The Supporting Child Caregivers Podcast

Yvette Blanchard, an expert NBO and NBAS practitioner and trainer, co-author of the NBO manual, transcends the boundaries of professional discipline in her wholistic and humanistic approach to the vulnerable families she treats.

Dr. Maya Szombat, a child psychiatrist working in London, a NBAS trainer and practitioner,  describes her work in maternity and neonatology settings, supporting parents of newborns and premature babies.

The Neonatologist Dr. Jaclyn Ruggiero talks about her care of critically ill newborns with complex medical needs in the NICU, while also promoting practices that strengthen the infant-caregiver relationship.  She will explain how these early experiences support the infants’ regulation and their connection with their caregivers. 

Prof M Angeles Cerezo, An Internationally Recognized Expert in Early Parent-Child Interactions talks about her journey from research to a practice of helping parents with the challenges and joys of parenting babies.

Lauryl Ramakrishnan, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and Lactation Consultant in Pediatric Primary Care and Lactation Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance gives us her insights into helping new mothers successfully nurture their babies, in that way building their self-confidence, their feelings of comfort and safety, and ultimately strengthening the mother-infant bond. Breastfeeding can be particularly challenging with premies, because premies can have a harder time breastfeeding, and also because it is even more critical for them to reach and maintain a healthy weight than healthy term babies.

Dr. Ana Mayen, a Salvadoran neonatologist, talks about her experience caring for preterm babies in El Salvador. She is a major member of our SCC team at the Casa de Vida, the residence for young pregnant teens in El Salvador. Since pregnant teens are a high risk group for preterm births as well as other complications, her experience and knowledge has been extremely important to us.Dra. Mayen is a Salvadorean pediatric neonatologist currently working at the Instituto Salvadoreño del Seguro Social to create preventive programs in childhood, through neonatal screening tools, to the follow up and care of affected children.  Dra Ana is the perfect person to begin this podcast series because she is passionate about babies and especially premature babies. She has had years of experience working with newborns. She has studied and lectured on neonatal palliative care. She is my close colleague, and friend, in El Salvador and was the first Salvadoran colleague who really connected with me in the goal of supporting healthy births and early childhood in El Salvador. 

Dr. Hanife Akal talks about her family vacations in Turkey—especially summer vacations shared by both sides of her extended family.

Dr. Shazia Parveen talks about how she celebrates the holiday of Eid in Pakistan and how she helped the children flood survivors celebrate life by planting trees to heal the earth.

Bob McDonell, the Director of Mi Casa Kids El Salvador talks about the holiday traditions of his childhood in the U.S. and now how Christmas is celebrated in El Salvador by the children at Mi Casa and by his family in San Salvador.

Dr. Carlotta Bettancourt describes an innovative group therapy model for children on the Autism Spectrum paired with volunteer high school mentors.

In our next episode of the series “Autism Today”, Professor Sylvie Goldman, of the Child Neurology and Cognitive Neurosciences Division of the Department of Neurology at Columbia University, talks about her work related to movement disorders and the identification of autism in girls. 

Dr. Cynthia Martin discusses her work with developmental differences such as autism. She will focus on the assessment of these children and refer to studies of their long-term outcome. Her work is fascinating and compelling. 

Alexandra Harrison answers listeners’ questions about grandparents, divorce,  and pressured children.

Patricia de las Casas Elias Bonnemaison, a psychanalyste, author, member of the Peruvian volleyball team, and grandmother, talks about her experience as a grandmother in Peru. Her daughter, Rocio Luna de las Casas, a psychologist, infant mental health specialist, and psychoanalytic candidate, will join the conversation to discuss Peruvian grandmothers and daughters, culture, and the power of relationships.

Chris-Ander Paraison is a rising sophomore at Harvard studying Chemistry. He was born in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, but moved to Massachusetts alongside his family following the 2010 Haitian Earthquake. Outside of academics, Chris enjoys playing guitar, watching anime, and hanging out with friends. In the future he hopes to either pursue a career in medicine, biotechnology, or pharmaceuticals. He talks about how his family values have shaped his life and his ambitions for the future.

Shamala Senthilkumar is a speech and language pathologist who has worked with young children, the terminally ill, and the medically disabled. She draws on her strong family values and commitment to early relational health to motivate her work with this vulnerable population.

Ivan Ron, A recent Harvard graduate who studied government and psychology, Ivana Ron, has given a lot of thought to family values from both an academic and personal point of view. She is big sister to four little sisters in a close family that includes her mother and grandmother and enjoys the richness of a Mexican heritage. Ivan has also been the gifted Instagram creator for SCC!  

Dr. Marva Lewis, researcher, infant parent psychotherapist, and highly valued colleague of many of us in the infant mental health community, talks about the quiet moments in which family values are communicated. 

Iyanu Shonukan, a first year student at Harvard College talks about the values he was taught by his Nigerian-American parents and how they have shaped his ambitions to provide underserved people with culturally responsive care in the mental health space.

What is the number one family value for Chinese adolescents and young adults? You may be surprised. Two Chinese students, Joanna and Jacky, join us from Hangzhou, China, and Boston Massachusetts, to describe two different school experiences but the same family values.

Dr. Muhammad Zeshan, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and social media influencer speaks about how he recommends passing on cherished family values to your children.

Dr. Abishek Bala, Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Central Michigan University, who traveled with me on my second trip to india, talks about the values he learned from his Indian family that he hopes to pass on to his young daughter living with him and his wife in the US. It is a thoughtful interview and includes some surprises for those of us brought up in the U.S.

Prajna Neelgund, software engineer, teacher, administrator, and actor talks to us about family values in traditional and contemporary India—how they are changing and the effects on young families.

Rohan Abhijith, a man of many talents-- educator, gamer, business strategist, and cartoonist and illustrator—talks about the family values he learned in his childhood in India. I met Rohan at Deenabandhu Trust, a school for children from low-resource families and was lucky enough to meet this mother and father in the beautiful city of Mysore.

SCC Pod host Alexandra Harriso draws on her decades of clinical experience and her experience as a parent to share her reflections on the importance of family values and how they can help guide parents through hard times.

Dr. Henry Marquez-Castro talks about how parents can strive to empower their children.

Ask Me Anything: 1) How do you detect depression in elementary school children? 2) How much of a problem is "screen time" for children? 3) How do I overcome the desire to be a "perfect parent" and to develop a support system? 

Dr. Duyen Trieu brings her compassion, interpersonal and language skills, and cultural knowledge, to serve the community of Vietnamese immigrants in the Boston area. She speaks about early relational health from this perspective.

Dr. Jaclyn Ruggiero speaks about what she has learned about early relational health from her work as a neonatologist in the NICU.

A teacher and advocate for excellent early care and education of young children and their families, Lisa Matter tells stories about some of the families she has worked and how she learned to “listen to the behavior” of the children.

Efuru McLeod, a licensed social worker born and raised in the small island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, gives a moving and inspiring story of her childhood experience with multiple caregivers. She explains how her personal experience of different and complementary care from family members informs and enriches her current work with children and families.

Hoda Shawky, a pediatric nurse practitioner and lactation and mental health practitioner, describes the evolution of her spiritually and culturally based support of mothers of infants and their families.

Early educator, Katie Mervin, talks to us about her passion for providing a comforting and facilitating environment for very early learners and for supporting their teachers.

Kailey Enayati, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, treats patients on the continuum from birth to end of life talks about what she has learned about early relational health from her patients' life stories and is in the process of designing an app to facilitate ERH-centered documentation that would make it easier for home visitors and families to write or access providers and improve referrals to other services

Dorothy Richardson talks about her pioneering work to support families of young children at the Rice Center and in establishing the Early Relational Health certificate program at U Mass Chan Medical School.

Dr. Bonnie Hepler talks about her studies of relationships between mothers, infants, and healthcare providers and how she works with vulnerable populations to achieve equity of quality and compassionate care.

Charles C. Daniels, the CEO of Fathers’ UpLift Inc., talks about the significance of father-child relationships and how this led him to the field of Early Relational Health. He tells stories of fathers who found their role as fathers after being lost to substance abuse and in doing that, found themselves.  

Dr. Dvir speaks about a collaborative care model in which child psychiatrists and pediatricians work together to support early relational health.Dr. Yael Dvir is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at UMASS Chan Medical School/UmassMemorial Health, where she is Vice Chair and director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Her current clinical work focuses on enhancing access to pediatric behavioral health through collaborative care models, and includes directing the UMASS - Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Program (MCPAP) site and the MCPAP for Early Childhood Program as well as precepting psychiatry trainees in the child psychiatry bridging clinic, a short term stabilization clinic.

Dr. Meeder, a pediatrician and Medical Director of a Family Child and Youth Mental Health Program, talks about how he came to understand the importance of early relational health as a pediatrician and how he works to support ERH in his pediatric practice. An accomplished athlete and world traveler, Rob also brings a spirit of adventure and an interest in culture to his work with families. 

Claudia Gold, a developmental pediatrician and author of four books on parenting, will introduce our new series, “What is Early Relational Health”?

In this Ask Me Anything episode, Alex responds to a question about what parents should do when a little boy insists on wearing dresses.

Jennifer Black combines expertise in early development with management consulting, exploring ways of helping systems grow—family systems and organizational systems. As a speech and language pathologist, a trainer in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, and a trainer in the NCAST model from the Parent-Infant-Child Institute, she brings her considerable skills to this talk, including a consideration of how to facilitate communication in families in indigenous communities in Hawaii and Alaska.

Matthew Valleau is a bilingual speech and language pathologist whose career trajectory took him from early intervention, where he worked with families in their homes, finally to working with children in the Boston Public Schools. Matthew brings a special set of talents and perspectives to helping children communicate.Reference: Valleau M, Arunachalam S (2017). The effects of linguistic context on visual attention while learning novel verbs, Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Ed. Maria Lamendola and Jennifer Scott, 691-705. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.

Ann Densmore is a certified speech pathologist and audiologist with a doctorate in education from Clark University (specialty in child discourse) and a master’s in human development and psychology from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.Resources:Douglas S, Dunkel-Jackson, Sun T, Owusu P (2022). A review of research related to the POWR intervention: a Communication partner intervention to support children with neurodevelopmental disorders, Current Developmental Disorders Reports, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40474-022-0244-6.Vallotton C, Mastergeorge A, Foster T, Decker K, Ayoub C (2017). Parenting supports for early vocabulary development: Specific effects of sensitivity and stimulation through infancy, Infancy, 22(1):78-107. doing: 10.1111/infa.12147. Knolle F, Vallotton C, Ayoub C (2018). Maltreated children use more grammatical negations, J Fam Child Stud, 27:453-464, dot:10.1007/s10826-017-0905-3. Olswang L, Prelock P (2015). Bridging the gap between research and practice: Implementation science, Supplement Article, J Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, doi:10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-14-0305. Densmore A, Helping Children with Autism Become More Social (2007). Greenwood Publishing Company.

Sara Douglas, Assoc Prof at Michigan State University in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies talks about her life-long mission to support communication in children with language disabilities.

Dr. Prelock talks about her studies of the nature and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) emphasizing the role of emotion regulation, social communication and perspective taking as important components of social cognition.

131 the SCC Pod: Jaclyn Roberto speaks about her work supporting children with communication problems and their families in weekly out patient sessions.Jaclyn is a speech-language pathologist who has been in the field for about 13 years.  Although she has worked in multiple settings over the course of her career, most of her career has been in a pediatric outpatient setting, where she works closely with families who bring their children for weekly speech therapy sessions. She has a passion for working with early childhood language, children on the autistic spectrum, pediatric feeding disorders, and augmentative-alternative communication. 

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Claire Vallotton, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University. She studies communication between preverbal children and their parents and educators, and develops curricula and workshops to help caregivers understand and respond to young children’s communication cues so that they can respect babies as little individuals with legitimate feelings, wants, and needs.

Carol Krusemark is a speech/language pathologist with over 30 years of clinical experience.  While she currently specializes in serving professional voice users, she has also worked in hospitals, schools, and on early intervention teams.  Her current areas of interest include teaching, supervision, and incorporation of trauma-informed care principles into clinical care.

We are delighted to welcome Sara MacIntyre to begin our series on Kids and Language. Sara is a speech and language therapist who specializes in stuttering based in Philadelphia. She owns YouSpeak Stuttering Therapy and hosts a webinar series and a podcast. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.