Positive parenting for all

From the inspiration of Sesame Street, from Head Start to Sure Start, to today's multiple rewording of troubled / vulnerable / at risk / etc families there has always been a will to make a difference and somehow help alter life courses for children born into challenging circumstances (see the vague language isn't helpful) What on earth does 'challenging' mean?  or for that matter 'troubled', or 'vulnerable'?

I've heard it said a few times that if a 'vulnerable' young person was to approach you on the street it would in fact be you that would feel 'vulnerable'.  Ditto 'challenged' young person.  Fact is the whole definition game is a politically loaded arena, with gains to be made by statisticians able to prove policies make a difference.  Meanwhile life goes on and our gut feeling might lead us to think otherwise.

For me the bottom line is that we must act on what we know to be right.  This means asking simple, fundamental questions, the kind that Joan Ganz Cooney posed way back. Radical but simple questions can lead to amazing change.

In today's smartphone-toting, social media rich culture, I often wonder what media we can harness to make expert knowledge available to everyone?  One great example is the adaptation of Stephen Bavolek's research and parenting programmes in the form of three 8-week on-line parenting programmes delivered though Netmums in the UK.

Any iPhone users signed up to the nurturing parenting programme don't forget Pocket Praise is a great tool to capture and share good behaviours.  Indeed ANY form of positive acknowledgement of children is wonderful and it's hard to overstate its effect.

The more we learn about brain science the more compelling becomes the case for kindness and sensitive parenting.  Research suggests that by the time a child turns 3, each original neurone has formed as many as 10,000 connections, making a total of about a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) throughout the brain. (That’s double the number of connections in your own brain.) Not only does this perhaps explain the creativity of an infant but make a strong case for supporting the brain's natural divergent development.

The baby brain holds the keys.  We must treat every one as the most precious thing in the world, for it is these very brains, in all their amazing complexity, that will help make sense of the world they have inherited.