Touchpoints’ Role in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty

Sunday, April 13. 2:00pm-3:30pm. Rainier Room.

Description 

Poverty is transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuated by the educational achievement gap that opens before kindergarten. Touchpoints improves early brain development and learning by promoting emotional availability in parents and professional caregivers. Learn about the skills and capacities nurtured in early adult caregiver-child interactions that can break the cycle of poverty. 

Presenter Bio 

Joshua D. Sparrow, MD, co-author with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of six books including "Touchpoints Three to Six: Your Child's Emotional and Behavioral Development."

Dr. Sparrow, child psychiatrist, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School; Director of Special Initiatives at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center at Children's Hospital, Boston; and has served as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of Marseille in France. A graduate of Yale Medical School, and Harvard Medical School teaching hospital residency and fellowship, Dr. Sparrow worked for several years before medical training as a preschool teacher and journalist in New York City. Co-author with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton of eight books (Touchpoints Three to Six: Your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development, The Brazelton Way Series on Discipline, Sleep, Calming Your Fussy Baby, Toilet Training, Feeding, Sibling Rivalry, and Mastering Anger and Aggression) and a weekly New York Times Syndicate column, “Families Today,” Dr. Sparrow also recently revised with Dr. Brazelton the Touchpoints: Birth to Three book. He writes Parent and Child Magazine’s “First Steps” column, and is the author of numerous scholarly papers published in the United States and Europe. He has lectured extensively nationally and internationally on child and adolescent development. Dr. Sparrow’s work with the Brazelton Touchpoints Center has included consultation on child development and parenting programs to the Harlem Children’s Zone and to American Indian Early Head Start Programs. He has also consulted to parents and schools in New York City in response to the September 11 disaster.