Taeshaun Walters is a parent educator and lactation counselor for TrainingGrounds and has just become a Certified HUG Teacher. She shares her HUG Your Baby experience with us.
TrainingGrounds is a non-profit organization that assists families and professionals with creating rich learning experiences for children and positive adult-child interactions. In this time of pandemic and virtual learning, our organization is discovering that reaching out to our families is key. When we found the HUG Your Baby program, I absolutely fell in love with its curriculum, and now I want to share it with every family I serve!
My own professional goals align perfectly with HUG Your Baby’s mission and content. I want to reach the African American pregnant women and babies who are my clients so that I can increase breastfeeding rates and help moms and dads learn skills to console and get to know their babies. HUG Your Baby offers so many simple and effective tips for calming a baby! It also offers insights like remembering that babies can see and read their parents’ facial expressions, which help families learn that babies can cry when their parents look upset or frustrated.
Seeing the joy on my families’ faces when I introduce them to HUG Your Baby is the best testimony to this program’s value. Parents are so happy to have this information, and many say that they wish they knew it when they had their first baby. Learning the HUG Your Baby techniques makes my parents feel more at ease—and more confident in their abilities as parents. That calmness and confidence is exactly what my organization aims to offer families as the basis for their children’s futures.