Trauma-Informed Parenting

By Erik Vance, NY Times, Sept. 1, 2021 The ability to bounce back is more important now than ever; here’s how to impart it. In my early teens, my dad took myself, my best friend and our neighbor on a grueling backpacking trip connecting California’s Yosemite Valley to Half Dome to nearby Clouds Rest mountain and back again. By the second day — halfway up Clouds Rest, on wobbly legs and besieged by mosquitoes — we finally mutinied. The three of us made it clear to my father that we were done.

Each month of the Big Heart World initiative , we will share a guide for parents and caregivers. The guide will introduce the the big idea of the unit, provide an overview of the resources that are available, and suggest ideas for how parents and caregivers can use the Big Heart World’s resources to support their children’s social and emotional learning. Feel free to print and share! August's guide is on Empathy . Past guides have covered the following themes: Friendship Similarities and...

By Lisa Damour, New York Times, Aug. 23, 2021 Adolescents are readying for the next step in a seemingly endless set of challenges. Here’s how to help them regulate their emotions. Many teenagers are feeling understandably upset as they face a third school year disrupted by Covid-19. Some are frustrated about the return to masks and other precautions. Others are nervous about how they will stay safe at school , or worried about eagerly anticipated activities being postponed or canceled. They...

By Diane Mehta, New York Times, August 25, 2021 With some employers looking to bring staff back to work on-site, here’s how parents can ask for schedule accommodations. Kate Westrin, a mother of two in Denver, used to commute to the office four days a week for her job as a people experience manager at Xero, a cloud-based accounting software company. After working from home throughout the pandemic, returning to her previous schedule felt impossible, she said. With the Delta variant...

As humans, we have a basic, primal need to belong. Belonging is defined as ‘the feeling of security and support when there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity for a member of a certain group . It is when an individual can bring their authentic self to others, including friendships, family and work.’ Feeling disconnected, unimportant, or not cared about can translate into feelings of loneliness. This has led to much of the suffering our society is experiencing today. Cigna...

By Pooja Lakshmin, M.D., New York Times, Aug. 20, 2021 A psychiatrist offers these tools to her patients who worry that Delta will disrupt the school year. As a psychiatrist specializing in women’s mental health, I have spent the past few months celebrating alongside my patients as they planned family reunions and sent kids off to summer camp. But with the arrival of the Delta variant, old questions and a familiar despair have begun to resurface in our sessions: Patients find themselves...

By Leah Wright Rigueur, The Atlantic, August 11, 2021 My first two children entered the world to the sound of my laughter—peals of uncontrollable laughter. When my third child was born on a cruelly hot night last summer in a sterile delivery room, his experience was no different. My reaction to birthing a child may have seemed bizarre to a besieged and battle-weary hospital staff in the midst of a pandemic, but I believe that my joy was a normal response to my scenario. Celebratory joy felt...

As children transition back to school, this video discusses tips for parents around resetting the routine and having conversations about the change. For more practical parenting strategies, visit the Center for Child Counseling . Click here to see the video.

By Eric Moskowitz, Bostonia, July 28, 2021 Near the end of the strangest school year of her life, Julia, a Newton North High School freshman, found herself scrolling an Instagram feed full of her friends posting COVID-vaccine selfies. Some boasted that they felt like superheroes, newly powerful. One said she could finally exhale, calling it her “first deep breath” in over a year. Neither captured what Julia was feeling as she worked up the nerve to get her first shot. “I was really nervous...

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire)—From fear to stress, the global pandemic has forced children everywhere to deal with a wide range of emotions and feelings. Some might act out, while others learn to keep their cool. But a new study shows how parents respond to their child’s emotions matters a great deal. When your child loses control, how do you act? A new study finds that a parent’s response to big emotions can impact kids’ behavior. Researchers followed 207 children in kindergarten, first,...

By Guest Author, 8/11/21, positiveexperiences.org/blog Following the recent release of their new app for mothers, Drs. Barry Zuckerman and Cyndie Hatcher spoke with HOPE Research Assistant, Loren McCullough about how the questions, information, and parent videos provided in Small Moments: Big Impacts (SMBI) can brighten the outcomes of parents and children. Dr. Cyndie Hatcher also discussed her experiences working with parents in primary care settings, and her use of SMBI’s resources to...

A while back, at the bookstore with my three sons, I started flicking through a kids’ magazine that had the kind of hyper-pink sparkly cover that screams: “Boys! Even glancing in this direction will threaten your masculinity!” In between the friendship-bracelet tutorials and the “What Type of Hamster Are You, Really?” quizzes, the magazine featured a story about a ’tween girl who had been invited to two birthday parties scheduled for the same time. Not wanting to disappoint either friend,...