PEPS Unplugged
The first time I brought my daughter Marissa (then a precocious 9 year-old) to the PEPS offices she took the usual short tour of our work spaces and met the very child-friendly staff. On our way back out to the car, she turned to me quite innocently and said plaintively: “But Daddy, where are all the babies?”
Where indeed?? Back then in early 2007, hundreds of babies were at the PEPS Groups happening almost daily in people’s living rooms all over Seattle and King County. But most of the babies we saw at our Good Shepherd Center home were heading down the hall to a neonatal massage class, not coming with Mom and Dad to attend a PEPS program session. The opportunities to see a cute PEPS baby (yes that is the only kind!) were few and far between.
I’m happy to say that when Marissa comes to visit me now (when she’s not too busy texting, that is), it’s very likely she’ll see all the babies she could hope for!! As part of PEPS’ 26-year commitment to new and expanding families, we’ve been steadily adding site-based opportunities to share and learn together for families with infants and toddlers.
In any given week at the Good Shepherd center (and other sites in West Seattle, Bellevue and Lynnwood) there are either Orientation sessions with tiny new babies (and some still waiting to make their grand entrance into the world), Baby PEPperS sessions for parents with little crawlers 5-12 months old and/or Little PEPperS sessions for parents with both a precious little one and a rambunctious toddler. All told we now have as many as 40 or 50 babies visit us in a given week, and they bring along their (often-tired and worn out) parents!!
It’s a scientific fact that seeing a baby elicits certain parental care responses in adults of any culture or ethnicity, “a region of the human brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex is highly specifically active within a seventh of a second in response to (unfamiliar) infant faces but not to adult faces” (Science Daily 2/27/08).
Here at PEPS, we don’t put on lab coats and pull out a stopwatch when we see a baby; we just get a boost of warm reassurance that the work we’re doing has real meaning if it makes raising one of those precious little ones just a little easier by building a community of support and care that parents know they can count on.
The next time you’re nearby, drop in the PEPS office and you’ll be likely to find out just where all the babies are!!!
Harry Hoffman
HarryH@pepsgroup.org
206-547-8570 ext. 25
