Early Childhood Education’s Success Begins With Support of Parent-Child Bonding: Welcome to the Mother’s Room

Creating a foundation that will allow children to thrive in an academic setting begins with family. The bonds forged between a child and their family give children the confidence to think big, ask questions, and feel empowered throughout their personal journey.

That’s why World Academy is always striving to take measures to ensure that our students and their families feel like valued members of our “‘world’ of opportunity.”

As part of a larger effort to accommodate the needs of each unique family, we recognized that   nursing moms had trouble finding the time and space to nurse their young children in comfort. Feeding plays a significant nurturing role in a child’s development and is paramount to the emotional connection between parent and child. Consequently, ensuring that World Academy parents have an easily accessible, comfortable space to feed and bond, became a priority.

The Role of Feeding in Parent-Child Bonding

For both breastfeeding and bottle-feeding parents, feeding time is a valuable opportunity for parent-child bonding. These feeding sessions offer infants a myriad of benefits beyond just providing nourishment—and these benefits can, in fact, be critical to healthy early childhood development.

Oxytocin, commonly referred to as the “love hormone,” is a chemical released in the brains of both parent and child during feeding and skin-to-skin contact. It aids significantly in the process of parent-child bonding, helping parents to feel connected to their young ones and encourages a strong, loving relationship. For mothers, oxytocin also helps with postpartum recovery and could lower their risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and other chronic illnesses.

Therefore, we felt intimate and private feeding is an activity that should be encouraged and supported. Providing accommodations that make breastfeeding, expressing milk, and bottle-feeding easier and free of distractions means supporting the health and wellbeing of our parents and children alike. With the benefits that this quality time can provide, children are set up for success from an early age.

Making Space Available for Parents When They Need It

Though we recognize the incredible benefits that feeding can bring to both parent and child, we also understand that having the time and a private space to do so is not always easy to find.

At World Academy, we seek to provide the best accommodations for children in our care. It is clear to us that helping families find a place for feeding, whenever they may need it, is an important part of our mission. In July 2019, World Academy added a beautiful new space to our state-of-the-art facility dedicated to nursing mothers/feeding families. The World Academy Mother’s Room was built to make it easier for mothers to find a clean, comfortable, and private space for feeding, whenever they had a need.

Directly across from our Infant Classroom, our Mother’s Room is beautifully furnished and fully equipped with everything a parent might need. Some special characteristics of the space include:

• The Mother’s Room is a fully enclosed, private space with a lockable door handle and a sign on the door to indicate when it is in use.
• Parents/family members can get cozy in the cushioned glider with matching footrest to find a comfortable position for themselves and their baby.
• A side table and multiple power outlets are easily within reach to accommodate pumping equipment.
• The space is fashioned with a changing table and sink for any clean-up required before and after a feeding session.
• The room can be used for bottle-feeding. We encourage families to reach out to us before they visit or pick up their child so we can have a bottle prepared.
• Also available is the Mother’s Room Resource Binder, which includes helpful information for breastfeeding and pumping mothers, and other reading materials about infant care.

Families can use the room whenever it is convenient for them. As a school that is fully committed to supporting families, we have a responsibility to the parents on our team as well. Many work environments in the United States do not have a designated space for nursing/pumping or bottle feeding, leaving working moms to pump in unsanitary environments like a public bathroom. We strive to provide a space that is completely sanitary so the mothers on our team can pump and store milk without fear of contamination. Our Mother’s Room thus plays a crucial and valuable role for our World Academy staff members as well as our parents.

See How We Help Keep Families Connected

At World Academy, we work for our families and in conjunction with our families, to ensure that all of our students are learning, growing, and succeeding in a positive environment—and that means providing accommodations that support their diverse needs.

With the Mother’s Room, our goal was to help families navigate their busy schedules with minimal stress. We didn’t want mothers to worry about finding a time and space to feed; instead, we hope this new room allows mothers to move throughout their day with confidence.

Transformative education and lifelong family engagement begins by supporting our youngest students. By providing a safe and welcoming space for mothers/families to maintain and even build those close connections with their children, we further strengthen our families’ journeys toward empowering the “whole child” in each and every student.

To learn more about our brand-new Mother’s Room and other cutting-edge features of our educational facilities, schedule a visit today! We’d love to share with you the accommodating environment we’ve created to enrich our students, their families, and our staff.