Professionals
Resources For Parents With Babies
The following resources for parents with babies are described below and are available on this site for downloading, customizing and printing:
- When your BABY can't stop CRYING brochures: standard tri-fold, plain language brochure English version, and translated versions
- Ask for Help Resources
- Crying Plan
- Crying Display
When your BABY can't stop CRYING brochures help parents and caregivers to:
- better understand infant crying
- learn strategies on how to deal with stressful crying situations.
When your BABY can't stop CRYING standard tri-fold brochure
When your BABY can't stop CRYING plain language brochure
For When your BABY can't stop CRYING brochures in other languages, click here.
The Ask for Help magnet/sticker, mini-poster (standard and plain language), and round sticker were all developed to serve the same purpose: To encourage parents to ask for help with infant crying. The three differ in terms of:
- the amount of information provided
- who the parent are referred to for help
- how and where each resource would be used.
Ask for Help magnet/sticker
Ask for Help mini-poster
Ask for Help mini-poster - plain language
Ask for Help round sticker
- Ask for Help round sticker -(colour, single sticker per page)
- Ask for Help round sticker - (colour, multiple stickers per page) The crying stickers are 1 1/2 inches each. The label sheet has been formatted to print on Avery Round Labels # 08293. Depending on your printer, you may need to adjust the page margins to have the labels print correctly.
The Crying Plan is a pro-active tool that you can use to help parents and other caregivers prepare for infant crying. Encourage parents to personalize the plan by picking infant soothing and self-calming techniques to try, as well as filling in the phone numbers of people they could call for help. In addition to filling out a crying plan for their own reference, parents can use the plan as an opener to talk about crying and SBS with the other people who look after their baby. Sharing their plan is a way that parents can give others a list of what works to soothe their baby and who to call for help. The Crying Plan can also be put on the fridge with peelable magnetic strips, or even other fridge magnets already there, for easy access for the parents as well as babysitters and other caregivers.
A blank crying plan is also included. This can be double-sided with the enhanced Crying Plan for use as an exercise with parents. Parents can fill out the blank one with lots of space to include their personal support systems and strategies for coping. The Blank Crying Plan is not a PDF document and can easily be adapted to suit the parent's needs. Adding a section in the outer circle for things like "Five strengths I have as a parent" or "Five things I love about my child" all serve to remind the parent that they do have strengths and abilities and that not all aspects of parenting are as hard as the times they may be experiencing right at this moment.
For Coping with Crying - Guidelines for Assessment and Using the Crying Plan, click here.
The Crying Display is another way to communicate information about infant crying and coping with crying, and to get parents talking about infant crying and asking for help if needed.
Customizing Resources Most of the resources for parents with babies that include the phone numbers for Health Link Alberta also provide two "unlocked" spaces. These spaces allow resources to be customized prior to printing as follows:
- One unlocked space is for the inclusion of local information, such as organizations' logos and/or contact information, and/or the recognition of financial sponsors.
- The other unlocked space is so that the Child Abuse Hotline number can be included on the resource. If included, the Child Abuse Hotline information must be written as follows: If in crisis, call the Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-638-0715.
The communication department of many organizations and most professional printers have the Adobe Writer software needed to insert information into the unlocked spaces, click here for instructions.
All campaign resources and images on this web site may be printed and used for educational purposes in health, child and family services, enforcement and other not-for-profit settings in Alberta. All other reproductions, in whole or in part, require written permission from the Alberta SBS Prevention Network.
The above documents are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view. For a free download, click here.
