December 2021

By Juli Fraga, Psy.D., Parents, September 1, 2021 With the stress of the pandemic, some parents are struggling with compassion fatigue. Here are some symptoms, causes, and expert-backed advice on how to handle it. After a grueling year of pandemic parenting, many parents are depleted from the never-ending roller coaster of anxiety. And now with the new school year, parents are also helping their kids readjust to in-person learning and trying to ease their fears about the Delta variant . On...

Latchkey Urchins & Friends is a podcast by me* and my co-host Anne Sherry, a therapist. We explore different topics within The Nurturance Void, the space left when we experienced childhood emotional neglect. Childhood emotional neglect happens between parents and their kids, within families, across generations, in communities, in nations, and in policies and programs. We seek to heal through humor and holding space. Each week a guest shares their childhood emotional neglect stories,...

By John Woodrow Cox, Mark Berman, and Steven Rich, Photo: Oakland County Sheriff's Office/AP, The Washington Post, December 9, 2021 She had seen her grandson’s red, spiral-bound notebook before that night, but now, as Catherine O’Connor sifted through its pages for the first time, what she read astonished her. “School Shootings,” Joshua O’Connor had titled the first page, above a reconstruction of the Columbine High School massacre that left 13 people dead. In the pages that followed,...

Storytelling Storytelling serves many purposes. It can help to build memory, imagination, attention and focus. It can connect children to generations past and present, raise cultural awareness and build a positive sense of identity. Here are a few ways to incorporate storytelling into your next visit: Ask patients over 3 to tell you about a holiday they celebrate Model storytelling by narrating during the visit Encourage parents to think about storytelling when they are reading, going beyond...

By Alison Gopnik, Illustration: Jared Briggs/The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2021 The great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget used to talk about “the American question.” In the course of his long career, he lectured around the world, explaining how children’s minds develop as they get older. When he visited the U.S., someone in the audience was sure to ask, “But Prof. Piaget, how can we get them to do it faster?” Today it’s no longer just impatient Americans who...

By Anne Vasquez, Photo: Allison Shelley/All4Ed, EdSource, December 13, 2021 After 18 months of distance learning, I took a breath before the start of this school year. What would the new normal look like? I feel like I’m still holding my breath, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop that comes in the form of an end-of-semester report card. As the mother of a newly minted middle school student and a high school junior, I knew this year would test my personal code of ethics about grades:...

By Julia Hotz, Photo: Getty Images, Scientific American, December 13, 2021 When COVID shut down life as usual in the spring of 2020, most physicians in the U.S. focused on the immediate physical dangers from the novel coronavirus. But soon pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris began thinking of COVID’s longer-term emotional damage and those who would be especially vulnerable: children. “The pandemic is a massive stressor,” explains Burke Harris, who is California’s surgeon general. “Then you have...

By Zoraida Ramirez, Rise Magazine, December 08, 2021 A Hard Decision I left my son with a family friend in 2007 when I was 20 years old and he was one and a half. I had run away from foster care and had nowhere to live and no money for food. I was also dealing with depression and trauma—and an abusive partner. I didn’t have support from my family and felt uncared for and alone. The family friend lived in a cozy, nice home. She suggested that I leave my son with her and write a statement...

By Ashley Abramson, American Psychological Association, October 1, 2021 What psychological research suggests about how to recognize and overcome it Candice Roquemore Bonner, PsyD, a clinical psychology resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, knows the parenting-while-working juggle well. She moved to Boston with her two children to begin her residency in June 2020, functioning solo until her husband could join them. Managing her burgeoning career and her family’s well-being—all...

By Melinda Wenner Moyer, The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2021 The safer children feel, the more they can show their true selves — warts and all — experts say. And that’s good for their development. There was a moment over Thanksgiving break when my 7-year-old bossily instructed her 76-year-old grandfather, whom she rarely sees, to “stop taking pictures and put down your camera,” and boy, I wished I could hide under the dining room table for the rest of the evening. I wondered: What kind of...

By Serita Cox, Illustration: Christine Ongjoco, The Imprint, December 2, 2021 O n Jan. 1, 2022, we estimate that 3,600 California youth will age out of the foster care system. On a single day. The fact that we — those of us working in the child welfare system, and the state system itself — cannot identify the exact number is itself alarming. Behind each case number is a human being, a young person who was removed from their biological home for their own safety and put under the protection of...

Join Julie Beem & Ginger Healy of ATN's Podcast - Regulated and Relational - where their guest for Episode 16 is Cissy White. Cissy is a self-proclaimed Joy Stalker and Truth Teller, and boy, is she ever! Her passion is to make trauma informed changes for survivors of trauma who are parenting with ACEs. With Julie and Ginger, Cissy discusses her path to healing. She says, “Trauma informed change must be led by survivors” and ATN could not agree more! In 2013, Cissy began her blog, Heal...