Our Therapeutic Nursery

The monumental task of simply surviving poverty puts an enormous physical and emotional toll on both parents and children. The "surround of force" they feel sends alarming waves of stress that swell unabated, day after day. The level of stress they experience as part of their day-to-day survival has been described as "toxic stress" by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Poverty is a strong reinforcing factor in the accumulation of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and subsequent toxic stress correlated with unfavorable health outcomes in adulthood.... Such cumulative exposure to adversity causes stress that behaves as a toxin in the developing brain of a child.” [North Carolina Medical Journal, March 2018, Michelle Hughes and Whitney Tucker]

When children experience this type of stress, it slows down the neural connections that develop in a child’s brain the first five years of their lives. Additionally, the parents' own fears and insecurities around food, rent, auto upkeep, employment, and supportive relationships, create further hardships that ripple throughout the family’s sense of well being.

Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, says excessive levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, disrupt the formation of synaptic connections between cells in the developing brain – and even affect its blood supply. “They literally disrupt the brain architecture,” says Shonkoff.

Starting from birth, a child’s brain rapidly begins to develop, but it is experience dependent. Best for baby is for those experiences to be repetitive and sequenced about the same each day. What if uncertainties prevent scheduled and repetitive events on any given day? What if you don't know where you'll sleep tonight, not because you're homeless, but because your Mama has to work the night shift off and on. What if someone comes when you cry one night but isn’t available the next?

Without appropriate early intervention, neural connections become impaired in ways that can last a lifetime. The stress response system is just one example. When the brain is sent into fight, flight, or freeze several times a day, the stress response system becomes hyper-reactive to the point that it takes less and less to set it off. The result is a child who is often unable to control their behavior, make good choices, focus in class, or have academic success.

Talitha Koum’s goal is to send our families’ treasured children into public school at Pre-K or Kindergarten with a brain organized for learning, the emotional strength to self-regulate, along with problem solving skills and compassion for others. It is the role of our therapeutic nursery to shape each child’s day with consistency of loving care, sensitivity to their individuality, and opportunities for self-expression. Learn more about our curriculum.

The positive outcomes Talitha Koum brings rest firmly in the day-by-day work of our committed staff of leadership clinicians and therapeutic interventionist teachers. Their incomes do not match the critical load they carry, which we regret. Yet even that funding would not be possible apart from the generosity of our strong core of donors, our faithful Rise Up! Waco sponsors, and the foundations who support our mission.

Grantmakers have included Still Water Foundation, Cooper Foundation, The Bernard & Audre Rapoport Foundation, Community Development Block Grant (Waco City Council approved), Victory Noll Empowerment Grants, First Woodway (Baptist) Community Grants, Independent Financial, Baylor Philanthropy & the Public Good class, First Presbyterian Mission Partnership, and the Bowen Family Foundation. We are ever grateful!