About Growing Kind Kids

Growing Kind Kids is the public education website of Charlotte Peterson, PhD, a licensed psychologist and author in Portland, Oregon, USA. The site publishes practical, evidence-informed guidance on mindful parenting, parent-infant attachment, gentle parenting, and positive discipline for expecting parents, new parents, caregivers, educators, and child psychologists.

Dr. Peterson specializes in positive pre- and postnatal experiences that optimize parent-infant attachment and prevent childhood emotional wounding. In addition to her private practice, she founded the Oregon Network for Infant Mental Health and served as Vice Chair on the State Advisory Board for Oregon's Healthy Start program.

She has traveled to over 60 countries with a special interest in parenting practices of non-violent cultures. Befriending indigenous people and living in their villages, she has observed caregiving that appears to grow more compassionate, peace-loving people. As an internationally known presenter, she has shared those findings at regional, national, and international conferences.

Her book, The Mindful Parent: Strategies from Peaceful Cultures to Raise Compassionate, Competent Kids, was published in 2015 by Skyhorse Publishing in New York and in 2017 in Korean by Ulysses Publishing Co. in Seoul. Growing Kind Kids collects the public teaching from that work: attachment-promoting practices, validation of toddlers' feelings, the difference between punishment and discipline, and Time-Ins rather than Time-Outs.

This site is an educational resource. It does not diagnose children, provide emergency mental-health care, or replace individualized psychotherapy. For clinical services, conference presentations, or an autographed copy of The Mindful Parent, use the Contact page. A longer professional biography is on Meet Dr. Charlotte. How we handle personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.