We are giving parents the tools to build bright, well adjusted kids in our community. 

MAYA Organization offers a series of free pregnancy and parenting classes each year in our North Side offices to over 600 Allegheny County residents. Parents who attend classes earn rewards such as car seats, pack and plays, high chairs, strollers and diapers. We would like to add a new series of classes for parents focused on fostering intelligence and positive mental health. 

Science has shown us much about child development in recent years. We now know that the foundation for sound mental health and intelligence is built early in life. Early experiences, which including relationships with parents, caregivers, relatives, teachers, and peers, help shape the developing brain. Disruptions in this developmental process can damage a child’s capacity for learning and relating to others, causing lifelong implications. Toxic stress is particularly damaging. Toxic stress results from strong, frequent, and/or prolonged biological stress responses to such negative situations such as poverty, threatening neighborhoods, domestic violence, parental substance abuse problems, poor child care conditions, and abuse or neglect. It can severely damage a baby’s developing brain and can impair school readiness, academic achievement, and both physical and mental health in children and, later, adults. Many problems, ranging from the failure to complete high school to incarceration to homelessness, could be dramatically reduced if attention were paid to improving children’s environments, relationships, and experiences early in life.

We plan to write four hour-long classes in partnership with Patrick Webster, the Project Manager of LAUNCH IMH Learning Collaboratives at the Matilda H. Theiss Child Development Center. This new curriculum that will focus on helping parents understand how to encourage their babies’ intelligence and promote mental health. These classes will teach new parents the skills needed to reduce the effects of toxic stress in their new babies. Their children will then be better prepared to be healthy and successful adults.

When the classes are written we will plan to offer them weekly at our North Side and Swissvale offices. Parents who participate will be given incentive points which can be cashed in for baby equipment such as diapers, infant clothing, high chairs, cribs, and car seats.