Blog

Why do people cut themselves? Here's a story of my work with Renee and how we helped her find better ways to deal.

I learned about a new research paper entitled, "Modifiable Resilience Factors to Childhood Adversity for Clinical Pediatric Practice" co-authored by Flora Taub and Renée Boynton-Jarret (pictured above). It was just published in Pediatrics which is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics). Here's the link to the abstract. I'm not going to pretend I subscribe to Pediatrics. I don't. However, I have been interested in the work of Renée Boynton-Jarret ever since writing a...

This blog post is about the complex relationship between a parent’s incarceration and a child’s academic success. For me this relationship is personal and scholastic. I was in fifth grade when my father, a lawyer, received a two-to-five year prison sentence for larceny. Although my family was confronted with the same challenges other families face when a parent is incarcerated (i.e. housing and food insecurity, inadequate heath care, childcare challenges, etc.), we also had considerable...

Wonderful piece of writing on the ATN blog. It's by Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D. Here's an excerpt: Staring at the analog clock in my therapist’s office, I wondered which hand was the big hand and struggled with my need not to go over my time. “I can’t read the clock,” I said. It was awkward because I was 62, but I really wasn’t. This awkward therapy moment is brought to you by my dissociative disorder. It was a watershed moment in understanding one possible reason for uneven learning in the...

Essay written by Joyelle Brandt. I stood in front of a room of strangers with kind eyes, and announced: “I have been struggling with postpartum depression.” Somehow it was easier to admit this to strangers than to my husband and friends, yet there it was. Since early in my pregnancy with my second child, I had struggled with my mental health. But it would take me years to realize that what I had was not postpartum depression, but a particularly acute flair up of the undiagnosed post...

I was such a mother. I was also the daughter of an alcoholic. My mom died earlier this year. When a mother loves an alcoholic or is raised by an alcoholic, she is changed in profound ways - ways she has no idea are even present, yet ways that make her a confounding figure in her children's lives. At the root of these "ways" is her adverse childhood experiences. As I shared recently in my post, The Legacy of Untreated Secondhand Drinking ACEs , "[My] Mom and I talked about my realization that...

We just had a chat about talking about hard topics with kids earlier this month. This article is about that. It's beautifully written and honest. I admire memoir writers who break silence about parenting with mental illness and/or emotional pain. Lots of people struggle but few write, speak or share about doing so. As a result a whole lot of people feel alone and might suffer more shame and pain even when help is available. Articles like these can help. Stories can challenge or refine our...

We had our first Parenting with ACEs Group chat a few weeks ago. The full chat transcript is saved online. For those who want highlights only and follow-up from our featured guest, Beth O'Malley, please find the following: Beth O'Malley: Talking Tough Topics as Social Worker, Parent & Adoptee How Lived Experience Can Be a Professional Asset Sharing Our Questions, Issues & Experiences How to Start Having Hard Conversations How to Talk with Teens ACEs as an AHA or Conversation Starter...

The juvenile justice system as originally conceived was based on the idea that young people who came into conflict with the law should be given the opportunity for reflection and reform. The earliest places of juvenile confinement were intended to rehabilitate young people, and help them become productive members of society. Over time, particularly in the 1990s, juvenile justice came to focus more on retribution and punishment. Kids were placed out of home for longer periods in increasingly...

American teens are hitting the bottle less often than they did 25 years ago, new research reveals. The analysis found that while 5 percent of 13-year-olds frequently binge drank between 1991 and 1998, only 2.6 percent were doing so in 2015. Among 18-year-olds, that number fell from 20 percent to less than 15 percent in the same time frame. "Frequent binge drinking" was defined as knocking back five or more drinks in a row, on two or more separate occasions, over the span of two weeks. And...

As if it isn't tough enough being an overweight kid, a new study shows it could have long-lasting repercussions for psychological health, too. When compared with normal-weight kids who become overweight adults, overweight or obese youth in the study faced three times the risk of depression in adulthood, the research found. And, that risk was more than four times greater if they were overweight or obese in both childhood and adulthood, the investigators reported. [For more of this story,...

Has anyone seen this video posted on the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICAMB) blog? "According to Dr. Ruth Lanius, a parent's experience of trauma can impact their ability to form a close, intimate relationship with their child." Ruth Buczynski, PhD Those of us Parenting with ACEs sure know that's the truth. Developmental trauma impacts our ability to form close and intimate relationships with ourselves, other adults and our children. The video was...