Fostering Futures℠
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Our mission is to engage and expand our audience by delivering thought-provoking material that focuses on key areas crucial to the development and well-being of all youth. Through our discussions, we aim to provide insights that are not only relevant but also transformative.
Join us as we explore innovative approaches in special education, Social Emotional Well-Being, and Community. Be ready to be apart of a community committed to making a positive impact.
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Fostering Futures℠
Episode 14 - Quiet Isn’t Always Calm: Misconceptions About Infant Behavior
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, Athena Cordero sits down with Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Behavioral Health Counselor Supervisor, Lina Myrvold, to unpack what infant mental health really means and why it matters far earlier than most people realize. Lina breaks down core misconceptions about babies (“they won’t remember,” “quiet means fine”), explains how attachment forms from birth, and describes how caregivers’ own histories and emotions shape infant development. She then walks listeners through early behavioral cues, co-regulation, and how infants communicate long before words.
The episode also spotlights Strong Start, a multidisciplinary early-intervention protocol developed through CAHELP to identify and support infants ages 0–4 months, particularly those who have experienced early adversity. Lina shares how Strong Start was created, how it works, and how early support can change a child’s lifelong developmental trajectory. The conversation closes with practical guidance for caregivers, powerful reflections on early attachment, and a reminder that nurturing mental health truly begins at the very beginning of life.
Highlights
- Lina explains what infant mental health is: supporting healthy development through early relationships, attachment, and caregiver responsiveness.
- Common misconceptions debunked, including the beliefs that babies “don’t know,” “won’t remember,” or “are fine if they’re quiet.”
- How early attachment forms through cry-response patterns, caregiver consistency, and co-regulation.
- The role of caregiver mental health, trauma history, anxiety, and previous loss, and how these shape infant responses.
- Early cues to watch for: gaze seeking, gaze aversion, flailing or dysregulated movements, ability to bring hands to midline, types of crying, and engagement signals.
- How adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) impact long-term outcomes and how positive experiences can counteract them.
- The creation of the Strong Start program and how rapid, multidisciplinary intervention supports infants in foster or kinship care.
- The importance of clinicians modeling attachment-based interaction for caregivers in real time.
- Success stories showing improved attachment, regulation, and long-term stability for Strong Start participants.
Takeaways
- Babies communicate from birth — through body language, cry patterns, gaze, and movement — and caregivers must learn to read these cues.
- A “quiet baby” may be securely attached or may have learned that crying doesn’t lead to their needs being met.
- Co-regulation matters: calm caregivers calm babies; dysregulated caregivers unintentionally pass along distress.
- Early intervention (0–4 months) can dramatically shift developmental trajectories, especially for infants with early adversity.
- Caregivers’ own histories, mental health, and stress influence bonding awareness and support can break generational patterns.
- One secure attachment relationship in early childhood can reshape a child’s lifelong capacity to connect and thrive.
- Strong Start shows how coordinated supports across mental health, OT, speech, and developmental specialists make a measurable difference.
- Early connections build the foundation for emotional regulation, learning, relationships, and long-term well-being.
Thanks for listening! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram | www.cahelp.org | podcast@cahelp.org
00:00:09 Intro
The relentless pursuit of whatever works in the life of a child.
00:00:18 Athena Cordero
Welcome to Fostering Futures with CAHELP, a podcast dedicated to our relentless pursuit of whatever works in the life of a child.
00:00:26 Athena Cordero
I'm your host, Athena Cordero, inviting you to join me and countless others as we share our unique perspectives and expertise in the world of special education, behavioral health, social-emotional well-being, and community.
00:00:39 Athena Cordero
Follow us on Buzzsprout, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
00:00:45 Athena Cordero
Okay, everyone, I'm Athena Cordero, and today I am talking to Lina Myrvold.
00:00:50 Athena Cordero
She is a licensed marriage and family therapist here with CAHELP.
00:00:54 Athena Cordero
You're also a behavioral health counselor supervisor with us.
00:00:58 Athena Cordero
Correct.
00:00:59 Athena Cordero
That was a mouthful for me, Lina, right now, sorry.
00:01:01 Athena Cordero
Okay, we're going to talk about infant mental health today.
00:01:07 Athena Cordero
and some things that you have done to make work maybe a little more efficient and what you get to do.
00:01:13 Athena Cordero
And you're going to get to share all of that.
00:01:14 Athena Cordero
But I mean, I just gave you a very small introduction.
00:01:17 Athena Cordero
Lina, you've done a lot.
00:01:18 Athena Cordero
You've been with CAHELP for a while.
00:01:20 Athena Cordero
Can you give us a little bit more about your background?
00:01:22 Lina Myrvold
Sure.
00:01:23 Lina Myrvold
So I started here in the summer of 2009.
00:01:28 Lina Myrvold
So I've been here for about 16 years.
00:01:31 Lina Myrvold
I started out as a
00:01:34 Lina Myrvold
sub.
00:01:35 Lina Myrvold
I don't know if we do those anymore, but I was a sub for a year and worked in the SATS program, which back then also had a different name.
00:01:43 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:01:43 Lina Myrvold
And then got transferred over to SART.
00:01:46 Lina Myrvold
I came in already having worked in infant mental health for three years.
00:01:51 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:01:52 Lina Myrvold
And I believe that that's where I was, you know, aimed to be, but SART was very in its infancy as well.
00:02:00 Lina Myrvold
And so they were kind of pulling it together.
00:02:02 Lina Myrvold
And then I moved over to SART after a year.
00:02:04 Athena Cordero
Okay, so speaking of infancy, okay.
00:02:08 Athena Cordero
So infant mental health isn't something that most people hear about every day, okay?
00:02:12 Athena Cordero
I think some folks even have to be reminded that we all have mental health.
00:02:16 Athena Cordero
That's not something that you only have if there's a problem or you know, you're worried about something.
00:02:21 Athena Cordero
We all have mental health.
00:02:22 Athena Cordero
So talk to me about infant mental health.
00:02:25 Athena Cordero
How do you even describe that in simple terms for folks?
00:02:28 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, so
00:02:29 Lina Myrvold
Infant mental health is kind of basically us ensuring the well-being of a child as they develop.
00:02:38 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:02:40 Lina Myrvold
You know, the way I like to look at it is that we have experiences, good and bad, through our whole life.
00:02:48 Lina Myrvold
It starts when we're born.
00:02:52 Lina Myrvold
And so providing infant mental health services
00:02:58 Lina Myrvold
make those help like families and relationships and the parents and caregivers of children learn how to attach and to make those experiences mostly positive.
00:03:12 Lina Myrvold
We can't erase all the negative, but certainly to counteract any negative with the positive.
00:03:18 Athena Cordero
Okay, gotcha.
00:03:19 Athena Cordero
So I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, right?
00:03:23 Athena Cordero
Because even if you're saying infant experiences, for me, I'm like,
00:03:28 Athena Cordero
How do you know an infant experience?
00:03:29 Athena Cordero
I can't tell you.
00:03:30 Athena Cordero
I mean, they can do some things, though I'm sure there's some things that you can share to help us understand the infant experience.
00:03:38 Athena Cordero
And I want to get into that, but maybe start me off by telling me, like, what are some of the biggest misconceptions you kind of come across when it comes to babies in mental health?
00:03:46 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, so, you know, our number one would be they're just babies.
00:03:53 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:03:53 Lina Myrvold
They don't know anything, right?
00:03:55 Lina Myrvold
Or
00:03:57 Lina Myrvold
they're not going to remember this.
00:03:59 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:03:59 Lina Myrvold
So, or they're quiet.
00:04:03 Lina Myrvold
They're quiet and that means everything's good.
00:04:07 Lina Myrvold
And so we get these comments from caregivers and then we have to kind of help them understand that the relationship is
00:04:24 Lina Myrvold
where we learn what's happening with infants.
00:04:28 Lina Myrvold
So they are constantly communicating to us, whether they're crying or they're looking at us or they're looking away.
00:04:36 Lina Myrvold
And learning what that communication is and means is kind of the job of any caregiver.
00:04:43 Lina Myrvold
We have to know when a baby cries a certain way,
00:04:47 Lina Myrvold
that that means that they're hungry or they're wet or they're tired or whatever that cry means.
00:04:54 Lina Myrvold
But they don't, we don't automatically know that.
00:04:58 Lina Myrvold
We have to learn each baby and we have to learn what that cry sounds like or what that communication is.
00:05:06 Lina Myrvold
And so, so I mean, I guess if I was a baby,
00:05:11 Lina Myrvold
And then you're my caregiver.
00:05:13 Lina Myrvold
So I cry, you come.
00:05:15 Lina Myrvold
I cry, you come.
00:05:16 Lina Myrvold
I cry, you come.
00:05:16 Lina Myrvold
And then you come and you take care of me.
00:05:18 Lina Myrvold
And I learn that you're my person.
00:05:20 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:05:20 Lina Myrvold
And I learn that I'm safe with you.
00:05:22 Lina Myrvold
And I learn that you're going to take care of me because I can't take care of myself when I'm that little.
00:05:27 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:05:29 Lina Myrvold
And then that bond and attachment happens.
00:05:33 Lina Myrvold
And then I know
00:05:36 Lina Myrvold
that when I have a need, I can communicate it in the way I communicate it.
00:05:42 Lina Myrvold
And you're going to understand that and you're going to come and you're going to take care of whatever I need, whether I'm hungry or I need to be changed or I need to be, you know, warm and you hug, whatever it is, then I trust that you are going to do that.
00:05:57 Lina Myrvold
That's what bond and attachment is.
00:05:59 Lina Myrvold
And that's very important in early childhood.
00:06:05 Athena Cordero
So, okay, and I hear you.
00:06:09 Athena Cordero
I'm even you starting me off with saying, okay, I'm a baby.
00:06:13 Athena Cordero
Try to walk yourself to this.
00:06:15 Athena Cordero
I did hear you say, because I'm thinking, okay, still misconception, right?
00:06:20 Athena Cordero
So if a baby's quiet, most people would think a quiet baby.
00:06:24 Athena Cordero
is a happy baby, right?
00:06:25 Athena Cordero
Everything's okay.
00:06:26 Athena Cordero
You're not crying.
00:06:26 Athena Cordero
You don't need anything.
00:06:27 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, I got a good baby.
00:06:28 Athena Cordero
Exactly, right?
00:06:29 Athena Cordero
Oh my gosh, that's exactly what I was gonna say.
00:06:31 Athena Cordero
I have a good baby.
00:06:31 Athena Cordero
Oh, you have a good baby.
00:06:32 Athena Cordero
You have a quiet baby.
00:06:33 Athena Cordero
They sleep all the time.
00:06:34 Athena Cordero
What a good baby.
00:06:36 Athena Cordero
But what I'm hearing you say is there's a bond and attachment that starts very, very early.
00:06:42 Athena Cordero
And so a quiet baby might not necessarily be a happy baby.
00:06:46 Athena Cordero
Maybe they haven't learned
00:06:48 Athena Cordero
or develop that attachment to somebody yet.
00:06:52 Lina Myrvold
Well, a quiet baby could be two things.
00:06:54 Lina Myrvold
Okay, so number one, it could be that that experience that I just went over happened and I'm securely attached to you and I don't have to cry unless I need something.
00:07:03 Athena Cordero
Gotcha.
00:07:04 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:07:04 Lina Myrvold
Or maybe I cried and you didn't come.
00:07:10 Lina Myrvold
Or I cried and let's say you're a substance abusing parent.
00:07:14 Lina Myrvold
I cried and you came and you were different every time.
00:07:17 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:07:17 Lina Myrvold
Or I cried and somebody else came because I get dropped off at different people or there's different people who are taking care of me because my primary caregiver is unavailable.
00:07:30 Lina Myrvold
So when those kinds of attachments start forming, these kind of insecure attachments, then I don't know how to communicate
00:07:43 Lina Myrvold
my need, because there isn't a steady person who's coming and going, I hear you and I understand what you're saying.
00:07:49 Lina Myrvold
So now I've got to cry all the time, right?
00:07:55 Lina Myrvold
Because somebody's going to come or something's going to happen.
00:07:59 Athena Cordero
To meet this need that I know I have that I can't even express.
00:08:02 Athena Cordero
I just know I need it.
00:08:03 Lina Myrvold
Correct.
00:08:04 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:08:04 Lina Myrvold
So now let's say I cry and nobody comes.
00:08:08 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:08:09 Lina Myrvold
Ever.
00:08:10 Lina Myrvold
right?
00:08:10 Lina Myrvold
Or they come and they prop a bottle, or they throw a blanket over me, or they roll me over, whatever happens, but there isn't that attachment.
00:08:20 Lina Myrvold
There isn't, maybe it's feeding time three times a day, and that's it.
00:08:25 Lina Myrvold
The bottle comes, not when I'm hungry, just when the bottle comes, that's when I eat.
00:08:30 Lina Myrvold
Gotcha.
00:08:31 Lina Myrvold
Or there's that kind of caregiving.
00:08:36 Lina Myrvold
It used to happen in like orphanages.
00:08:38 Lina Myrvold
I don't even know that we have too many orphanages anymore, but where, you have to take care of so many kids that it's just kind of the scheduled thing.
00:08:47 Lina Myrvold
So there isn't like a, I cry and then I get a need met.
00:08:51 Lina Myrvold
It's just that the basic needs are met and that's it.
00:08:53 Athena Cordero
And there's no bond.
00:08:55 Lina Myrvold
And there's no bond and there's no attachment and there's nobody to come get me.
00:09:00 Lina Myrvold
So I don't, I learn
00:09:04 Lina Myrvold
Because our brain develops around all this relationship stuff.
00:09:09 Lina Myrvold
I learn that my crying doesn't mean anything.
00:09:13 Lina Myrvold
It's not going to get any need met.
00:09:15 Lina Myrvold
So why am I going to waste my energy crying?
00:09:17 Lina Myrvold
So then I don't cry at all.
00:09:19 Athena Cordero
Gotcha.
00:09:19 Lina Myrvold
So those are the ones where we think, especially the kiddos that we work with who have
00:09:25 Lina Myrvold
primarily an attachment break because they're removed.
00:09:28 Athena Cordero
So, okay, so thanks for clarifying that for me, right?
00:09:31 Athena Cordero
Because as far back as I can remember and just kind of old school, thinking, quiet baby, happy baby.
00:09:38 Athena Cordero
And so it's not necessarily that they're not a happy baby or that they are.
00:09:43 Athena Cordero
Can you give me maybe some more, I don't know, some more signs, like early signs of a baby?
00:09:50 Athena Cordero
might need some extra support around bonding or what are some other things we can look for other than the absence of crying or overly crying?
00:09:58 Athena Cordero
What are some other things we can check for?
00:10:00 Lina Myrvold
Sure.
00:10:01 Lina Myrvold
Well, let me, first let me take you down a little history trip, I guess.
00:10:06 Lina Myrvold
It's just a small one.
00:10:08 Lina Myrvold
So in 1975, there was a paper
00:10:12 Lina Myrvold
called Ghosts in the Nursery.
00:10:14 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:10:15 Lina Myrvold
And it was kind of like this, and oh, sorry, let me, it's by Frailberg, Adelson, and Shapiro.
00:10:21 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:10:23 Lina Myrvold
And the idea started forming that when I have a child and I go to parent, that my early childhood experiences
00:10:38 Lina Myrvold
are going to come into play.
00:10:40 Lina Myrvold
That's what's going to get triggered for me.
00:10:41 Lina Myrvold
And then I'm going to care for my child in the same way that I was cared for, because I don't have a conscious memory of that.
00:10:49 Lina Myrvold
I mean, rarely do folks have a conscious memory before three.
00:10:52 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:10:53 Lina Myrvold
So if I go to care for my infant baby,
00:11:00 Lina Myrvold
you know, I don't, especially in 1975, for reading a whole lot of books.
00:11:05 Lina Myrvold
Well, there were a few out there, but, oh, sorry.
00:11:09 Lina Myrvold
But then, so it's just this kind of idea of like, I bring my experience into my parenting right now.
00:11:18 Athena Cordero
Unconsciously.
00:11:19 Lina Myrvold
Subconsciously.
00:11:20 Lina Myrvold
Subconsciously.
00:11:21 Lina Myrvold
Sorry.
00:11:21 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:11:23 Lina Myrvold
Gotcha.
00:11:23 Lina Myrvold
And so,
00:11:28 Lina Myrvold
So that was kind of like the first birth, if you will, of infant mental health, of this idea that there's some experiences that we have in our own early childhood that then we bring into our adulthood.
00:11:43 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:11:43 Lina Myrvold
Okay, so then fast forward 50 years and all the research and the folks that got involved in infant mental health to develop it to where we are today, that evolved into
00:11:58 Lina Myrvold
Okay, so then that means that that early relationship does have an impact on us as adults.
00:12:07 Lina Myrvold
So how do we go back and make this early relationship a positive one and a connected one so that then these babies grow up to be functional and relational human beings?
00:12:22 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:12:23 Lina Myrvold
So that's how infant mental health
00:12:28 Lina Myrvold
kind of evolved.
00:12:29 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:12:31 Lina Myrvold
And it mixes a lot with trauma because what happens is we have to look at our adverse, you know, childhood experiences, the AC, everybody knows this.
00:12:43 Lina Myrvold
I'm sure that folks have talked about that here.
00:12:46 Lina Myrvold
So we have these adverse childhood experiences that can, don't always affect our, you know, our adulthood and folks can end up having certain
00:12:57 Lina Myrvold
results of that, whether it be physiological or, you know, institutional and that kind of thing.
00:13:05 Lina Myrvold
But then if we have adverse childhood experiences, then we by default also could have positive childhood experiences.
00:13:14 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:13:14 Lina Myrvold
And so what we want to do is figure out how do we, in spite of adverse childhood experiences, how do we get in there and help the caregiver create positive
00:13:27 Lina Myrvold
childhood experiences to kind of mitigate that so that then the baby can still develop even if they have multiple adverse childhood experiences.
00:13:38 Athena Cordero
So just for listeners, Lina, and you're right, we have talked about ACEs before, especially here, right?
00:13:43 Athena Cordero
We talk about it, but just in case someone's listening, I have no idea what ACEs.
00:13:49 Athena Cordero
Can you give us just like a quick, and I know that's hard, but a quick overview of what an ACES score could be, or what does that mean?
00:13:57 Lina Myrvold
Yes, so the ACES looks at different areas of our childhood, whether it be our caregivers, substance abuse, or if there was physical abuse or neglect.
00:14:13 Lina Myrvold
the child's life.
00:14:16 Lina Myrvold
There's a relational section, there's an abuse section, there's a historical section, and what the study did, and I don't have...
00:14:30 Lina Myrvold
I'm sorry, but I don't have the reference for the study.
00:14:32 Lina Myrvold
That's okay.
00:14:33 Lina Myrvold
But what the study did was they basically looked at folks who were adults and institutionalized.
00:14:39 Lina Myrvold
Okay, so you're either in prison or, you know, substance abuse facilities, mental health facilities, those kinds of things, and looked at their childhood and found that folks who had four or more of these adverse childhood experiences
00:15:00 Lina Myrvold
had a higher risk of ending up in those places.
00:15:03 Lina Myrvold
Gotcha.
00:15:03 Lina Myrvold
So that's kind of how it was born.
00:15:05 Lina Myrvold
So then we decided to go back and identify them early so that we prevent that trajectory.
00:15:12 Lina Myrvold
So now if we know that the parent, the child was prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol, or they had a parent who was, say, incarcerated, or there was some abuse in their
00:15:26 Lina Myrvold
home or domestic violence or those kinds of experiences, then we can mitigate those with the positive relational experiences and try to avoid that trajectory of ending up in institutions.
00:15:40 Athena Cordero
So early identification.
00:15:43 Athena Cordero
to try to put in some intervention to prevent some of those things or replace those things with maybe some more positive experiences.
00:15:51 Athena Cordero
Correct.
00:15:51 Athena Cordero
Awesome.
00:15:52 Athena Cordero
You did it.
00:15:52 Athena Cordero
I mean, it was, that was probably rough, but you did it.
00:15:55 Athena Cordero
That's a good overview for us.
00:15:57 Athena Cordero
Okay, so like you were saying, then there is the caregiver is very important in the situation.
00:16:04 Athena Cordero
We're talking about infant mental health, but a lot of that has to do with the caregivers.
00:16:08 Athena Cordero
mental health, their experience, and their bond with the infant.
00:16:12 Athena Cordero
So, and I hear you even as you're explaining ACEs and you're talking about the research and the study and where that even came from, we're thinking about folks who are incarcerated or drug abuse or, you know, any of the things that could affect negatively.
00:16:29 Athena Cordero
But what about for a family that
00:16:33 Athena Cordero
I mean, it wasn't something along those lines.
00:16:35 Athena Cordero
What if they had lost a baby previously, and they're depressed or they're trying to get over that or one of their children, that they have already is sick or has a need and they have to focus a lot on that child and they have an infant?
00:16:50 Athena Cordero
I guess what I'm what I'm asking is,
00:16:53 Athena Cordero
Because the role of a caregiver's mental health is so important, what can we do at home?
00:16:58 Athena Cordero
You know, or what can you share with folks who are in the caregiver role on what they can do to make sure they're still having that bonding with the infants, like some things that they can check?
00:17:10 Athena Cordero
Does that make sense?
00:17:11 Athena Cordero
Yeah.
00:17:11 Lina Myrvold
So there's this idea of co-regulation.
00:17:16 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:17:18 Lina Myrvold
We do it all the time.
00:17:19 Lina Myrvold
I mean, our whole life is based in context of relationship, right?
00:17:22 Lina Myrvold
We can't get through a day without, interacting with another human being.
00:17:26 Athena Cordero
As much as we probably might try not to sometimes.
00:17:28 Lina Myrvold
You're absolutely right.
00:17:29 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:17:29 Lina Myrvold
I mean, you still have to go to the grocery store.
00:17:31 Lina Myrvold
You still have to, you know, call your mother or whatever.
00:17:34 Lina Myrvold
But we, our whole life is in context of relationship.
00:17:39 Lina Myrvold
And so this idea of co-regulation that we regulate each other, right?
00:17:44 Lina Myrvold
If I walked into your office frazzled because I had an interaction in the morning that frazzled me, and you took one look at me and went, you know, and took a deep breath, I'm going to take a deep breath with you.
00:18:00 Lina Myrvold
Gotcha.
00:18:01 Lina Myrvold
Right?
00:18:01 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:18:02 Lina Myrvold
If you came and put your hands on my shoulders, I'm going to feel that
00:18:07 Lina Myrvold
connection and that, you know, I'm gonna match your, how regulated you are.
00:18:15 Lina Myrvold
You know, caregivers do it all the time.
00:18:16 Lina Myrvold
Baby cries, we pick them up, we hold them, right?
00:18:18 Lina Myrvold
That calms the baby down.
00:18:20 Lina Myrvold
That's co-regulation.
00:18:22 Lina Myrvold
Conversely, there could be co-dysregulation, right?
00:18:27 Lina Myrvold
Oh, okay.
00:18:28 Lina Myrvold
If I'm an anxious parent or caregiver, then my baby doesn't even have to be an anxious baby.
00:18:36 Lina Myrvold
I can be so anxious that when I go to pick up my baby, I am now connecting that and passing that on to the baby.
00:18:44 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:18:44 Lina Myrvold
So if we know that about ourselves, if I know that I'm an anxious parent, or I know that I have this history of depression or even abuse in my own childhood, let's say, if I know that I am at risk of
00:19:06 Lina Myrvold
this generational kind of cyclical passing this on to my own baby, then I can take those precautions and maybe get therapy or work through things myself, look at my own trauma, look at my own childhood.
00:19:22 Lina Myrvold
But we don't always know that either.
00:19:24 Lina Myrvold
No, you're right.
00:19:25 Lina Myrvold
We don't always know.
00:19:26 Lina Myrvold
I just know that my baby won't sleep.
00:19:29 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:19:29 Lina Myrvold
And I am so anxious that I can't get my baby to sleep.
00:19:32 Lina Myrvold
So I pick my baby up and I bounce them really hard and, you know, and which unbeknownst to me, I am aggravating.
00:19:40 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, I'm like aggravating the situation.
00:19:43 Lina Myrvold
And
00:19:45 Lina Myrvold
And my baby still won't sleep.
00:19:47 Lina Myrvold
And I'm doing everything that I think I can.
00:19:50 Lina Myrvold
So that's where we as mental health professionals and in the infant mental health field come in and help parents see that and understand that how much of a role they play in whether their baby regulates or calms down or is able to connect with them, make eye contact, that kind of thing.
00:20:15 Lina Myrvold
So that's, so that's kind of the caregiver role is huge.
00:20:19 Lina Myrvold
I mean, that's the biggest role in a baby's life.
00:20:22 Lina Myrvold
That's it.
00:20:23 Athena Cordero
So I heard you say eye contact.
00:20:27 Athena Cordero
And I'm trying really hard.
00:20:28 Athena Cordero
I'm trying to take, my kids are almost, one's almost 20 and one's 11.
00:20:35 Athena Cordero
Okay, so I'm trying to take myself back to those moments when they were both infants.
00:20:40 Athena Cordero
And I do remember making sure that they can make eye contact or if I called their name, they turn their head, you know, or even if I walked into a room and started talking, they look because they recognize my voice.
00:20:55 Athena Cordero
Or how do I feel before I pick them up?
00:20:58 Athena Cordero
You know, just hold on a second, you know, then let me pick them up now because I'm a little bit more, you know, calm, pick them up.
00:21:05 Athena Cordero
I remember feeling like that and not even knowing why.
00:21:08 Athena Cordero
right?
00:21:09 Athena Cordero
I just wanted to do it because it felt like the right thing to do, to pay attention to those things.
00:21:14 Athena Cordero
Are those the kinds of things that you would suggest that a caregiver pay attention to?
00:21:21 Athena Cordero
And are there any other things, you know, that you could suggest that they look for?
00:21:25 Athena Cordero
Because someone without any idea of even thinking about infant mental health, right?
00:21:30 Athena Cordero
I just want them to know a couple of
00:21:33 Athena Cordero
behaviors, like things that their body is doing that they can try with an infant so that they know, that they can try it and they can kind of see how it's going.
00:21:43 Athena Cordero
Is there like a, I don't know, like a little help, like quick cheat sheet we can give them, of eye contact, talking, stuff like that they can, just try to try after they listen to this.
00:21:54 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, well, I mean, and we have developmental charts that we are happy to share.
00:22:02 Lina Myrvold
that kind of shows by age.
00:22:04 Lina Myrvold
And if we go way back to zero, let's say, and we do look at, say, a one month old, that's when we get the most like, it's just the baby, it's just laying there.
00:22:17 Lina Myrvold
You know, what am I supposed to look for?
00:22:20 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:22:20 Lina Myrvold
Well, we're looking to see how the body moves.
00:22:23 Lina Myrvold
We're looking to see how the communication happens.
00:22:26 Lina Myrvold
Does the baby cry when there's a need?
00:22:29 Lina Myrvold
Does the baby cry all the time?
00:22:30 Lina Myrvold
Does the baby not cry at all?
00:22:31 Lina Myrvold
Like these are, these, you know, things can be, you know, I don't like the term red flags, but you know, they could be something to look at.
00:22:42 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, some signs.
00:22:45 Lina Myrvold
And is the baby able to lift their arms and legs off the ground?
00:22:51 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:22:53 Lina Myrvold
Are they moving them in tandem or are they, do they seem dysregulated?
00:22:58 Lina Myrvold
Like one arm's up, one arm's down, that kind of...
00:23:00 Athena Cordero
Kind of flailing a little bit.
00:23:02 Lina Myrvold
Flailing.
00:23:03 Lina Myrvold
Can they bring their hands to midline?
00:23:05 Lina Myrvold
Even not hold anything or do, you know, we're talking about one month old.
00:23:10 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:23:10 Lina Myrvold
So, but just bringing the hands to midline because if you...
00:23:15 Lina Myrvold
If we look at our own selves and we try to regulate our own selves, you will find yourself bringing yourself to midline.
00:23:21 Athena Cordero
Okay, when you say that, because people can't see us, right?
00:23:23 Athena Cordero
Yeah, right.
00:23:24 Athena Cordero
Midline, you mean like bringing your hands together to?
00:23:26 Lina Myrvold
The center or in front of your chest or, you know.
00:23:30 Lina Myrvold
So these are things that we can look for in very early infants.
00:23:38 Lina Myrvold
as kids age, there are different things to look for.
00:23:41 Lina Myrvold
Can they make that eye contact?
00:23:43 Lina Myrvold
Do they seek that eye contact?
00:23:45 Lina Myrvold
Not just can you get it from them, but do they seek it from you?
00:23:49 Athena Cordero
Oh, what does that look like?
00:23:50 Lina Myrvold
Well, it's so...
00:23:52 Lina Myrvold
And this is where we get into baby cues and things like that.
00:23:54 Lina Myrvold
Like what's the baby actually saying?
00:23:57 Lina Myrvold
And again, I can't show you because there's pictures and things of what a baby looks like when they are ready to engage with you.
00:24:04 Lina Myrvold
Their eyes will open up, their face will brighten, they will look directly at you or in your direction at least.
00:24:12 Lina Myrvold
They will smile if they're at smiling age, giggle if they're at giggling age.
00:24:17 Lina Myrvold
Like these are things that you know this baby is
00:24:20 Lina Myrvold
ready to attach and experience with you.
00:24:25 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:24:26 Lina Myrvold
And that is an optimal time for like teaching or training or bonding or that kind of a thing.
00:24:33 Lina Myrvold
As caregivers, we often miss those signs, right?
00:24:39 Lina Myrvold
I want to attach when I'm when I'm ready to attach, right?
00:24:43 Lina Myrvold
I got 5 minutes before I gotta whatever.
00:24:45 Athena Cordero
Let me come read you a story.
00:24:47 Lina Myrvold
I'm, yeah, and we're gonna play, right?
00:24:50 Lina Myrvold
And baby may be like, No, it's not time for me.
00:24:52 Lina Myrvold
I don't even wanna look at you right now.
00:24:55 Lina Myrvold
And these are the things we need to look at, right?
00:24:57 Lina Myrvold
If we go to engage with a baby and the baby doesn't even want to look at us, we need to read that sign.
00:25:04 Lina Myrvold
We don't want to push that.
00:25:05 Lina Myrvold
We don't want to chase that gaze.
00:25:07 Lina Myrvold
If you chase it and you make it happen, we're going to dysregulate them further and we're going to get bigger signs.
00:25:14 Athena Cordero
That's forced, yeah.
00:25:15 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:25:15 Lina Myrvold
So if we don't notice the little sign of like looking away and saying, no, I don't want to engage with you, if we don't recognize and hear that, then they will
00:25:25 Lina Myrvold
let us know bigger.
00:25:26 Lina Myrvold
They will start crying or start kicking at us or doing other things to physically make us go away.
00:25:35 Athena Cordero
Wow.
00:25:35 Athena Cordero
So that's interesting, Lina.
00:25:37 Athena Cordero
I mean, they tell you all the time, right?
00:25:40 Athena Cordero
When you're about to have kids, first kid, second kid.
00:25:43 Athena Cordero
It's not about you anymore, right?
00:25:44 Athena Cordero
Like it's about the child.
00:25:46 Athena Cordero
But I think you just kind of put
00:25:48 Athena Cordero
a real life example to what that actually means.
00:25:51 Athena Cordero
Because just because I'm ready to bond with you and play doesn't mean that you're ready, even though you are four or five, you know, six months old, and that we should be looking for a sign.
00:26:01 Athena Cordero
Yeah, no, right?
00:26:03 Athena Cordero
Those, the 18-year-old signs are much louder than I think, even than the three months old.
00:26:08 Athena Cordero
But you're absolutely right.
00:26:09 Athena Cordero
That's really good for folks, I think, to hear, because that does give somebody at home something to try.
00:26:15 Athena Cordero
that I think is huge.
00:26:16 Athena Cordero
I'm ready to play, but let me look and see if you're ready to play.
00:26:19 Athena Cordero
I think there's folks who can listen to this and go home and try that, or go do that right now with their infants.
00:26:25 Athena Cordero
So that's helpful.
00:26:27 Athena Cordero
With all of this, okay, you're wrapping our minds around infant mental health, how to check for body language, what crying can mean, what it might not mean, how our history can come into play, and how over the course of, I think you said 50 years, what we know now,
00:26:45 Athena Cordero
in trying to replace even some of the negative things that could have happened with positive things, I want you to talk to me about Strong Start.
00:26:53 Athena Cordero
You've brought that up before.
00:26:55 Athena Cordero
I know I wanted to make sure that we talked about it now.
00:26:58 Athena Cordero
Walk me through kind of the beginning of that and what the need, you know, what need you've seen for it.
00:27:06 Lina Myrvold
So, okay, I'll take you away.
00:27:10 Athena Cordero
I'm going to filter up.
00:27:11 Lina Myrvold
We're going to go another filter from a running trip.
00:27:14 Lina Myrvold
So I'm going to say it was 2016, 2017, where my agency here, back then, it was Desert Mountain SALPA, currently is CA Health.
00:27:29 Lina Myrvold
We had these SOAR meetings where we were looking into how, you know, what's the need in the community and where can we best serve our community?
00:27:44 Lina Myrvold
And folks were encouraged to look at where their position is here and if they saw a need to kind of create programs and ideas and send them in.
00:27:59 Lina Myrvold
And there was, SOAR was a lot bigger than that, but that was
00:28:04 Lina Myrvold
That's what I grabbed onto.
00:28:06 Lina Myrvold
That's what I heard was like, ooh, I get to create a program.
00:28:09 Athena Cordero
And SOAR, so folks know SOAR is like this process that you go through to identify a need and create an action plan and then monitor what that plan is providing.
00:28:21 Lina Myrvold
It was more of an organizational training.
00:28:29 Lina Myrvold
trip, if you will, that we took together on, kind of looking at what we do.
00:28:35 Lina Myrvold
How can we do it better?
00:28:38 Lina Myrvold
Where are their needs?
00:28:40 Lina Myrvold
And then individuals could then on the side create ideas or come to the table with ideas of, you know, well, we could do this or we could do that kind of a thing.
00:28:52 Athena Cordero
So forward thinking, right?
00:28:53 Athena Cordero
Like what do you see right now as we can get ahead of some things and make a difference or an adjustment?
00:29:00 Lina Myrvold
Absolutely.
00:29:00 Lina Myrvold
That's awesome.
00:29:01 Lina Myrvold
And that was led by Jennifer Sutton.
00:29:04 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:29:04 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:29:06 Lina Myrvold
And there was, and it was.
00:29:07 Lina Myrvold
It was, for me, it was a beautiful experience because there were three of us at the time that kind of started talking about this infant mental health.
00:29:18 Lina Myrvold
I came, I don't remember, I came into this agency already with three years.
00:29:25 Lina Myrvold
So my child is now 18, but when
00:29:30 Lina Myrvold
I was pregnant.
00:29:31 Lina Myrvold
I was working for an agency in Los Angeles County and Los Angeles County at that time, this is 2016, I was six, sorry, 2006, that at that time LA County then put down a mandate that like
00:29:50 Lina Myrvold
all mental health facilities had to have an infant mental health specialist.
00:29:53 Lina Myrvold
And I was pregnant.
00:29:55 Lina Myrvold
And so it was just kind of like, well, you're pregnant.
00:29:57 Lina Myrvold
Do you want to do this?
00:29:57 Lina Myrvold
And I was like, yeah, sure, why not?
00:29:59 Lina Myrvold
And you know, I mean, you're qualified.
00:30:01 Lina Myrvold
He practiced and I fell in my lap.
00:30:04 Lina Myrvold
But it was a huge turning point in my life because I spent that whole pregnancy studying infant mental health.
00:30:12 Athena Cordero
While you were pregnant.
00:30:13 Lina Myrvold
While I was pregnant.
00:30:14 Lina Myrvold
And then after you were pregnant, and then I got to practice.
00:30:17 Lina Myrvold
That's cool.
00:30:19 Lina Myrvold
So yeah, my first test study.
00:30:22 Lina Myrvold
And so I've been in the field for a while before this happened, roughly 10 years.
00:30:30 Lina Myrvold
And so that coincided with
00:30:37 Lina Myrvold
at the time around 2017, a CFS mandate that came down that said that we needed to respond to a referral within two weeks.
00:30:48 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:30:51 Lina Myrvold
And I believe that CFS also had that mandate so that if, so for instance, if a baby was removed at birth, then
00:31:04 Lina Myrvold
they had two weeks to kind of refer to us.
00:31:06 Lina Myrvold
And then we had two weeks to, respond to that.
00:31:10 Lina Myrvold
And so the age of the clients that we were getting slammed down to like, at that time, it was like six months old.
00:31:21 Lina Myrvold
And we were kind of getting them that young, but our process took a long time.
00:31:26 Lina Myrvold
And by the time our
00:31:28 Lina Myrvold
System kind of got into effect for these children.
00:31:32 Lina Myrvold
They were probably over a year old.
00:31:33 Lina Myrvold
Wow And so that's where the idea came for us about We need to get in there faster, right?
00:31:42 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, we need to get in there as soon as they come in and so how can we do that?
00:31:47 Lina Myrvold
along with the age of these kiddos coming in younger and younger and
00:31:55 Lina Myrvold
So it was just kind of this perfect storm of like, this is needed now.
00:32:00 Lina Myrvold
So we developed this protocol.
00:32:02 Lina Myrvold
It was supposed to be 0 to one year old and turned it in for that SOAR process.
00:32:10 Lina Myrvold
And then about a year later, I got a phone call and they said, yours was one of the ideas that was selected.
00:32:16 Lina Myrvold
Do you want to start developing it?
00:32:18 Lina Myrvold
And I said, sure, absolutely.
00:32:19 Lina Myrvold
That's exactly what I want to do.
00:32:21 Lina Myrvold
And so
00:32:23 Lina Myrvold
And so then we had like four pilot families.
00:32:29 Lina Myrvold
We kind of started, you know, fleshing it out.
00:32:33 Lina Myrvold
And the need at that point had gotten so great that it was hard to know how to sort through it all.
00:32:43 Lina Myrvold
So then the baby would come in, our programs, our protocol, it's a strong start.
00:32:51 Lina Myrvold
has a mental health clinician, it has an occupational therapist, a speech pathologist.
00:32:59 Athena Cordero
For an infant.
00:32:59 Lina Myrvold
For an infant, yes.
00:33:01 Lina Myrvold
We have all these people, and that's not even it, because then we bring them into a clinic experience where they get to have more testing.
00:33:10 Lina Myrvold
We have a developmental neuropsychologist who provides a test.
00:33:15 Lina Myrvold
And then we get to find a developmental age and those kinds of things.
00:33:19 Lina Myrvold
And so just kind of coordinating all those services in the early stage of Strong Start was kind of what we tried to do, have them do it linearly.
00:33:31 Lina Myrvold
So like the mental health clinician would
00:33:33 Lina Myrvold
do their eight weeks and then OT would come in and then speech and then we'd do the clinic and that kind of thing.
00:33:40 Lina Myrvold
And we did that.
00:33:41 Lina Myrvold
We piloted that for a while and we started trying to streamline that.
00:33:45 Lina Myrvold
And then when COVID hit, we kind of, and we had just started doing right before COVID hit.
00:33:53 Lina Myrvold
So kind of tail end of 2019, we had just started doing co-treats, getting all of those
00:34:01 Lina Myrvold
disciplines together in one session.
00:34:03 Lina Myrvold
Instead of seeing them linearly, we saw them all together.
00:34:07 Lina Myrvold
And we would go into the homes, we would take our own baby dolls, sit in a big circle, and we would, you know, the parent caregiver would have the child, the actual child, and then the rest of us would have our baby dolls, and we would kind of, given the disciplines that we were representing, would show and model for the parent.
00:34:29 Lina Myrvold
And so we were just getting that kind of iteration of Strong Start going when COVID hit and we kind of had to move it on to online, which actually lent itself really well to this because a lot of people could be on the screen.
00:34:44 Athena Cordero
Yeah.
00:34:47 Lina Myrvold
Without crowding the parent.
00:34:49 Athena Cordero
They're comfortable in their space and looking at what, kind of watching, hearing and taking that in.
00:34:55 Athena Cordero
I could see how that could be maybe even easier.
00:34:58 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:34:59 Lina Myrvold
And then coming out of that, coming back to work, doing it back in person, we kept that co-treat going.
00:35:07 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:35:07 Lina Myrvold
And so, and there's a dedicated team.
00:35:11 Lina Myrvold
the mental health clinician, the occupational therapist.
00:35:14 Lina Myrvold
Now there is a dedicated team, the speech pathologist.
00:35:18 Lina Myrvold
We have our clinic team that includes the developmental neuropsychologist, a pediatrician, a nurse.
00:35:24 Lina Myrvold
Everybody's small army for me.
00:35:27 Lina Myrvold
Yes, because if we get in early enough and we help this baby,
00:35:36 Lina Myrvold
to develop appropriately, we can kind of change the trajectory of this child's life and development to where they don't need us anymore.
00:35:48 Lina Myrvold
They don't need services anymore.
00:35:51 Lina Myrvold
And when they go to school and they're regulated and can sit and learn and listen and retain information, they can do that.
00:36:01 Lina Myrvold
Because a lot of times if we don't intervene,
00:36:05 Lina Myrvold
at some point, at whatever milestone, wherever their little brain kicks in and goes, nope, I can't, I'm not going to sit down in this classroom or I'm going to run out, then you intervene there.
00:36:23 Lina Myrvold
I mean, there's going to be, there's obviously there's a need for mental health at all ages, but the earlier we get in, the less that need
00:36:29 Lina Myrvold
Occurs later in life.
00:36:30 Athena Cordero
So I just want to I just want to take us back to I mean, I know that probably to those listening It probably sounds like a lot, for an infant, especially when you said speech I was thinking speech.
00:36:39 Athena Cordero
Yeah, what you know, how does that work?
00:36:41 Athena Cordero
Give me an example of What the speech therapist?
00:36:46 Athena Cordero
Would maybe do or look for your a baby say like I don't know three three to five months old.
00:36:53 Lina Myrvold
Yeah
00:36:55 Lina Myrvold
I'm going to call out my team because I know that they're going to listen to this.
00:37:01 Lina Myrvold
They should be here or come for their own, you know, podcast because because that is a world and it's a whole world of itself.
00:37:12 Lina Myrvold
But mainly we are looking at babies communicate with us all the time, whether it be through body movement or vocalizations, crying,
00:37:25 Lina Myrvold
that kind of a thing.
00:37:26 Lina Myrvold
So when we look at speech, let's say, we are looking at that communication.
00:37:33 Lina Myrvold
Are they communicating?
00:37:34 Lina Myrvold
They're not saying words.
00:37:35 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:37:36 Lina Myrvold
We know that.
00:37:37 Lina Myrvold
We hear the word speech and we think words.
00:37:39 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:37:40 Lina Myrvold
Right?
00:37:40 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:37:41 Lina Myrvold
But it really is communication.
00:37:42 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:37:43 Lina Myrvold
And communication doesn't have to be words.
00:37:46 Lina Myrvold
And so there's that piece.
00:37:47 Lina Myrvold
There's also a feeding piece that's connected to
00:37:53 Lina Myrvold
speech pathology.
00:37:54 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:37:55 Lina Myrvold
So can a baby chew and swallow and move food, you know, to the back of their mouths and those kinds of things.
00:38:02 Lina Myrvold
If we're talking really early, like strong start age, the bottle, can they suck and get milk out of a bottle?
00:38:11 Lina Myrvold
can they do that whole cycle of suck, swallow, breathe?
00:38:14 Lina Myrvold
Because we have to breathe while you're up your mom and all this stuff that can get interrupted with some of the babies that we get.
00:38:22 Lina Myrvold
And so that's all tied into speech.
00:38:25 Lina Myrvold
Wow.
00:38:26 Athena Cordero
Okay, I needed the example.
00:38:28 Athena Cordero
I just wanted to make sure folks understood.
00:38:30 Athena Cordero
And because in an episode that we did with Annie Smolinski, I don't know if you got a chance to hear that, she was talking about speech.
00:38:38 Athena Cordero
And we learned the difference between words and communication.
00:38:42 Athena Cordero
And so that sounded like what you were talking about here.
00:38:44 Athena Cordero
I just wanted to make sure I got it right.
00:38:46 Athena Cordero
But you're right, there is a lot of communication that's not verbal, especially for a baby that young.
00:38:52 Athena Cordero
And then I also wanted to just, you know, take the time to remind us that this is for a child that has been determined to need something based on a situation they're in, right, where they have all of these adults, that small, mighty army of people, trying to get them on the right track so that they can
00:39:08 Athena Cordero
can go through school age, experiences in a way that sets them up for success earlier if they did have kind of a rough start.
00:39:20 Athena Cordero
It sounds like we're trying to identify earlier and then change, like you said, change the trajectory of their experience as much as we can, which I mean is awesome, right?
00:39:29 Athena Cordero
It's awesome.
00:39:30 Athena Cordero
Okay, so you've got the strong start protocol now in place.
00:39:35 Athena Cordero
Do you have
00:39:37 Athena Cordero
I don't know, even because it's hard.
00:39:38 Athena Cordero
I mean, you guys get to work with these babies and then you hope they go off and never need you again.
00:39:43 Athena Cordero
Like you said, they never need us again.
00:39:45 Athena Cordero
Do you have any success stories or anything that you can recall or that comes up for you in this process with starting Strong Start that just kind of sticks with you that you can share?
00:39:55 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, well, so the majority of the infants that we get have been prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol.
00:40:03 Lina Myrvold
They have been removed from the biological
00:40:07 Lina Myrvold
parent, they are involved in the child welfare system.
00:40:13 Lina Myrvold
So that's how we identify the need early.
00:40:19 Lina Myrvold
Then they get removed at birth, let's say, and then they get placed in a caregiver's home, whether it be a relative caregiver or foster home.
00:40:29 Lina Myrvold
And
00:40:32 Lina Myrvold
And so that's how they kind of come to us, majority.
00:40:34 Lina Myrvold
I'm not even sure I can recall a biological one month old that's come to us yet.
00:40:40 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:40:42 Lina Myrvold
So we have that early attachment break, right?
00:40:45 Lina Myrvold
And then we throw in all these people.
00:40:47 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:40:47 Lina Myrvold
So we try to, we try to not interact as much.
00:40:51 Lina Myrvold
We really encourage the caregiver and child dyad to do all the touching and holding and services.
00:40:59 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:41:01 Lina Myrvold
But, and so because of the foster care system, we tend to get repeat parents, right?
00:41:13 Lina Myrvold
Because a baby will come into their home and maybe get reunited, or they will get a second baby, or they just, they only get babies or whatever.
00:41:21 Lina Myrvold
So we tend to see families come through multiple times.
00:41:28 Lina Myrvold
So we hear success stories a lot, actually, which is kind of nice.
00:41:32 Lina Myrvold
And I don't, I mean, I don't wanna, all of our babies are so unique and all of their experiences are so unique.
00:41:39 Lina Myrvold
I'm not even sure that I could describe one without it being identifiable.
00:41:43 Lina Myrvold
But what I can say is that we have had parents come back, let's say with a second baby and give us the
00:41:56 Lina Myrvold
update on the baby that we had done previously and they are successful in school and they're making friends and they're able to attach their caregiver, whether it be them or the next caregiver, maybe they went back home, maybe they went to a relative caregiver.
00:42:10 Lina Myrvold
They still connect with them even after something like that happens if they get, you know, remove, not remove, but move on from their home and they still stay connected, right?
00:42:22 Lina Myrvold
So this bond and this attachment, I mean, we really,
00:42:25 Lina Myrvold
As human beings, we really only need that one secure attachment in childhood to change our ability to attach and relate to other people for the rest of our lives.
00:42:38 Lina Myrvold
And so if that be this person who was put in their life for this period, then it's that person.
00:42:45 Lina Myrvold
And so that's our job is to get in there and help them understand the importance of that relationship and the importance of that connection.
00:42:52 Lina Myrvold
for that baby to be successful later in life, even if they don't stay with them.
00:42:58 Athena Cordero
Wow, that's huge, Lina.
00:43:01 Athena Cordero
Just even in the perspective that you give it right now, to have some of those parents return with another baby to give you kind of a glimpse, because we don't know what happens after, right?
00:43:12 Athena Cordero
They come to us,
00:43:13 Athena Cordero
that we provide this service or this support and then we hope that they go off and everything works.
00:43:19 Athena Cordero
But for you to be able to hear from some of the parents that it absolutely did work, I'm sure you guys like fill up with all the good feels because of that.
00:43:28 Lina Myrvold
Yeah, it's nice.
00:43:29 Lina Myrvold
I mean, you know, it's funny, I've been working with children for 25 years and I've worked with all ages.
00:43:36 Lina Myrvold
I landed here in babies really early on, but
00:43:41 Lina Myrvold
But in the beginning, I worked with a lot of teenagers.
00:43:44 Lina Myrvold
And teenagers will come back and tell you, and tell you how successful they are.
00:43:50 Lina Myrvold
But babies, these babies aren't going to remember that.
00:43:53 Athena Cordero
They're not going to remember the army of folks that were around them, right?
00:43:56 Athena Cordero
That's true.
00:43:57 Athena Cordero
You won't have an infant, you know, call you by whatever name you went by when they were 14 out of the community to tell you how things are going.
00:44:06 Lina Myrvold
That's true.
00:44:07 Lina Myrvold
And I should actually clarify, they're not going to have a conscious memory of us.
00:44:11 Athena Cordero
Gotcha.
00:44:12 Lina Myrvold
But there will be this visceral memory.
00:44:14 Lina Myrvold
So, you know, going way back to when we started here today about what are some of the misconceptions.
00:44:20 Lina Myrvold
And one of the misconceptions is babies aren't going to remember this time.
00:44:24 Lina Myrvold
But we have this visceral memory where when this child goes to attach to another person, even in adulthood, in relationships or anything like that, then
00:44:38 Lina Myrvold
they are going to pull from these early connections, these early bonds, these early attachments, because that's how they learned how to connect.
00:44:46 Lina Myrvold
Now I'm going to know how to connect to another adult in my adulthood.
00:44:50 Lina Myrvold
And so it may not be a conscious memory of us and what happened and how we brought them along.
00:44:56 Lina Myrvold
But subconscious, it will be a subconscious visceral memory, you know, and which goes all the way back to that very first paper goes in the nursery.
00:45:06 Lina Myrvold
saying that, you know, we kind of repeat these patterns and we don't know why.
00:45:13 Athena Cordero
Right.
00:45:13 Lina Myrvold
I don't know why.
00:45:14 Lina Myrvold
Sometimes my mother comes out of my, you know, I'm talking to my kid and my mother comes out of my, I call it a Grammyism, right?
00:45:22 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:45:22 Lina Myrvold
And so, you know, we don't know why, but it's because that's how we were taught.
00:45:28 Lina Myrvold
That's what was ingrained in us and it's going to come through the good and the bad.
00:45:32 Athena Cordero
Yeah, no, okay, that's,
00:45:35 Athena Cordero
That's a really good point, and I'm glad you took us back to the beginning of this and kind of brought us full circle with that.
00:45:44 Athena Cordero
If there was anything, and you gave us a lot of really good information, Lina, but if there was just one thing, maybe two, that you think or you hope people take away from the information today, whether they're a parent, a caregiver, a professional, whoever they are,
00:46:02 Athena Cordero
about nurturing mental health from the very beginning of life.
00:46:06 Athena Cordero
What would you want them to take away from this?
00:46:09 Lina Myrvold
Well, I would say, we get entrusted, whether we are the ones who give birth, whether we get a baby a different way, we are entrusted with these little babies.
00:46:26 Lina Myrvold
They can't take care of themselves.
00:46:29 Lina Myrvold
We are, the caregiver role is so important to that little baby because that's all they have.
00:46:37 Lina Myrvold
Without us, if we walked out that door, the baby wouldn't survive.
00:46:41 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:46:41 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:46:42 Lina Myrvold
That is how they get their food and their water and their shelter at the very base level.
00:46:49 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:46:49 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:46:50 Lina Myrvold
Yeah.
00:46:50 Lina Myrvold
We add on to that this nurturing and the love and the kindness and the,
00:46:56 Lina Myrvold
and the connection and the attachment and the bond, and that adds our next level, you know, and we keep, we keep building on that until they are adults and can go out and be, you know, productive humans in this world.
00:47:15 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:47:16 Lina Myrvold
Um, that early, early zero to the
00:47:23 Lina Myrvold
three, really, we work with zero to four months, right?
00:47:27 Lina Myrvold
So we're super early.
00:47:29 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:47:31 Lina Myrvold
Is so important to the rest of that child's life, if we think about it, even our own lives, right, how important that early connection was to how we function today, whether we think that it's a good functioning or a bad functioning, that that connection and that
00:47:49 Lina Myrvold
that time period is so important to the rest of this child's life.
00:47:53 Lina Myrvold
As professionals, when we come in and we help, we help this caregiver and this child dyad make those connections and have that attachment and change that trajectory for the child so that they can be successful, again, humans.
00:48:12 Lina Myrvold
As
00:48:13 Lina Myrvold
parents and professionals, we have the same goal of working ourselves out of a job.
00:48:18 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:48:18 Lina Myrvold
Oh, you're right.
00:48:19 Lina Myrvold
That's right.
00:48:19 Lina Myrvold
I mean, we raise children so that they can go and be and live without us.
00:48:24 Lina Myrvold
They're dependent on us from the beginning and they go and we want them to be independent in, you know, in the end.
00:48:31 Lina Myrvold
Same professionally, you know, in mental health.
00:48:36 Lina Myrvold
We get children that come in and need our help and need us to help guide them and their caregivers into this relationship.
00:48:45 Lina Myrvold
And then hopefully we don't, they don't need us anymore.
00:48:51 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:48:51 Lina Myrvold
Right?
00:48:51 Lina Myrvold
So we're here to work ourselves out of a job.
00:48:53 Lina Myrvold
I guess that's the biggest, that's the thing.
00:48:55 Athena Cordero
Yeah.
00:48:56 Athena Cordero
I mean, that's really powerful though, Lina, when you think about it, because whether, like you said, it's biological parent or somebody, you know, professionally working to support.
00:49:05 Athena Cordero
At some point, you want them to have had enough of the replacement of those positive things and that positive trajectory you can set them on to where they can regulate and function and go on to live productive lives on their own, which is what all of us want, right, for kiddos.
00:49:23 Athena Cordero
This has been really interesting for me.
00:49:25 Athena Cordero
The only thing that I think I'm going to add is I'm going to just challenge any caregiver or parent at home
00:49:35 Athena Cordero
with an infant to look at their baby to see if they are reciprocating the playtime.
00:49:41 Athena Cordero
That was huge for me.
00:49:42 Athena Cordero
If I'm ready to go play and you're kind of looking away and I'm trying to force this playtime or this time right now, I think that's the challenge I think for folks is to see what the baby, are they giving you the eye contact?
00:49:56 Athena Cordero
Did they smile?
00:49:57 Athena Cordero
Did they pop their eyes open, you know, ready for what you're trying to give them?
00:50:00 Athena Cordero
And if they didn't,
00:50:02 Athena Cordero
How did you respond?
00:50:03 Athena Cordero
Did you push it or did you wait and then try to come back later or recognize when they are doing those things and then give it to them when they need it?
00:50:12 Athena Cordero
I can't wait to go mess with the folks I know who have kids, if they have babies.
00:50:17 Lina Myrvold
And that's what, you know, that is, if not the, it's one of the very first sessions that we provide in Strong Start, is this cues.
00:50:30 Lina Myrvold
understanding of what is my baby trying to tell me?
00:50:35 Athena Cordero
Right.
00:50:35 Lina Myrvold
And am I able to pick up on those cues and then respond appropriately?
00:50:42 Athena Cordero
Right.
00:50:43 Lina Myrvold
So, you know, I mean, I could notice the cues and not respond appropriately.
00:50:47 Lina Myrvold
So that is one of the very, very early on sessions that the Strong Start team has with the parent because
00:50:56 Lina Myrvold
It's hard even to move on in treatment without that knowledge and without knowing what the communication is, especially since a particular child.
00:51:04 Athena Cordero
It sounds like you're working very much with the caregiver to do the things.
00:51:08 Athena Cordero
So if they can't recognize it or...
00:51:12 Athena Cordero
learn it, then it would be hard, I would imagine, to even move forward.
00:51:16 Lina Myrvold
Oh, yeah.
00:51:16 Lina Myrvold
I mean, you're not going to hand a team of folks who are infant mental health specialists a baby and then go get coffee and come back and pick up your baby, right?
00:51:27 Lina Myrvold
I mean, because the baby can't be like, okay, so today the team told me we need to make eye contact and we need to play more.
00:51:36 Lina Myrvold
Babies can't do that.
00:51:37 Lina Myrvold
We have to work with the caregiver.
00:51:40 Lina Myrvold
Because we're still in that phase of without the caregiver, this baby is not going to develop appropriately, period.
00:51:49 Athena Cordero
Wow, Lina.
00:51:50 Athena Cordero
So this has been super, super helpful.
00:51:54 Athena Cordero
I learned a lot sitting here listening.
00:51:56 Athena Cordero
I always learn a lot when I talk to you.
00:51:57 Athena Cordero
So what I do want is to make sure that we can make some resources available for folks on the website.
00:52:07 Athena Cordero
After listening to this, you did mention that there are some development charts or things
00:52:10 Athena Cordero
that we can share.
00:52:11 Athena Cordero
So maybe, you know, you can get us some of those.
00:52:13 Athena Cordero
We can put that up so that folks have something to refer to.
00:52:16 Athena Cordero
If anybody had any questions about Strong Start or just the information that you shared today, is there a contact information or a certain process or protocol we have here with, you know, with SELPA, the Desert Mountain Children's Center, to where they can get in contact with someone or, you know, get more information about Strong Start or just infant mental health.
00:52:37 Lina Myrvold
Absolutely.
00:52:38 Lina Myrvold
I mean,
00:52:39 Lina Myrvold
folks can just reach out to me.
00:52:40 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:52:42 Lina Myrvold
We typically, if a baby comes in now zero to four months, then they typically get into this Strong Start program protocol.
00:52:56 Lina Myrvold
They get to get the Strong Start protocol.
00:52:58 Lina Myrvold
Yes.
00:52:58 Lina Myrvold
And
00:53:01 Lina Myrvold
But yeah, certainly if people had questions, there are videos that you can watch that are not mine.
00:53:09 Lina Myrvold
They're by pathways that will show side by side infants at two months or four months, the typical and atypical development.
00:53:18 Lina Myrvold
If you wanted like to actually get a visual, what does it look like?
00:53:22 Lina Myrvold
What is this, you know, not being able to lift my arms and legs off the ground?
00:53:26 Lina Myrvold
What does that actually look like?
00:53:27 Lina Myrvold
What does averting gaze look like?
00:53:29 Lina Myrvold
Or bringing, bringing.
00:53:31 Athena Cordero
Yeah.
00:53:32 Lina Myrvold
So these things you can actually see on those videos.
00:53:37 Lina Myrvold
And there's, you know, the, I guess my infant mental health guru, Bruce Perry.
00:53:46 Lina Myrvold
Okay.
00:53:47 Lina Myrvold
So he's got this, you know, breath of work because he's developmental brain development, you know, kind of expert.
00:53:57 Lina Myrvold
And
00:54:00 Lina Myrvold
And then, you know, trauma also, you know, this is all kind of a mixture of different theories.
00:54:07 Lina Myrvold
So there's this idea of trauma and visceral memory and how we bring that forward into life from our own experiences.
00:54:18 Lina Myrvold
And so Bessel van der Kolk has a book called The Body Keeps a Score, and that talks about this trauma and this visceral kind of, you know,
00:54:27 Lina Myrvold
what we carry on in life subconsciously.
00:54:32 Lina Myrvold
And yes, I will get you the development chart that we pass that we usually go over with families and just to see where the kids are because we can't just look at a development chart and go, okay, this baby's zero to three months.
00:54:47 Lina Myrvold
This is exactly where they're supposed to be, right?
00:54:49 Lina Myrvold
We have to we have to take every baby and family that comes to us
00:54:54 Lina Myrvold
and look at them individually and figure out where is this baby?
00:54:59 Lina Myrvold
Right.
00:55:00 Lina Myrvold
What is this baby doing?
00:55:01 Lina Myrvold
Where should this baby be?
00:55:02 Lina Myrvold
Which is why when we do our clinic days and they get their testing from our developmental neuropsychologist and the speech testing and the OT testing, we get to get a kind of a developmental age.
00:55:14 Lina Myrvold
We know where to start with them.
00:55:16 Athena Cordero
Developmental age, not physical.
00:55:17 Lina Myrvold
Developmental age, not physical age, because we have this.
00:55:22 Lina Myrvold
What Doctor Kitty Fryer Randall likes to say, this, you know, this gap in between the frustration gap in between where a baby...
00:55:34 Lina Myrvold
we think they should be based on their age and where they actually are based on their developmental age.
00:55:38 Lina Myrvold
So it's a frustration gap, this is what Dr.
00:55:40 Lina Myrvold
Kitty calls it.
00:55:41 Athena Cordero
I love that.
00:55:41 Athena Cordero
It's like, so basically what's on paper versus what you see in real life.
00:55:44 Athena Cordero
Correct.
00:55:45 Athena Cordero
Gotcha.
00:55:45 Athena Cordero
Okay, all of that, all of those resources, I think that'd be super helpful for folks.
00:55:50 Athena Cordero
They can go do a little bit of their own digging and get some actual visual examples, like you were saying in the videos.
00:55:56 Athena Cordero
We'll make sure that we can make that available on the website.
00:55:58 Athena Cordero
Okay.
00:55:59 Athena Cordero
This has been great, Lina.
00:56:00 Athena Cordero
Thank you so much.
00:56:01 Lina Myrvold
Thank you.
00:56:02 Lina Myrvold
Thanks for having me.
00:56:03 Lina Myrvold
It was fun.
00:56:04 Outro
Before we wrap up, we want to remind you that if you or someone is facing a crisis, help is available.
00:56:13 Outro
You are not alone.
00:56:15 Outro
If it's an emergency, please call 911.
00:56:19 Outro
For immediate support, you can reach out to the crisis and suicide hotline by dialing 988.
00:56:26 Outro
Remember, taking the first step to ask for help is a sign of strength.
00:56:31 Outro
Stay safe.
00:56:32 Outro
Take care of yourself.
00:56:34 Outro
and take care of each other.
00:56:36 Outro
Until next time, be well.
00:56:40 Athena Cordero
What if one conversation could change everything?
00:56:45 Teaser
California has the most foster youth.
00:56:47 Teaser
We're one or two in the whole nation of the number of foster youth.
00:56:50 Teaser
There's about a million foster youth in the United States.
00:56:53 Teaser
50,000 of them are just LA County and us.
00:56:56 Athena Cordero
A lot of people think, oh, I can't do it.
00:56:57 Athena Cordero
I could never be a foster parent.
00:56:59 Athena Cordero
I get too attached.
00:56:59 Teaser
But that's what you want.
00:57:01 Teaser
You might be the only person in that child's life who attaches
00:57:04 Teaser
to them because I fear that once they leave, they're not going to have everyone providing for them.
00:57:09 Teaser
They want to be something.
00:57:10 Teaser
They've come from trauma, giving them a different perspective on what life could be for them.
00:57:15 Teaser
We're still regular kids, but we have trauma, and that's something that comes with that extra baggage.
00:57:22 Teaser
And the one thing that I did notice being in the foster system is you experience a lot of neglect.
00:57:25 Teaser
That impacted me for the best because it showed me what I never will be.
00:57:29 Teaser
You can't help a foster youth if you're not able to identify them.
00:57:32 Teaser
If you see something
00:57:34 Teaser
say something.
00:57:34 Teaser
Children need us.
00:57:35 Teaser
They need us to be the eyes and ears and to speak up for them.
00:57:38 Teaser
I'll never forget the three knocks on our door.
00:57:40 Teaser
And when that door reopens, two police officers are standing out there and they're ready to take me and my siblings.
00:57:46 Teaser
We're excited to share that this is just the beginning.
00:57:49 Teaser
We're rolling out a mini-series dedicated to walking alongside the foster community from every angle.
00:57:55 Teaser
You'll hear from incredible guests.
00:57:56 Teaser
Their stories are honest, powerful, and full of insight.
00:57:59 Teaser
They share the real, unfiltered experience, the joys, the struggles, and the moment that changed lives.
00:58:05 Teaser
Stay with us and join the journey.
00:58:07 Teaser
See you next time.
