Making the World a Better Place One Parent-Child Interaction at a Time.
Let’s face it, parenting is hard. Maybe much harder than you expected! We all want the best for our child, but knowing how to parent in a way that fosters positive healthy development is difficult. Here at Positive Parenting Perspectives, I share decades of research and theories on child development combined with my own years of in-the-field research, teaching, and parenting experience to help parents build a solid foundation of knowledge on how young children grow, learn, and develop in addition to providing practical guidance on how to to apply that knowledge to everyday situations, interactions, and learning opportunities. I believe that parenting is a learning and growing experience and with a little knowledge, some guidance, and a lot of love, we can all be the parents we want to be for our kids!
About Me
Alison Baroody-Sarboraria
Family Life
I am blessed to be the mother of beautiful amazing children who have taught me more about love, patience, expectations, frustration, and myself than I ever thought possible. My husband and I started our parenting journey first with a miscarriage, then finding out less than a year later that we were expecting twins who were quickly followed by our singleton daughter. Surviving a miscarriage, multiples, post-partum mood disorder, autism, and three in diapers at the same time has had it’s challenges, but also it’s joys! I believe that parents can change the world one parent-child interaction at a time. Through warm, caring, and creative parenting, we can foster healthy positive development for our children. The more we learn and grow along the way, the more we can help our kids and be the parents we want to be.
Education and Training
I earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Psychology. This was followed by a M.S. and Ph.D in Developmental Studies from Purdue University with an emphasis on early development birth-8 years. Both my thesis and dissertation examined the relation among literacy environments (home and school), children’s interest and engagement in literacy and reading, and children’s early academic skills. After graduate school, I completed a two-year Institute of Education Sciences (IES) post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia.
Experiences
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been interested in how children grow, learn, and develop. In my teens and early 20’s I cared for and worked with children in both home and school settings. During my undergraduate years, I was a volunteer in preschool classes and transcribed hundreds of hours of parent interviews as part of a research project. I have spend over a decade conducting in-the-field research in preschool and elementary schools in an effort to better understand how children learn and how this learning is shaped through experiences at home and school. Both at Purdue University and San Francisco State University, I have taught undergraduate courses on child and adolescent development. Additionally, I have served on preschool and K-8 teacher training committees. I have over 30 conference presentations and 15 plus peer-reviewed publications.