Statements
Mission
Attachment Parenting International is a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world.
Background
Nurturings delivers research-based parenting information and support to all parents in an accessible and practical format so that positive childhood experiences (PCEs) are prominent and children and families flourish. We encourage caregiver responsiveness in everyday interactions that that builds a caring and trusted relationship. These relationships are the foundation for all current and lifelong aspects of health - physical, emotional, social - learning and growth. Nurturings is a 501(c)(3) non-profit member organization founded in 1994 to network with parents, professionals and like-minded organizations around the world. It was founded by Lysa Parker and Barbara Nicholson. Nurturings mission is to educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world. Nurturings promotes parenting practices that create strong, healthy relationships between children, parents and caregivers. Parent have access to our resources through our grassroots parent support groups and volunteer group Leaders around the world, our email newsletter, social media, parenting professionals and partner organizations. Nurturings serves as a clearinghouse and community of practice for parent education, research, and information dissemination through publications and an online directory or professionals, trainings and resources. Through education, support, advocacy and research, our principal goal is to heighten global awareness of the profound significance of healthy parent-child relationships to invest in our children's bright futures.
Impact
Nurturings 30th commitment to families continues to grow with its online reach and expanded training options for professionals and community-based local parent group leaders. A 2020 study by SMU showed that families who have used Nurturings resources report warmer relationships with their children, less coercive discipline and fewer child problems than parents who did not know about or use Nurturings resources. Parents have also reported using less physical punishment and shaming of children, increased communication and understanding, confidence in parenting their infants and children, a feeling of support and a desire to help others by volunteering. These findings are far-reaching as these children grow up with positive childhood experiences (PCEs) that not only provide them with lifelong health and resilience, but are shared with others in interactions and with their own future children and families.
Needs
Some of Nurturings' most pressing needs include: technology upgrades, upskilling and management which are constantly changing and complex for volunteer staff, yet required for a fully virtual, global organization; annual communications costs of $25,000 to create, edit, update and manage the content-intense requirements to regularly deliver online content for professional trainings as well as parents; graphic/design resources to help us reach families with language barriers or low literacy ($10,000 to $150,000); skilled research to continuously understand parent and professional needs by designing, collecting, analyzing, using and reporting what we're learning in our programs and guiding adaptations to serve new groups of professionals and parents ($100,000-$150,000); resources that help us address needs in the legal community; technology that can help us deliver relevant and timely text-based parenting content to busy and hard-to-reach families; an annual audit would improve our grant eligibility ($7,500); endowment funding would be welcomed at any level as part of a near-term and long-term funding plan, and our understanding is that an organization of our size should begin at approximately $300,000.
CEO Statement
Nurturings believes that HOPE-informed, relational health for all parents is an irreducible need for healthy parenting, healthy families and healthy children. Positive childhood experiences (PCEs) are the main ingredient, and all parents and caregivers can provide them. Children with PCEs have the early and lifelong foundations they need to succeed in life. Our Eight Principles of Parenting map out healthy parenting practices that many parents don't know and fewer know about the powerful effects of combining them. Nurturings programs bring the Eight Parenting Principles to life through online content, community parent support groups and professional trainings. Our aim is that these research-based parenting resources are available to everyone. Through our work, we aim to slowly reconnect our social fabric to focus on holistic family supports that start from the beginning and include resources that are currently missing or require individual families to puzzle together on their own. We are working toward a future where parent support is normal, voluntary, early and often and meets the family needs.
Our organization and program models are designed to be positively self-perpetuating. Our support for parents is designed to help parents feel supported, replenished and increasingly competent and effective in health-giving parent-child interactions. We focus on relational health first because it is the foundation of all other health - we cannot enjoy health on our own. Our information and support is based in research that we make accessible and instantly useable for busy parents. We take a strengths-based approach that shines a light on what parents already do well and gives them key feedback about where they can broaden and build most effectively. We identify parenting as a set of learned skills that we all need to update from our own childhood and revisit as our children grow.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Human Services - Family Services |
| Secondary Category: | Mental Health & Crisis Intervention - Alliances & Advocacy |
| Tertiary Category: | - |
Areas Served
Nurturings offers a unique network of international parent support groups in addition to web-based information and support. Support groups are listed here: http://www.nurturings.org
| International |
| National |
| TN - Davidson |
