topic: You Can't Sleep With Your Foot On The Gas Pedal: How To Improve Sleep By Tapping Into Calm - [View Abstract]
Many parents feel confused about how to approach sleep with their infants. There is a lack of consistent, evidence-based information about infant sleep, and in the context of ever-increasing contextual pressures, this can lead many parents to ask for help with sleep. However, sleep information that is respectful to mental health, attachment and breastfeeding can be hard to find, particularly when national guidelines seem to advocate approaches that promote a non-response. Perinatal professionals are uniquely placed in positions of trust with families, and possess advanced skills in listening, counselling and providing information. They are therefore well-placed to provide information to families about sleep proactively, which may reduce parental stress and frustration, and lead to fewer families becoming desperate and turning to solutions that include cessation of breastfeeding, separating parents and infants, and leaving infants to cry.
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The Connected Baby: How Understanding Infant Brain Development Changes Our View of Humanity
Dr. Suzanne Zeedyk is a research scientist fascinated by babies’ innate capacity to connect. Since 1993, she has been based at the University of Dundee (Scotland), within the School of Psychology, where she now holds an Honorary Post. In 2011, she stepped away from a full-time academic post in order to establish an independent training enterprise, the aim of which is to help the public understand what science now understands about the importance of emotional connection for human health and happiness. She works internationally with organisations keen to think more deeply about fostering connection, compassion and resilience. In the last 5 years, more than 40,000 people have attended her speaking events. Suzanne’s core aspiration is to strengthen awareness of the decisions we take about caring for our children — because those choices are integrally connected to our vision for the kind of society we wish to build. More information is available on www.suzannezeedyk.com.
Human infants are born already connected to other people. Over the past 30 years, science has gained a much better understanding of the sophistication of babies’ innate social capacities, including the way that infants’ early emotional experiences drive brain development. Many practitioners remain unaware of these discoveries, despite the implications they hold for delivering high-quality care. This presentation will review these discoveries and reflect on what they tell us about our own humanity. Emotionally healthy individuals and emotionally healthy societies rely on empathy, resilience and trust. These qualities are precisely the ones being wired into the brain in the earliest years of life.
The Crying Curve and the Impact on Postpartum and Breastfeeding
A love for babies fueled Kimberly's 20+ year career serving families in the postpartum time frame. With a passion for nurturing new parents, she trains doulas and educators with CAPPA to support and educate for a strong beginning of bonding and connection. She loves teaching expectant families to have a smooth transition to new baby life through the Providence Healthcare System in Portland, OR. She began as a postpartum doula, then quickly added breastfeeding and new parent classes to help parents from the very beginning, and then became an IBCLC to meet their bigger challenges. She owns ABC Doula & Newborn Care in Portland, OR, is the mother of 2 grown kids, and resides in Phoenix near her parents. Like many other baby whisperers, Kimberly has honed skills for listening and responding to babies that parents can quickly learn to understand and interpret their tiny humans. When she sees parents struggling, and especially with the most fussy of babies, her heart hopes that all parents could be given the tools to compassionately support their little ones, and learn how to meet their needs, which creates more confidence in themselves in their new roles as well.
Topic: Understanding Infant Crying - [View Abstract]
The Crying Curve is an evidence-based pattern of crying that begins at about 42 weeks of gestation (2 weeks of extrauterine life), peaks at 6-8 weeks of age, and sharply declines by 12-15 weeks. As many as 15 different studies have concluded that this pattern is common across infants of all cultures, gestational ages (based on a 40-week gestation), and parenting styles—and the applications are many in the early parenting world. How can parents use this pattern to help them navigate breastfeeding? How can they gather their support people, family or village to maximize positive relationships and get the support they crave? How can they utilize it to help assess their newborn and understand what is needed for their specific situation? How much crying is too much crying? Lactation consultants, postpartum doulas, and other postpartum professionals who possess this information are well positioned to help to educate parents on how to best approach their postpartum recovery period, as well as navigate the ups and downs of breastfeeding and early newborn sleep. This session will aim to explain and apply the Crying Curve in multiple ways to support and guide the newborn family.
The First 1,000 days: Promoting Infant Mental Health
Monica Roosa Ordway, PhD, APRN, PNP-BC is an assistant professor at Yale University School of Nursing where she teaches community health in the Graduate Entry Prespecialty into Nursing and Masters programs. Her research interests include the assessment of psychosocial and biological variables that influence early parent-child interactions and the development of the capacity for parental reflective functioning (RF). Her current research is focused on examining sleep, stress, and health among toddlers living with socioeconomic adversity. Her research goals include evaluating programs using a biological-psychosocial profile in order to translate programs for practical and sustainable use within pediatric clinical settings with the aim of mitigating the effects of toxic stress and the development of subsequent risk factors that lead to chronic illnesses. Dr. Ordway is also a pediatric nurse practitioner and board certified lactation consultant with almost 20 years of clinical experience.
Infant mental health is an interdisciplinary professional field of inquiry, practice and policy, concerned with alleviating suffering and enhancing the social and emotional competence of young children. The focus of this presentation is to highlight the importance of supporting the relationships between infants and toddlers and their primary caregivers to ensure healthy social and emotional development. Considering the increasing understanding of the impact of toxic stress on the lifelong health of very young children, it is critical that we identify methods to buffer the experience of toxic stress on children beginning at the earliest stages of life. Without appropriate regulation from a supportive caregiver, exposure to toxic stress in early childhood can result in wide-ranging physiological disruptions, including alterations in mental health. This presentation will provide an overview of infant and toddler development, the toxic stress literature, and provide important information on how to screen and assess infants (and toddlers) and their families for risk and protective factors that may trigger or buffer the effects of toxic stress.
The Neuroscience of Connection: Understanding Regulation for Ourselves and Others
Lisa Dion, LPC, RPT-S, is an international teacher, creator of Synergetic Play Therapy, founder and President of the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute, and host of the Lessons from the Playroom podcast. She is the author of Aggression in Play Therapy: A Neurobiological Approach for Integrating Intensity and is the 2015 recipient of the Association for Play Therapy’s Professional Education and Training Award of Excellence.
Research in neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology sheds light on the need for parents/caregivers to act as their child's external regulator during states of dysregulation as the child learns how to self-regulate. When activated, children need to borrow the parent's regulatory capacity as their own regulatory system is developing. Without an understanding of what regulation is and what it isn't and the importance of parents knowing how to regulate their own arousal states, parents may inadvertently be increasing the child's dysregulation instead of helping to modulate it for integration. Over time, this can significantly impact the parent's ability to stay attuned and present to the child, as well as themselves. It can also lead to a child's regulatory system not being patterned to its optimal potential. In this discussion, Lisa Dion will discuss what regulation is and is not helping participants understand what it really takes to create a deep connection.
The Postpartum Nest: Helping Parents Lay the Foundation for Their Child's Lifelong Health
Darcia Narvaez, Professor Emerita of Psychology, University of Notre Dame researches moral development and flourishing from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating anthropology, neuroscience, clinical, developmental and educational sciences. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher and seminarian, among other things. She grew up bilingual/bicultural but calls the earth her home. Dr. Narvaez’s current research explores how early life experience influences wellbeing and moral character in children and adults. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association and former editor of the Journal of Moral Education. She is on the advisory boards of Attachment Parenting International, Kindred, Your Whole Baby, and the Self Reg Institute. She has numerous publications, including more than 20 books such as Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-how for Global Flourishing; Basic Needs, Wellbeing and Morality: Fulfilling Human Potential and Embodied Morality: Protectionism, Engagement and Imagination. A recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She blogs for Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”) and hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org.
Every animal has a developmental system or nest for its young that matches up with the maturational schedule of offspring. Humans have a nest too although many people don’t realize it. The human nest refers to the experiences and care that a child receives after birth and in the years that follow. Modern child raising has changed significantly from the nest of our ancestors with concerning results. Learn more about the epigenetic impact of the early nest and how early life experience influences wellbeing and sociomoral character in children and adults as well as societal culture. Delegates will gain an understanding of the essential components of the early nest (including touch, responsivity, breastfeeding, alloparents, positive social support, play, and soothing perinatal experiences) along with ways to empower parents to incorporate them into their infant’s care to create a foundation for lifelong health and well being.
Kim Barthel is an award-winning occupational therapist, trans-disciplinary teacher and best-selling author who is actively supporting function and healing in many cultures. A pioneer in reinforcing the importance of relationship, Kim’s passionate interests include complex behaviour, attachment, sensory processing, trauma-sensitive practice, Neuro-Developmental Treatment and mental health. Kim’s mission is to support the conscious evolution of the human spirit. www.kimbarthel.ca
This session invites early childhood professionals to learn more about the science of infant development, particularly the impact that early trauma and stress can have on the brain, behaviour, learning and relationships throughout the lifespan. Attachment, attunement, co-regulation, sensory processing and creating optimal interpersonal relationships between infants and caregivers are highlighted. While an infant may inherit challenges trans-generationally, from developmental disability, from an early life event or a chaotic home, how their closest caregivers interact with them has direct and significant impact on their well-being both mentally and physically. Enhancing trauma-sensitive caregiving in the earliest years is critical as a foundation for children to become their best selves.
Dr. Patty Born is an associate professor of environmental education at Hamline University in St Paul, MN. She has worked for over three decades in different educational settings, including museums, nature centers, zoos, parks, and traditional classrooms. As a scholar-activist, she is concerned with helping teachers-to-be develop an accurate and informed understanding of issues related to climate, environment and sustainability, as well as helping them engage with important questions about our connections to other species. Patty's research interests are related to human-animal relations, wildlife experiences and their impact on teacher self-efficacy, and nature-based education. Dr. Patty Born is an associate professor of environmental education at Hamline University in St Paul, MN. She has worked for over three decades in different educational settings, including museums, nature centers, zoos, parks, and traditional classrooms. As a scholar-activist, she is concerned with helping teachers-to-be develop an accurate and informed understanding of issues related to climate, environment and sustainability, as well as helping them engage with important questions about our connections to other species. Patty's research interests are related to human-animal relations, wildlife experiences and their impact on teacher self-efficacy, and nature-based education.
Relationships with animals are deeply significant for children but are often overlooked by the adults in their lives. Why are animals so captivating for children of all ages? Dr. Born will share an overview of how animals impact children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and inter/intra-personal development and growth. Animal interactions can decrease anxiety, provoke higher-order thinking, improve social relationships and have been shown to have therapeutic and physiological benefits as well. Dr. Born will also describe ways that adults can be supportive of child-animal relationships with information about health and wellness(for children and animals!), safety, caregiving, and ways to foster healthy, meaningful relationships with companion and wild animals.
You Can't Sleep With Your Foot On The Gas Pedal: How To Improve Sleep By Tapping Into Calm
Lyndsey is an experienced paediatric nurse, children’s public health nurse, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Holistic Sleep Coach, researcher and responsive parenting advocate. She has worked in hospitals, clinics, the community and within clients’ homes for 20 years, serving within the UK NHS, in private practice and voluntarily.
The co-founder and clinical director of the Holistic Sleep Coaching program, Lyndsey regularly teaches internationally, as well as providing mentorship for newer sleep coaches. She is passionate about responsive feeding, gentle parenting and promoting parental confidence and well-being.
With Professor Amy Brown, she is the co-founder of Thought Rebellion – an education and publishing company seeking to inspire, challenge and equip professionals and writers in the parenting, lactation and perinatal space with an evidence based revolution.
Lyndsey is currently a PhD researcher at Swansea University, exploring the needs and challenges of medically complex breastfed infants and children. In 2019 she set up the Breastfeeding the Brave project to raise awareness of the unique breastfeeding needs of chronically, critically, and terminally ill children in the paediatric setting. The mother of a childhood cancer survivor, she often talks about the impact of chronic serious illness on families, and seeks to support other families living through a serious childhood illness.
Lyndsey is a respected international speaker and teacher, and regularly speaks out against the dominant sleep training culture, as well as advocating for the rights of families to receive high-quality, compassionate and expert support. She is the author of Holistic Sleep Coaching (2018), Let’s talk about your new family’s sleep (2020), Still Awake (2021), Breastfeeding the Brave (2022) and co-author of The Writing Book (2022).
Topic: Breastfeeding Children with Cancer - [View Abstract]
Topic: More Support in a Coffee Shop Than in the Hospital: Experiences of Breastfeeding Children With Medical Complexity - [View Abstract]
Topic: Supporting Families With Sleep While Optimising Attachment and Responsive Feeding - [View Abstract]
Topic: You Can't Sleep With Your Foot On The Gas Pedal: How To Improve Sleep By Tapping Into Calm - [View Abstract]
Many parents become frustrated by their child's sleeping patterns. They may try to implement sleep schedules, or sleep training in an effort to try to manage their fatigue. However, understanding how sleep fundamentally works can not only optimise sleep, but also reduce parental frustration, improve connection, and increase confidence. Sleep occurs best in a non-stress state - therefore utilising strategies that increase child stress levels is likely to be counter-productive. Equally, experiencing stress for any reason may reduce the ease with which we can support sleep. This presentation discusses a holistic approach to supporting optimal regulation, attachment, emotional connectivity and naturally optimised sleep.
