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“If your parent is the bear in the living room, it is biologically impossible to run to that parent when they are either over or under reacting. If your parent is scary you can’t run to them. And you also can’t run away from them because you are a child, you can’t function in the world on your own. You can’t make it out there." Donna Jackson Nakazawa We can get so lost in theory, data and facts that our language about trauma, abuse and adverse childhood experiences can become clinical and...

I shared the blog post below on ACEsConnection a little while ago. I keep thinking about images when it comes to PTSD and also ACEs. The cultural image of PTSD is something that still tends to be of soldiers. How do we go about changing that. I'm hoping a better understanding of ACEs, in the general public, will eventually change the images we tend to have and use as well. But what images should be shown? What images do people have of ACEs and what do we hope they (we) will have? I know even...

"In a sense, it doesn't matter from a policy point of view, whether bad health is transmitted down the generations through a biological mechanism, a social one or a mixture of both - because we largely already know how to fix it. The good news is that even if you start life with a low stock of health, if you live in a society with good public health, you can, to some extent, build up your stocks as you go along." This BBC radio show shares stories and research which are hopeful, horrible and...

Eight years ago I wrote a brief review of The Whole Parent: How to be a Good Parent Even if You Didn't Have One by Debra Wesselmann. It was, and still is one of the few titles on this important topic. While the article is older, and geared towards adoptive parents, the content is still useful and this book can help any of us who are Parenting with ACEs. Here's an excerpt: This book is fantastic because it manages to be non-shaming about our weak spots while stressing the importance of...

The Boston Globe's spotlight team continues to do great reporting. In May, they ran a story about hundreds of students who had been sexually abused by staffers at close to 70 private schools in New England. Yesterday, they ran a story about the retaliation many faced at private schools after reporting. When a small boarding school in the Berkshires discovered that a music teacher was having a sexual relationship with a female student, administrators responded in a way many parents would...

This is one necessary and important contribution written by Dawn Daum. It's honest. There are few resources available to parents with PTSD, especially new parents dealing with the physical and emotional demands of early parenting. When I became a new mother, I was prepared for a lot—but nobody told me that parenting when you have experienced childhood abuse can feel like walking back into a war zone as a soldier with PTSD. Before becoming a mother, I could physically re-shift focus away from...

I started my career as a preschool teacher. For 13 years, I helped 3- to 5-year-old children learn how to write their name; count, sort and use other foundational math concepts; manage their toileting and dressing independently; and meet other easily-observable school-readiness milestones. The children were flourishing, and their families were delighted with their achievements! But woven throughout the multi-faceted learning experiences supporting cognitive, language, physical, and self-help...

There are some great hand-outs, available for free, for non-commercial use which talk about self-regulation vs. self-control. Some are geared towards teachers but they are useful for parent as well. And honestly, they are useful for adults as well as children. I like the way words like safety are explained and how simple some of the approaches are. For example, in "Understanding Stress Behavior for Teachers" the "Tips to Deal with Stress Behavior" are as follows: Figure out and reduce the...

Whac-A-Mole players ( by Laura ) _______________________________________________ Many people and organizations focus on preventing violence with the belief that if our society can stop violence against children, then most childhood trauma will be eradicated. However, research that has emerged over the last 20 years clearly shows that focusing primarily on violence prevention – physical and sexual abuse, in particular – doesn’t eliminate the trauma that children experience, and won’t even...

The world can be a dark place for many children: the "lost boys" from Sudan, refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria, child sex workers in Brazil, baby girls abandoned in China, kids pulled into gang drug wars in the United States. Such suffering by children is more common than most people might think and represents what some believe to be one of our biggest public-health crises of all time. A study published in January in the journal Pediatrics puts that violence into stark perspective by...

Great article by Barbara J. King. An excerpt: The biggest lesson that I've taken from Self-Reg is that when a child insists that a teacher's voice is harsh, or a restaurant or classroom is unbearably bright or loud, we need to recognize (even though we might not experience things that way at all) that the child is very probably not lying, exaggerating or trying to be oppositional. Instead, the child's biological sensitivities may make her exquisitely reactive in a way that triggers a...

This is part 2 of the Dear Sugar Podcast on Family Secrets . This is a topic so many of us grapple with in one way or another, maybe once in a while or maybe a lot. When and if and how to share secrets? What to do with secrets not openly disclosed? How to respond to secrets shared with us? There are no easy answers or lists of what to do. Just conversation and discussion and food for thought. And food for feelings.