Eileen Hayes MBE (born Margaret Eileen Healy) was a Scottish born author, magazine columnist, qualified family counsellor, frequent broadcaster on TV and radio and mother of four.
Eileen was born in Falkirk, Scotland, to Joseph and Catherine Healy (née Clarkin). Her background included degrees in psychology and health education from the University of Glasgow and King’s College London, teaching, health promotion and research. Her career focused on promoting positive parenting techniques, and the better understanding of infants and young children.
As parenting advisor to the NSPCC, over many years she worked on major campaigns such as FULL STOP, [1] Protecting Babies, Not Naughty But Normal, Listen to Children, and Putting Children First and wrote a wide range of their parenting publications, including Baby's First Year, Handle with Care and Encouraging Better Behaviour as well as carrying out a great deal of their media response work on family issues.
Eileen wrote widely about crying, sleep, and tantrums, and published several books on childcare, including Understanding Your Baby (Egmont), Understanding Your Toddler (Egmont), Crying, Tantrums (Hamlyn), and Crying and Comforting (DK). A regular contributor to the media on family topics, [2] on programmes like The Wright Stuff and Woman’s Hour, Eileen also made several series of Practical Parenting tips for Living Channel, and presented a parenting slot on BBC series A Family of My Own and Everyone’s Got One.
She was Editor-in-Chief of Your Family magazine [3] and website for five years, was parenting expert on www.bbc.co.uk/parenting and Gurgle, [4] and Parenting Consultant to Bounty (parenting club) [5] who deliver publications to all new mothers in the UK.
Eileen's most recent responsibilities included being Chair of the Media and Cultural Change group for the Early Years Champions group, Patron of Parenting UK (of which she was a founder member and Vice-Chair), chair of trustees of Brazelton Centre in the UK, member of the Government sub-group on public education for the early years and Ambassador for Deaf Parenting UK. She also advised on Live Life Give Life's [6] recent campaign The Orgamites, [7] to raise awareness of organ donation in young children, and appeared in Kate & Mim-Mim's information film on friendship. [8] She was also a trustee of Best Beginnings UK, involved in The 1001 Critical Days campaign, and a regular contributor to the Women of the Year Lunch.
She was awarded MBE in the 2009 Birthday Honours [9] by Queen Elizabeth II, for services to children and families.
In 2019, the Brazelton Centre UK launched the 'Eileen Hayes Fund', [10] to provide bursaries to fund or part-fund training in neonatal behavioural observation (NBO) and to support initiatives that will help families with guidance about child development and behaviour that assists parent and baby relationships.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a British child protection charity.
Thomas Berry Brazelton was an American pediatrician, author, and the developer of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS). Brazelton hosted the cable television program What Every Baby Knows, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column. He wrote more than two hundred scholarly papers and twenty-four books.
Attachment parenting (AP) is a parenting philosophy that proposes methods aiming to promote the attachment of parent and infant not only by maximal parental empathy and responsiveness but also by continuous bodily closeness and touch. The term attachment parenting was coined by the American pediatrician William Sears. There is no conclusive body of research that shows Sears' approach to be superior to "mainstream parenting".
A form of child abuse, child neglect is an act of caregivers that results in depriving a child of their basic needs, such as the failure to provide adequate supervision, health care, clothing, or housing, as well as other physical, emotional, social, educational, and safety needs. All societies have established that there are necessary behaviours a caregiver must provide for a child to develop physically, socially, and emotionally. Causes of neglect may result from several parenting problems including mental disorders, unplanned pregnancy, substance use disorder, unemployment, over employment, domestic violence, and, in special cases, poverty.
A tantrum, temper tantrum, lash out, meltdown, fit or hissy fit is an emotional outburst, usually associated with those in emotional distress, that is typically characterized by stubbornness, crying, screaming, violence, defiance, angry ranting, a resistance to attempts at pacification, and, in some cases, hitting and other physically violent behavior. Physical control may be lost; the person may be unable to remain still; and even if the "goal" of the person is met, they may not be calmed. Throwing a temper tantrum can lead to a child getting detention or being suspended from school for older school age children. A tantrum may be expressed in a tirade: a protracted, angry speech.
A spoiled child or spoiled brat is a derogatory term aimed at children who exhibit behavioral problems from being overindulged by their parents or other caregivers. Children and teens who are perceived as spoiled may be described as "overindulged", "grandiose", "narcissistic" or "egocentric-regressed". When the child has a neurological condition such as autism, ADHD or intellectual disability, observers may see them as "spoiled”. There is no specific scientific definition of what "spoiled" means, and professionals are often unwilling to use the label because it is considered vague and derogatory. Being spoiled is not recognized as a mental disorder in any of the medical manuals, such as the ICD-10 or the DSM-IV, or its successor, the DSM-5.
Penelope Jane Leach is a British psychologist who researches and writes extensively on parenting issues from a child development perspective.
Child development stages are the theoretical milestones of child development, some of which are asserted in nativist theories. This article discusses the most widely accepted developmental stages in children. There exists a wide variation in terms of what is considered "normal", caused by variations in genetic, cognitive, physical, family, cultural, nutritional, educational, and environmental factors. Many children reach some or most of these milestones at different times from the norm.
On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep is a Christianity-based infant management book written by Gary Ezzo and pediatrician Robert Bucknam in 1993. Baby Wise presents an infant care program which the authors say will cause babies to sleep through the night beginning between seven and nine weeks of age. It emphasizes parental control of the infant's sleep, play and feeding schedule rather than allowing the baby to decide when to eat, play and sleep.
Attachment in children is "a biological instinct in which proximity to an attachment figure is sought when the child senses or perceives threat or discomfort. Attachment behaviour anticipates a response by the attachment figure which will remove threat or discomfort". Attachment also describes the function of availability, which is the degree to which the authoritative figure is responsive to the child's needs and shares communication with them. Childhood attachment can define characteristics that will shape the child's sense of self, their forms of emotion-regulation, and how they carry out relationships with others. Attachment is found in all mammals to some degree, especially primates.
Magda Gerber was an early childhood educator in the United States and is known for teaching parents and caregivers how to understand babies and interact with them respectfully from birth.
Aletha Jauch Solter is a Swiss/American developmental psychologist who studied with Jean Piaget in Switzerland before earning a PhD in psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her specialist areas are attachment, psychological trauma, and non-punitive discipline.
Crying is the dropping of tears in response to an emotional state or pain. Emotions that can lead to crying include sadness, anger, and even happiness. The act of crying has been defined as "a complex secretomotor phenomenon characterized by the shedding of tears from the lacrimal apparatus, without any irritation of the ocular structures", instead, giving a relief which protects from conjunctivitis. A related medical term is lacrimation, which also refers to non-emotional shedding of tears. Various forms of crying are known as sobbing, weeping, wailing, whimpering, bawling, and blubbering.
A childhood phobia is an exaggerated, intense fear "that is out of proportion to any real fear" found in children. It is often characterized by a preoccupation with a particular object, class of objects, or situation that one fears. A phobic reaction is twofold—the first part being the "intense irrational fear" and the second part being "avoidance."
Patricia McKinsey Crittenden is an American psychologist known for her work in the development of attachment theory and science, her work in the field of developmental psychopathology, and for creation of the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM).
Video interaction guidance (VIG) is a video feedback intervention through which a “guider” helps a client to enhance communication within relationships. The client is guided to analyse and reflect on video clips of their own interactions. Applications include a caregiver and infant, and other education and care home interactions. VIG is used in more than 15 countries and by at least 4000 practitioners. Video Interaction Guidance has been used where concerns have been expressed over possible parental neglect in cases where the focus child is aged 2–12, and where the child is not the subject of a child protection plan.
Catch, playing catch, or having a catch, is one of the most basic children's games, often played between children or between a parent and child, wherein the participants throw a ball, beanbag, flying disc or similar object back and forth to each other. At early stages in a child's life, having a catch is a good way to evaluate and improve the child's physical coordination. Notably, "[i]f a child cannot catch a ball that he or she is bouncing, it is unlikely the child will be able to play catch". Most children begin to be able to play catch around the age of four. Many four-year-olds instinctively close their eyes when a ball is heading towards them, and it can take some time to overcome this. Playing catch can help develop dexterity, coordination and confidence.
Video feedback interventions are used in health and social care situations. Typically a “guider” helps a client to enhance communication within relationships. The client is guided to analyse and reflect on video clips of their own interactions. Applications include a caregiver and infant, and other education and care home interactions. Video feedback interventions have also been used where concerns have been expressed over possible parental neglect in cases where the focus child is aged 2–12, and where the child is not the subject of a child protection plan.
The SafeCare programme in the United Kingdom works with parents of children under age six who are at risk of experiencing significant harm through neglect.
Infant crying is the crying of infants as a response to an internal or external stimulus. Infants cry as a form of basic instinctive communication. Essentially, newborns are transitioning from life in the womb to the external environment. Up to 27% of parents describe problems with infant crying in the first four months. Up to 38% identify a problem with their infant crying within the first year. Parents can be concerned about the amount of time that their infant cries, how the infant can be consoled, and disrupted sleeping patterns. Colic is used as a synonym for excessive crying of infants, even though colic may not be the cause of excessive crying.