What does early relational health have to do with getting your kids to put their shoes on? Julie King, co-author of "How to Talk So Little Ones Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Age 2-7", offers a series of parenting tools that lean into emotional intelligence and foster early relational health.

For nearly 50 years, Lois Lowry's books have adeptly tackled friendship, loyalty, fear, comfort, family, war, political oppression, love, grief, racism, and so much more – and usually from the perspective of the children themselves. Lois Lowry joins us to share how, through writing, she tries “to convey her passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.”

Every so often, a book comes along that allows parents and children to slow down together, engage, and experience the joy of reading a book that requires, and then rewards, looking closely at everything that book has to offer. Famed author and illustrator Loren Long joins us to talk about The Yellow Bus, a magical new children's book that does exactly that.

Instead of 'Screen Time', try 'Green Time'! Dr. Pooja Tandon and Dr. Danette Glassy, co-authors of the new book "Digging Into Nature: Outdoor Adventures for Happier and Healthier Kids" join us to talk about a growing body of evidence behind the mental and physical benefits nature offers to children, ideas for nature-based activities, and ways to overcome common challenges busy families face when trying to increase outdoor time.

In the fifth and final episode in our multi-part series on poverty and early relational health we look inside our organization and examine the work Reach Out and Read is doing to help families experiencing material hardship. Ruth Coleman, Alex Chu, and Callee Boulware outline how we can use our long-standing experience and in-depth research to focus on under-resourced communities and support meaningful approaches to poverty and healthy early relationships.

Positive, supportive interactions with children may help mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences resulting from poverty. Continuing our spotlight series on poverty and early relational health, Dr. Kate Rosenblum, co-Director of Zero to Thrive at the University of Michigan, joins us to talk about how aligning programs like ours can "promote the health and resilience of families from conception to early childhood through research, training and community partnership."

How can families help prepare their children for school when they’re working multiple jobs, or struggling to buy groceries? Reading a book together can seem like a lot when all your energy is focused on meeting the basic needs of your family. Evidence-based home visiting programs like Parents as Teachers can help with some of these challenges. Jennifer Bronsdon and Emily Callahan of Parents as Teachers at MGH Revere join us to talk about what home visiting is, what it isn't, and how these programs meet families in their reality - at their homes.

There's a significant amount of data on childhood poverty, but the numbers only tell one part of the story. Cristi Carman and Dr. Philip Fisher of Stanford University join us to talk about how to decipher complex data to better understand the experiences, challenges, and resiliency of young children and their families experiencing material hardship.