Martha Nelson, 63; Children’s Therapist, Day-Care Consultant

Martha Streiff Nelson, a children’s therapist and nationally recognized advisor on mental health consulting for day-care centers, has died. She was 63.

Nelson died Sunday at her Pasadena home after a two-year struggle with ovarian cancer, said her husband, Bryce Nelson, a professor of journalism at USC’s Annenberg School.

Martha Nelson had spent most of the last decade providing child development counseling to day-care centers in the Redondo Beach school district and in San Bernardino. She worked under a program created by the Cleveland-based Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development and funded by TRW Inc.

In 2001, the psychoanalytically oriented therapist described her efforts in a book chapter, “Mental Health Consultations in the Preschool Day-Care Center.”

Barbara Streeter, associate director of the Perkins Center extension division, said Nelson’s work “was integral to the success of this unique day-care consulting project.... She has uniquely helped develop the preschool effort in Southern California and the nation.”

Born in Lewiston, Idaho, the former Martha Streiff married Nelson there in 1961. She was educated at Harvard University, the University of Munich in Germany, the University of Oxford in England, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, the Baltimore-D.C. Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Graduate Center for Child Development and Psychotherapy in Los Angeles.

Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, she taught German and English at inner-city schools in Washington, D.C., and at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nelson is survived by her husband, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post; her mother, Elinor Streiff; two children, Kristin and Matt; three siblings, Julia Evans and Katrina and Fritz Streiff; and a granddaughter.

A memorial service is planned Jan. 18 at All Saints Church in Pasadena.

The family has asked that memorial contributions be sent to that church at 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101; the Graduate Center for Child Development, 6464 Wilshire Blvd., Room 999, Los Angeles, CA 90048; or the Hanna Perkins Center, 2084 Cornell Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44106.