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Laurie Ann Thompson

Laurie Thompson

Unite for Children. Unite against AIDS.

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Unite for Chil­dren, Unite against AIDS is a glob­al Cam­paign to alert the world to the fact that chil­dren are miss­ing from the glob­al AIDS agen­da. It pro­vides a plat­form for urgent and sus­tained pro­grams, advo­ca­cy and fundrais­ing to lim­it the impact of HIV/AIDS on chil­dren and help halt the spread of the dis­ease. Pol­i­cy­mak­ers and the glob­al pub­lic must become aware that AIDS not only affect adults, but is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing affect on chil­dren through­out the world. Please find out more at http://www.unicef.org/uniteforchildren/index.html.

Keeping love alive after baby arrives

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Here’s one where I have some hands-on expe­ri­ence — main­tain­ing a healthy mar­riage after kids join the fam­i­ly. My extra­or­di­nary hus­band and I will cel­e­brate our 10th anniver­sary this year. We make time to care for each oth­er and our rela­tion­ship, as well as for our two young children.


“Keep­ing love alive after baby arrives”, Par­entMap, Sep­tem­ber 2005, pages 13–14

Book Review — Swimming with Maya

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I picked up this book because the pic­ture on the cov­er looks like my own daugh­ter. When I read the back notes and learned that she was dead, I quick­ly put it back down. I didn’t want to read about Eleanor Vincent’s dev­as­tat­ing loss. For some rea­son, though, I felt com­pelled to try to com­pre­hend her experience.

What I found was indeed dis­tress­ing, but inspi­ra­tional at the same time. The book is in many ways a post­mortem trib­ute to Vincent’s daugh­ter and an explo­ration of the heal­ing effects of organ dona­tion. Tak­en in its entire­ty, how­ev­er, this book is real­ly about a jour­ney through the process of heal­ing from a life­time of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­mas. The extreme grief over her daughter’s sud­den death and the strug­gle to cope with it lead Vin­cent down buried paths of pain going all the way back to her child­hood. She emerges trans­formed. She lost her daugh­ter, but there­in found her­self, and we can’t help but applaud her success.

Jogging? Ugh.

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I love hik­ing, but my bike has been parked for years and jog­ging has nev­er been my thing. To look at me is to clear­ly see that I am not a great author­i­ty on fit­ness. Nev­er­the­less, I accept­ed an assign­ment for an arti­cle on exer­cis­ing out­doors with a child under two. Yes, I actu­al­ly got out the sneak­ers and went jog­ging for this one, all in the name of research. I broke a sweat but had a good time. If you look close­ly, you can see I also took the photo.

“Get out and get fit — with your baby”, Par­entMap, July 2005, page 13

A little stretch

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All of the arti­cles I’ve writ­ten before this one have been on top­ics that I already knew some­thing about or have had some first­hand expe­ri­ence with. Not this one! It was real­ly fun to do, though. Most of the research came from inter­views, so at first I was a lit­tle ner­vous. Every­body I talked to was so help­ful and inspir­ing, how­ev­er, that now I look for­ward to interviewing.

“Young teens need prac­tice man­ag­ing mon­ey”, Par­entMap, June 2005, pages 19–20

Tiny article, but extremely important

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Here is a very short arti­cle about a top­ic I am quite pas­sion­ate about, umbil­i­cal cord blood. Sev­er­al major hos­pi­tals in our area have teamed with the blood bank to col­lect and store the stem-cell rich cord blood and donate it to indi­vid­u­als in need through a nation­al reg­istry. Now some­thing that is typ­i­cal­ly dis­card­ed can instead save lives — magnificent.

“Donate cord blood and save a life”, BabyMap, Spring/Summer 2005, page 4

[Note: Because this ran in the Post­ings sec­tion, it was not archived on the Par­entMap web site, so there is no link to an online ver­sion. Sorry!]

A little flattery

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It’s always nice to receive com­pli­ments on your work. After doing the arti­cle and school pro­files for Judy’s Book Greater Seat­tle, Liesel Pol­lvogt wrote:

Thanks Laurie–you did an *awe­some* job on these. I was impressed with your quick turn-around, qual­i­ty of writ­ing, and how you instant­ly “got” what this was all about and were able to get start­ed with­out a bunch of ques­tions. Thanks again for your hard work and quick turn-around on this! There may well be work in the future if all goes well!

School profiles

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In March, I worked on writ­ing sum­maries for sev­er­al schools based on sur­vey data obtained from par­ents by Judy’s Book Greater Seat­tle, including:

  • 65th Street Coop­er­a­tive Preschool
  • The Clear­wa­ter School
  • Epiphany School
  • French Amer­i­can School of Puget Sound
  • Hill­top Ele­men­tary School
  • The Nova Project
  • Pike Mar­ket Child Care and Preschool
  • The Ever­green School
  • West­side School

I also wrote an arti­cle for them enti­tled “A great preschool means a great fit.”

[2007–06-01: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, they seem to have tak­en down all of their arti­cles and now have only com­mu­ni­ty reviews and prod­uct deals, so my school sum­maries and arti­cle appear to be no longer avail­able. Bro­ken links have been removed.]

Early language delays can hamper learning

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This arti­cle is about diag­nos­ing and treat­ing lan­guage delays before chil­dren enter school in order to pre­vent learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er. My daugh­ter, as well as the chil­dren of sev­er­al of my friends, are for­tu­nate to have received speech ther­a­py as preschoolers.

“Ear­ly lan­guage delays can ham­per learn­ing”, Par­entMap, Novem­ber 2004, page 13

Hike and seek with geocaching

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My first pub­lished arti­cle is about tak­ing kids geo­caching — a grow­ing sport where hand­held GPS sys­tems are used to locate hid­den “trea­sure”. Although we don’t go often enough, my fam­i­ly real­ly enjoys hik­ing, and geo­caching adds a nice twist to help keep the lit­tle ones moti­vat­ed. The Pacif­ic North­west is a par­tic­u­lar­ly great place for geo­caching, but you can try it just about any­where in the world.

“Hike and seek with geo­caching”, Par­entMap, August 2004, pages 22–23

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