New bilingual series helps parents use emotional connection to respond to tantrums, withdrawal and everyday stress

NEW YORK, June 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection today announced the launch of Tips for Connection, a new free video series designed to help parents of children ages 0–5 build emotional connection during the everyday moments that often feel most difficult.

The short-form videos, each approximately two to five minutes long, are available in English and Spanish through the Welch Center’s online workshop series. Additional languages will be added over time.

A Practical Tool for Early Relational Health

Tips for Connection is designed for busy parents looking for immediate, practical guidance when a child is upset, withdrawn, overwhelmed, melting down or struggling to regulate emotions.

The Welch Center’s work is grounded in a simple but powerful scientific insight: emotional connection is not merely a warm feeling between parent and child. It is a biologically important state that helps parents and young children co-regulate stress, behavior and emotions.

That insight is central to early relational health: young children do not learn to regulate emotions alone. They learn it first by connecting emotionally to parents and co-regulating emotions together.

From Control to Connection

The new series helps parents move beyond the idea that young children should simply learn to control themselves. Instead, it gives parents concrete ways to restore connection first, so children learn to calm and reconnect together.

Topics Include:

• Emotional co-regulation versus self-regulation
• What to do when a child is withdrawn
• Responding to tantrums
• How parents and children can share a full range of emotions
• Connection is a changeable state not a fixed trait between parents and children

“Parents often feel pressure to correct behavior via teaching or using reward and punishment strategies, especially during tantrums, meltdowns or moments of withdrawal,” said Martha G. Welch, MD, founder of the Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection. “But emotional behavior in young children is best co-regulated through emotionally connecting with their parents. When parents learn how to create a connected state with their child, it changes the emotional experience for both of them, and the desired behavior follows.”

Free Resources , including free EmoteConnect app

The launch expands the Welch Center’s growing library of free parent resources and builds on the Center’s mission to bring the Welch Method from the research lab to the living room.

“At some point, every parent faces the same question: what do I do right now?” said Marc E. Jaffe, Senior Advisor at the Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection. “These videos are short, practical and grounded in groundbreaking science. They are meant to meet parents in real life, in the moments when connection can make the greatest difference.”

The Center also expects to launch EmoteConnect, a free mobile app, in the coming months. The app will include much of the same parent-facing content available on the website, along with workshops and additional features designed to help families strengthen emotional connection over time.

Parents and caregivers can access Tips for Connection through the Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection’s online workshop series at emotionalconnection.org/parentworkshop.

About the Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection

The Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing child health and development through parent-child emotional connection. Founded by Martha G. Welch, MD and grounded in her clinical practice treating behavioral disorders and decades of research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, the Center provides tools, training and evidence-based programs that empower families to build lasting, loving, healthy and mutually fulfilling relationships.

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SOURCE Martha G. Welch Center for Emotional Connection