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"Both emotional and intellectual development depend on rich, deep, nurturing relationships early in life, and now continuing neuroscience research is confirming this process."

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. & Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D.
The Irreducible Needs of Children

"[Emotional] strokes are a basic need. [Emotional] strokes are to the psyche what food is to the body."

Our latest understanding of child development clearly demonstrates the necessity of forming healthy attachments to the parent or parent figure during childhood. This is known as attachment theory. It is through these early parent-child bonds that effective parents begin the process of fulfilling their children's developmental needs: the essential emotional input that enables children to mature in healthy ways.

The problem is, for those of us who did not experience adequate nurturing during our own childhood, it can be difficult to access these unlearned emotional skills for use with our children. Of course, there are many excellent books on the subject of effective nurturing that will help us understand these concepts. And yet, it is known that this "feeling work" is not something you can easily read or think your way into - because it takes place in the right hemisphere, or feeling side of the brain, as opposed to the left brain's reasoning centers, which is where all this thinking about our emotional lives occurs. What it usually takes to change old emotional habits is the experience of doing, or the necessary practice to break free from our emotional blocks and begin learning new, more productive patterns of behavior.

Although there is considerable debate among child development specialists over the various methods and subtleties of child rearing, there is general agreement that children must have their core developmental needs met in order to mature into emotionally balanced and complete adults. And so we introduce to you our line of interactive mentoring tools that will help more parents provide the emotional nourishment that all children require, if they are to "grow up big and strong on the inside." Each is an experiential vehicle designed to help parents better connect with the deepest parts of their children's inner lives, while at the same time provides kids with more of the wonderful words of encouragement and acceptance that all children need to hear in order to feel emotionally secure and truly valued.

In our first delightfully illustrated storybook, entitled Darby Dawson and the Golden Heart Palace: Building Self-esteem, Optimism and Character through Effective Nurturing, Omar the Encouraging Genie takes Darby and the reader on a magical journey to a special place - deep into their hearts - where their feelings of joy, hope, kindness and self-value live inside them. It represents that sacred space within us all that eventually, if all goes well, becomes our core source of strength and belief in ourselves, our vision for a bright future, our desire to self-motivate in order to achieve our goals, and our empathy for others. On their journey, children are encouraged to express their feelings and taught to identify, discuss, and deal with the various emotional challenges they are experiencing in their daily lives. And when they arrive at their marvelous destination - their Golden Heart Palace - they are immersed into an environment of powerful positive reinforcement, where potent words of encouragement emanate right from the palace walls. Reading to a child in this manner is particularly beneficial for those parents who did not receive enough positive parental input during childhood, and therefore may need practice in learning to demonstrably support their children's emotional needs. An attractive, eighteen-inch, soft-cloth Omar Companion accompanies our Storybook adventure, something for children to love and cuddle along the way. And a handsomely printed Certificate of Achievement rounds out the package, which rewards children for all their hard work in learning to understand their world.

KinderStart Search Engine, because kids don't come with instructions

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