Earlier this month, “families with babies and toddlers from every state and Washington, D.C.” raised their voices “to tell Congress what young children need to thrive,” at this year’s Strolling Thunder event.
And this week, thanks to the Massachusetts Babies Coalition, the first annual Strolling Thunder event was held in Massachusetts at the State House!
Led by Aditi Subramaniam, the Director of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Policy at MSPCC, “the MA Babies Coalition brings together community organization partners, policymakers, the state’s infant mental health association (Massachusetts Association for Infant Mental Health), and lived experience professionals to co-create a shared vision and set priorities for systems building and policy that centers thriving babies, thriving families and thriving communities.”
The coalition shared this recap on LinkedIn:
And check out the Facebook post and the Instagram post.
Speaking at the event, Subramaniam said:
” Right now, nearly 400,000 children under the age of six call Massachusetts home. Babies whose families have crossed oceans and borders to get here — who are raising their children in two cultures, multiple languages, carrying lullabies from all over the globe, and singing them right here in the Commonwealth.
“Every one of these babies arrived already reaching. Because that’s what babies do. Before words, before steps, a baby reaches for relationship—born wired to connect. This is infant mental health and early relational health. And this is the soil everything else grows in… “
“And we can never forget—a baby cannot thrive alone. This truth is the heartbeat of the Massachusetts Babies Coalition. We have a simple practice that guides everything we do: we hold the baby in mind. And when we hold the baby in mind, we must hold the whole family, and the whole community, right alongside. Because a thriving baby needs a thriving family. And a thriving family needs a thriving community that has its back.
“That’s not a slogan for us — it’s our north star: thriving babies, thriving families, thriving communities. Always together. Policy looks very different when we see it through the eyes of a baby or of a parent holding a baby. Babies are nonpartisan and babies are here and now! When we invest early, we heal early. We treat less, because we prevent more. There is no wiser investment our Commonwealth can make.”