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Our Programs and Services
Well Baby Center, 12316 Venice Blvd., Mar Vista, CA 90066
Phone: 310-402-BABY (2229) Fax: 310-390-3955
Well Baby’s philosophy is rooted in the emerging field of infant-family mental health.
We believe that healthy early relationships are the cornerstones of an infant’s emotional, cognitive, and physical growth and development. Infants and toddlers rely on their parents to make sense of their world.
A primary relationship — where a parent mindfully attends to a child’s emotional needs—is crucial to normal growth and development and parents need support for such an awesome task. Social support for new parents has been found to be the single most important protective factor available to prevent and eradicate entrenched, multi-generational family problems. Social support mitigates feelings of "overwhelm" in new parents who are constantly giving to their children, their bosses, their spouses, their friends -- and ending up feeling completely depleted. Our parenting center provides what parents seem to need most – a like-minded community where they can truly belong.
The mother-infant relationship is the template for all future relationships
a child will encounter. This first relationship (whether with mother or other maternal caregiver) is co-created, where the child influences the relationship as much as the mother does. Research has shown that this initial bond impacts a child’s brain development in fundamental ways. When there’s a good fit, the parent easily helps the child co-regulate emotional states (the precurser to the child having internalized self-control). This capacity enables social-emotional and cognitive growth, assuring that the child will have future success in school and in friendships with other children. When the relationship experiences struggles however -- either because there isn't a good fit between the parent's and the child's temperment, or because there are emotional and/or physical vulnerabilities within the mother or the child, a negative cycle can become the pattern of interaction. In addition, there might be impinging environmental stressors -- such as financial difficulties, marital issues, mourning the death of a loved one, the birth of second child, and so on -- that could interfere with the mother-infant bond. Finding professional support as well as the support of other parents in the early years of a child's life could make all the difference in preventing long-term problems from developing.
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