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Kyle Pruett
Authority on Child Development
Kyle Pruett
Authority on Child Development
Biography
Kyle D. Pruett, M.D., a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at both the Child study Center and the School of Nursing at the Yale School of Medicine, conducted the country’s only long-term study of the impact on children of primary caretaking fathers. Author of several award-winning books, he also writes a blog for Psychology Today called “Once Upon a Child.” He hosted his own Lifetime Television series, Your Child Six to Twelve with Dr. Kyle Pruett, and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey to host her award-winning video, Begin With Love., and by Peter Jennings to appear with him on the Children’s Town Meetings after 9-11.
Dr. Pruett appears frequently in the New York Times, on National Public Radio and Television. An acclaimed speaker and teacher, he has addressed the National Press Club, educated judges, lawyers, business leaders and physicians in many states and countries, and advised dozens of legislators and policy makers at the state and national level. He is past-president of Zero to Three: The National Center for Infants, Toddlers and their Families, and a past member of the Sesame Workshop Board of Directors. Dr. Pruett is featured in the award-winning Zero to Three Podcast series “Little Kids, Big Questions,” the Goddard Schools ‘Parenting in Five” and the Johnson and Johnson video.
Educated in Indiana public schools, and Yale and Tufts Universities, he has served as a forensic consultant on child, parental and family development, paternal involvement, children’s mental health, creativity, and the effects of media, trauma, and divorce on children. He was Visiting Professor at University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Dr. Pruett co-founder of the Early Childhood Peace Consortium at Yale and the United Nations with recent presentations in Istanbul, Marrakech, Florence, and the UN/UNICEF in New York. He served as early childhood consultant to the Salama bint Hamdan Foundation, Abu Dhabi, UAE. A member of the Performing Arts Medicine Association, Dr. Pruett is also a gifted musician and regularly performs as a soloist in opera, oratorio and vocal chamber music. He is father to three daughters and one son, grandfather of four, and is married to Dr. Marsha Kline Pruett, the Maconda Brown Professor of Psychology and Social Work at Smith College.
Speaker Videos
The Importance of Fathers
Marriage and Parenting Choices
Good Wishes to Parents
Nature vs. Nurture
Speech Topics
Not Too Young to Notice: The Impact of Violence in Today’s World on Infants, Toddlers & Preschoolers
As a cascade of public and personal violence seems to fill the early years of this century, parents and caretakers alike find themselves facing harder and more frequent questions about the effects such events have or will have on their youngest children. Dr. Kyle Pruett reviews the newest psychological and neurobiological science to help us understand—in plain English—the mechanisms by which such experiences impact our children and ourselves, and their potential to change us and our worldview in both helpful and not-so-helpful ways. Active Q & A will focus on advice for conversations and behavior techniques that reduce the stress of such events on our youngest children. Dr. Pruett's audiences leave feeling better understood, and equipped to help their families adapt to this increasingly familiar 21st-century context.
New Horizons in Father Engagement: What to Do with Dad After You Have His Attention
Now that paternal involvement in the lives of children has been flagged as important to both child and family well being, many questions arise about how the nurturing world is to make room for father’s contributions, given that 1) those contributions differ from mother’s, and 2) child-centered systems (including the family, educational, and healthcare) aren’t currently shaped to easily integrate his contributions. Co-parenting no longer uniquely references parenting after divorce, serving instead as the marquis for the next phase of the real-world of paternal engagement—how parents tag team to raise their children across time, or not. Research and public policy are woven together with clinical realities of the diverse world of paternal and grandparental engagement where non-traditional arrangements expand almost daily. Advice is tendered throughout, ending with the signature audience-engaging Q&A of Kyle Pruett presentations.
Practical Neuroscience for Parents & Teachers
In this presentation, Kyle Pruett offers plain-English narration of the parts of the brain and gene science explosion that relate to changes in parenting and/or educating our children in the 21st century. His visually rich explanations highlight what we have now come to understand about the incredible power of experience to shape our genetic building blocks into unique assets and liabilities. Audiences leave this discussion with a new vocabulary, visual imagery of and respect for the plasticity of human growth and development across generations—the very bedrock of resilience. Respect for the limitations of our current understanding is highlighted during the Q & A.
A Global Perspective on Paternal Engagement
Why are so many cultures who are worried about the well being of their families turning to paternal engagement as a way to lower the risk of further family weakening? Strong evidence-based programs, illustrated by journalistic narratives and video images from Turkey, aboriginal reserves in Alberta, and mixed ethnic groupings in California, serve as base of discussion with audience about how co-parenting influences have the capacity to change communities for the better in profound unforeseen ways.
Why are so many cultures who are worried about the well being of their families turning to paternal engagement as a way to lower the risk of further family weakening? Strong evidence-based programs, illustrated by journalistic narratives and video images from Turkey, aboriginal reserves in Alberta, and mixed ethnic groupings in California, serve as base of discussion with audience about how co-parenting influences have the capacity to change communities for the better in profound unforeseen ways.
As neuroscience advances, we are provided with new images almost weekly of how experience shapes the growing brain. Music has emerged as a remarkably influential architect: enhancing, connecting, and strengthening parts of the brain that are crucial in memory, problem solving, cognition, and emotion management to name a few. How this happens to whom, when, and why makes an intriguing illustrated (visual and auditory) story, with Kyle Pruett tying Lady Gaga to Beethoven and beyond. Dr. Pruett’s lifelong experience as a professional musician makes the Q&A segment of this presentation both animated and full of useful advice for parents and educators of the listener/performer/educators.
Neglect: The Silent Epidemic
Kyle Pruett offers an eye-opening perspective on this most overlooked soon to be ‘discovered’, form of trauma in childhood. Pruett begins with a review of the compelling research on the power/prevalence of neglect, and how differently it impacts children and families than its more obvious (but frequent) partner, abuse. Forms of assessment and subsequent treatment are reviewed for efficacy, and why concerned clinicians and practitioners need to be thinking in more complex ways about this near epidemic is addressed with plenty of “what-to-do-about-it” advice and Q&A.
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