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Resources
Guides, articles, and tools for educators, families, and anyone who cares about young children.
Guides, articles, and tools for educators, families, and anyone who cares about young children.
You won’t find a generic download button here. Every resource we’ve developed is shared in conversation - sometimes a quick email, sometimes a call - because context matters, and a handout without a person behind it is rarely the thing you actually need.
This isn’t a gate. It’s a pace. Browse what’s below, and when something lands, reach out and we’ll send the version that fits your situation.
If you’re new to our work, begin with these. They’re short, jargon-light, and designed to meet you where you are.
A plain-language guide to understanding the framework and how it can help you connect with your child.
Read more →When a child hits, hides, or shuts down - they’re telling you something. An introduction to Emotionally Responsive Practice.
Read more →A comparison of three strengths-based approaches to supporting autistic children.
Read more →Not your typical supervision. A guide to understanding reflective practice and why the parallel process matters.
Read more →How personal teddy bears become emotional anchors that transform classroom culture.
Learn more →Longer-form reflections we come back to often. These are the pieces we’ll link future Field Notes posts into when the concepts show up in everyday life with young children.
On peek-a-boo, object permanence, and practiced trust. Why the disappearance-and-reappearance ritual is the first rehearsal for the drop-off — and for every reliable return that follows.
Read the essay →Why repetition is the good part. On serve-and-return, circles of communication, and what the sixteenth tickle is actually doing for a child’s brain — even when the adult is genuinely bored.
Read the essay →And what it doesn’t have to look like. On Magda Gerber, Emmi Pikler, and the difference between a real yes space and the Instagram version. A yes space is safety, not a styled shelf.
Read the essay →A curated list of the teachers we keep returning to. Books are linked to Firestorm Books & Coffee—an Asheville worker-owned bookstore we’d rather see you support than a big-box retailer.
Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools Can Heal, Creating Schools That Heal, and Bears, Bears Everywhere!—the originating texts for the BEAR Program and Bank Street’s ERP lineage.
Find at Firestorm →Playing and Reality. Where the language of transitional objects, the “good enough” parent, and the space between self and other all come from. Dense, lyrical, worth the work.
Find at Firestorm →Porges’s The Polyvagal Theory and Dana’s Anchored and The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy. The neuroscience of co-regulation, translated for clinical use. Dana is the warmer door in.
Find at Firestorm →Beyond Behaviors and Brain-Body Parenting. The most accessible bridge between polyvagal neuroscience and day-to-day practice. Rejects compliance-based models without moralizing.
Find at Firestorm →The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, and The Power of Showing Up. Interpersonal neurobiology for parents and educators in plain language, with scripts.
Find at Firestorm →The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter, You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, and the stories-and-storytelling practice that shaped a generation of early childhood teachers.
Find at Firestorm →From Neurons to Neighborhoods—the foundational science synthesis on early childhood development. Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child is the plain-language companion.
Find at Firestorm →The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and What Happened to You? (with Oprah Winfrey). The ChildTrauma Academy’s neurosequential model, made accessible through clinical stories.
Find at Firestorm →Too Scared to Cry. The foundational work on childhood trauma memory and post-traumatic play. Still the clearest thinking on why trauma play is not drama play.
Find at Firestorm →Play in Family Therapy and The Healing Power of Play. Family-systems play work for children who have experienced trauma, loss, or complex family dynamics.
Find at Firestorm →Levine’s Waking the Tiger and Badenoch’s The Heart of Trauma. Somatic Experiencing and interpersonal neurobiology for practitioners who work through the body first.
Find at Firestorm →Raising a Secure Child. The Circle of Security team’s parent-facing book—the one we most often hand to families coming out of a COSP group.
Find at Firestorm →“Using Toys to Support Infant-Toddler Learning and Development” (Young Children, NAEYC, 2011)—an article by our co-founder on how the objects in a room scaffold early communication.
Read at NAEYC →Short, warm episodes from the co-author of The Whole-Brain Child and The Power of Showing Up. Grounded in interpersonal neurobiology, delivered without jargon.
Find the podcast →Adam Young’s podcast on attachment, story work, and the healing of childhood trauma. Measured pace, clinically grounded, accessible to non-clinicians.
Listen →Richard Schwartz and collaborators on Internal Family Systems, attachment, and the science of being a body in relationship. For practitioners who want the adult-therapeutic register.
Listen →“A new way to think about the transition to motherhood.” The clearest public articulation of matrescence we know—linked in our parental ambivalence glossary entry.
Watch →Short videos on co-regulation, pathological demand avoidance, and working with dysregulated children. Clinically precise, delivered in plain language.
YouTube channel →Bank Street’s Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice posts talks, lectures, and classroom footage—including Koplow on why a bear is a doorway into a child’s feelings.
CERP resources →Organizations and tools we regularly recommend to families and educators.
National nonprofit with resources on infant and toddler development, policy, and practice.
Home of the Circle of Security parenting program - find groups, trainings, and resources.
Professional development and resources grounded in the emotionally responsive approach.
Evidence-based autism intervention that trains parents to be their child’s best play partner.
Resources, training, and technical assistance for implementing the Pyramid Model.
Local Smart Start partnership serving Buncombe County families and early childhood professionals.
NC’s hub for infant mental health workforce development and IMH-E® endorsement.
We’re happy to point you toward the right tools, trainings, and supports for your specific needs.
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