Blog

Not long after it ruled against helping domestic abuse victims abroad , the Trump administration is now creating a hostile environment for abused immigrants living in the United States who are seeking help. Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an immigrant woman and her 16-year-old son at a North Carolina courthouse after preparations for a case against the woman's ex-fiancé, whom the two accuse of domestic violence, ABC News reported . Immigration authorities made...

“I feel a sense of dread as bedtime rolls around. Here we go again.” A dad said this in our family therapy office one day, describing his son’s pre-bed antics. The child would go wild as bedtime approached, stubbornly ignoring his parents’ directions and melting down at the mention of pajamas. The parents felt frustrated and stumped. They asked us a question we hear a lot: Should they sternly send him to time out and take away his screen time when he acted this way (punishments)? Or set up a...

A new movement was born out of a Tweet from a colleague that I have never met. The Empty Desk Project is the unofficial working name and our hashtag is #NoMoreEmptyDesks. We have a name, a plan to begin, and a vision for what we want to accomplish - all from a Tweet. Here is the message that began this new movement: I read and re-read Kendrea's message and my mind jumped to involving students in painting desks to symbolize students who have been lost to gun violence. I thought of an art...

A program in Colorado that allows federal food aid recipients like Tamara Anne to double the amount they spend on locally grown produce is transforming impoverished families' eating habits. Fittingly, the program is called Double Up Food Bucks. "My teenager said to me recently: "Hey, mom, I want you to know I really like fruit more now," recounted Anne, as she plopped reddish-orange Palisade peaches into a cream canvas bag. "With Double Up Food Bucks, we've been getting a few starters, and...

W hen two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013, children in the city were paying attention. In day cares and schools, youngsters told their teachers they couldn’t go to the city anymore because of the bad people there, and that they couldn’t run races because they would get hurt. But a group of Boston student-teachers was prepared to respond to just these types of fears among young children. They attended Wheelock College, a teacher training school in the city, and had...

It’s expensive to be poor. And few places in higher education feel that more acutely than historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), where endowments are typically smaller and enrollments have fluctuated wildly over the past decade. Now, to be clear, the financial misfortune of black colleges does not rest squarely on their shoulders. Born out of necessity primarily after the Civil War to educate black people who were shut out of most other colleges, the institutions have been...

In July, a group of advocates from across California met in Sacramento, just blocks from the State Capitol, for the Next Generation Fellowship , a six-day leadership development and policy advocacy training for emerging community leaders. Amid differences in age, race/ethnicity and gender, each of the 15 fellows share a powerful connection: They have been directly impacted by the justice system. The Next Generation Fellowship recognizes that the true costs of incarceration are felt by those...

There's no shortage of statistics about the depth of America's opioid epidemic — there were 72,000 overdose deaths just last year — but numbers don't tell the whole story. Beth Macy takes a ground-level look at the crisis in Dopesick, a new book focusing on central Appalachia. Macy has spent three decades reporting on the region, focusing on social and economic trends and how they affect ordinary people — she says this area is the birthplace of the modern opioid epidemic. Dopesick explores...

“Play has become a four-letter word.” So says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek , a psychologist at Temple University and one of the authors of a new paper about the importance of play in children’s lives. The clinical report , published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends that pediatricians write a “prescription for play” at doctor visits in the first two years of life. Years of research have shown that play is an important part of a child’s development, assisting in cognition, memory, social...

The word “separation” conjures up many emotions, often simultaneously, but rarely are they positive. It usually invokes some sense of loss or impurity. People can separate ideas from action, items from items, chemicals from chemicals, and people from other people — but they cannot separate cause from effect. Right now, we’ve got a case where all of the above has come into play in a rude awakening for a nation that once prided itself on the balanced nature of its democratic republic, its...

The term trauma-informed care is a very important concept. A trauma-informed therapist is aware of the complex impact of trauma (any perceived trauma) on a person’s suffering and how it shapes a person’s efforts to cope. A trauma-informed approach integrates a thorough knowledge of this impact into every aspect of treatment. It also means that any person or organization that claims to be trauma-informed makes emotional and psychological safety a priority for the people they serve.

Visit advancingparenting.org. We are a small nonprofit pioneering a new kind of aces prevention and a new kind of parenting education…one that reaches everyone, everywhere, all the time. One of our activities is distributing parenting tips bumper stickers. Parenting tips on vehicles will be read 1000s of times by 1000s of people of all ages for years to come! The tips are parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children and they focus...