Tagged With "child of an alcoholic"
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Report: Solutions To Stop Sexual Violence Against Children [npr.org]
By Susan Brink, NPR.org, November 19, 2019 Sexual violence against children happens everywhere: in wealthy enclaves, in slums, in suburbs, in rural villages. Invariably, it happens in secret: in the privacy of family homes, in dark corners of schools and churches, and in murky shadows at neighborhood, community, sporting and scouting events. It happens often, and periodically groups put out reports to call attention to the issue. "That's usually where the story stops," says Daniela Ligiero,...
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[Repost] Trauma-informed Care: It Takes More Than a Clipboard and a Questionnaire
California is about to launch an ambitious campaign to train tens of thousands of Medi-Cal providers to screen children and adults up to age 65 for trauma, starting on January 1, 2020. It is well-established that the early identification of trauma and providing the appropriate treatment are critical tools for reducing long-term health care costs for both children and adults. Research has shown that individuals who experienced a high number of traumatic childhood events are likely to die...
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Research Review: Childhood Trauma and its Effects on Mothers in Home Visiting Programs [Prevent Child Abuse America]
Each month Prevent Child Abuse America's Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Dr. Bart Klika, does a quick run-down of emerging research related to child abuse and neglect prevention. In this inaugural installment, Dr. Klika walks through some of the recent research into the effects of childhood trauma and how the lasting effects of this trauma is impacting mothers who participate in home visiting programs. Watch the video here
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Resource List -- Professional Development
Professional development opportunities for parent educators/trainers/staff that incorporate NEAR research (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACEs, and Resilience). Echo Parenting and Education Nonviolent child raising seeks to eradicate early family violence in the common practices of spanking (60% of American toddlers are spanked), bribes, threats, name calling, shaming, manipulation, being untruthful or praise and rewards. This view moves beyond the current legal definition of child abuse and...
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Resource List -- Spanish-Language ACEs Science Resources
Looking for Spanish-language handouts or information for presentations? Find Spanish-language resources here.
This resource list is organized in alphabetical order.
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RYSE Center's Listening Campaign: Young people in Richmond, CA help adults understand trauma, violence, coping, and healing
"My experience with violence is very brutal...I grew up with violence as if it were my sibling." - LC participant (youth) "We know we can't run the city- it's too complex- but our experience and our voices should count, especially because we're the most effected ." - LC participant (youth) "Our city's problems are shared by us all; we are all part of the problem AND the solution. Listening is a key component to healing." - LC Share Out partici pant (adult) Three years ago, RYSE Center in...
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SAMHSA's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach
Years in the making, this important piece of the trauma-informed pie is on the table! Check it out.
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Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent (www.nytimes.com)
Note: An article by Emma S. Ketteringham that shows how the system traumatizes and re-traumatizes many children and their parents. My hope is that as we talk about trauma-informed, trauma-aware, self-healing and resilient communities we talk less about how people can do better, try harder and more about we can all be a safer, kinder and treat symptoms of adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences and focus on treating the causes of both instead. When I met Eline, she...
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Making The Case That Discrimination Is Bad For Your Health from Code Switch
"When Arline Geronimus was a student at Princeton University in the late 1970s, she worked a part-time job at a school for pregnant teenagers in Trenton, N.J. She quickly noticed that the teenagers at that part-time job were suffering from chronic health conditions that her whiter, better-off Princeton classmates rarely experienced. Geronimus began to wonder: how much of the health problems that the young mothers in Trenton experienced were caused by the stresses of their environment? It was...
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Marin Community Clinics in California screen babies for ACEs, provide support in effort to prevent trauma
When Marin Community Clinics (MCC) first considered screening their patients for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) they already had decided that if they were going to prevent children from acquiring ACEs, they had to take a radical approach.
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Maternity Group Home Program Funding Opportunity. Applications Due 07/25/2019 [Admin for Children & Families]
Funding Opportunity Application Due Date: 07/25/2019 Maternity Group Home Program *See attached pdf for more info. Description: The Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Transitional Living Program’s Maternity Group Home (MGH) grant program. The purpose to provide safe, stable, and appropriate shelter only for pregnant and/or parenting youth ages 16 to...
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Meet Your Child’s Needs For Improved Behavior
Understanding WHY a child behaves as he/she does provides you with the answer as to what the child needs to willingly and capably improve his/her behavior. Communication is a behavior, and all forms of behavior are ways of communicating. The child who resists bedtime is communicating something, and the message goes beyond merely saying, “I don’t want to.” The same is true for the child who refuses to turn off the TV or turn away from the video game. The child who speaks to you...
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Meet Your Child’s Needs For Improved Behavior
Understanding WHY a child behaves as he/she does provides you with the answer as to what the child needs to willingly and capably improve his/her behavior. Communication is a behavior, and all forms of behavior are ways of communicating. The child who resists bedtime is communicating something, and the message goes beyond merely saying, “I don’t want to.” The same is true for the child who refuses to turn off the TV or turn away from the video game. The child who speaks to you...
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Mental Health Is The Biggest Issue Teens Face Today, New Research Shows (bustle.com)
A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that seven-in-10 teens identified anxiety and depression as a major problem they face, The New York Times reported. While being a teenager has long been synonymous with angst, it's important to distinguish typical teen behavior from anxiety and depression, which are diagnosable mental health conditions . Though issues like bullying, substance use disorder, alcohol consumption , and gang violence were also cited as problems, mental health was...
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Mental Health Is The Biggest Issue Teens Face Today, New Research Shows (bustle.com)
A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that seven-in-10 teens identified anxiety and depression as a major problem they face, The New York Times reported. While being a teenager has long been synonymous with angst, it's important to distinguish typical teen behavior from anxiety and depression, which are diagnosable mental health conditions . Though issues like bullying, substance use disorder, alcohol consumption , and gang violence were also cited as problems, mental health was...
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Mental Health, Social Adversity, and Health-Related Outcomes in Sexual Minority Adolescents: A Contemporary National Cohort Study [thelancet.com]
By Background Sexual minority adolescents are more likely to have mental health problems, adverse social environments, and negative health outcomes compared with their heterosexual counterparts. There is a paucity of up-to-date population-level estimates of the extent of risk across these domains in the UK. We analysed outcomes across mental health, social environment, and health-related domains in sexual minority adolescents compared with their heterosexual counterparts in a large,...
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Mothering at the Edge
Life has been so sweet of late and that, for me, has been emotional. I feel a mixture of joy and disbelief. This time of mothering a teen as a parent with ACEs. I sit the edge of my bed sorting socks and memories. A middle-aged mother in so many kinds of transition. Some mornings, I hear her feet soft on carpeted stairs, see her long hair rolling down her back almost touching the hips. I remember when she did not have hips. The years I gathered her up each morning, carrying her down the...
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The Developing Brain & Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...
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The Key To Good Enough Parenting - Repair The Rupture
Good enough parenting is about repairing relationship ruptures with your child. Reach out, discuss, reconnect - repair the rupture to avoid later problems
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The Legacy of Untreated Secondhand Drinking-Related ACEs
I am the child of an alcoholic. My mom didn’t stop drinking until age 79. She died at 84. There was no warning, no lingering illness. She died two days after an unsuccessful emergency surgery. But we had five years during which she did not drink, after forty-five years during which she did. You see, my mom knew she had a drinking problem. So did we, the rest of her family. There were times when she fought mightily to stop or control it. There were times when the rest of us fought mightily to...
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The Mama Bear Effect & Free Downloads
One of my favorite organizations is the Mama Bear Effect . It's a few years old and is basically a bunch of grown-ups dedicated to keeping children safe - particularly from sexual abuse. Today, they posted something important on Facebook about not putting so much emphasis on teaching children to say "no" and rather expecting adults to keep children safe. I have to say that given the reality that most abusers are known to children, it's not likely that a child simply saying "no" to an abuser...
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The Nurtured Parent Revolution: Transforming Trauma through Love, Healing, and Social Justice Activism
Many family courts across the nation routinely fail the most vulnerable in our society: mothers and their children in crisis seeking a life free from abuse. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice released the Saunders Report , a study that found the standard and required domestic violence training received by judges, lawyers, and custody evaluators, does not adequately prepare them to handle abuse cases. Inadequately trained professionals tend to believe the myth that mothers frequently...
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The Perils Of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn To Back Off (npr.org)
"Even though I was getting A's and B's, mostly A's, in all my classes — all my honors classes — I still felt it wasn't good enough," Savannah says. No matter how well she did, someone else was doing better. "The pressure I put on myself was out of control," she says. She says she felt the pressure all around her — from peers, teachers and her parents. Newfound awareness of these kinds of struggles, has started a conversation — and new initiatives — in her community. A group of parents is...
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The Rise of the Trauma-Informed Mothers
The next generation is less likely to wear predisposed shackles of trauma because as trauma-informed parents we are re-wiring the traumatically stressed DNA that was passed down to us.
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How to Help a Child Struggling With Anxiety [npr.org]
By Cory Turner, National Public Radio, October 29, 2019 Childhood anxiety is one of the most important mental health challenges of our time. One in five children will experience some kind of clinical-level anxiety by the time they reach adolescence, according to Danny Pine, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and one of the world's top anxiety researchers. Pine says that for most kids, these feelings of worry won't last, but for some, they will —...
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How Trauma Therapy Cultivated My Recovery
I was 5 years old when I had my first encounter with trauma. Too young to comprehend the magnitude of the situation, my first grade class participated in a “Good Touch/Bad Touch” workshop,centered around educating and recognizing signs of sexual abuse. I found relief in finding a safe place to lay down the burden I had been carrying. I went straight to the school counselor and told her, in vivid description, the intimate details of my unwarranted molestation. I remember the grueling...
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In honour of my Dad, Remembrance Day 2019
War is most certainly Hell. It is also a source of #ACEs for the children of veterans. Here's a little insight into my story.
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Intermountain Video Podcast: How Kids Navigate a Pandemic
Meegan Bryce, MSW, began her work at Intermountain with children and families as a Direct Care Counselor in 2004. She has since been a Cottage Supervisor, Child and Family Therapist, the Residential Manager and now serves as the Residential Director. Meegan is a Montana native and enjoys all the outdoor activities that Montana has to offer, especially river rafting. In this video podcast, she speaks with Development Officer Tyler Zimmer about how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting the...
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WHY FAMILY SUPPORT MATTERS? (Its Importance for Strengthening Resilience from Adverse Childhood Experiences-ACEs)
Graduation day - a picture of my mother and me after I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminal Justice (Corrections) studies from Kent State University in June 1977. This was seven years after that fateful summer of 1970 when my mother and I realized that our family needed some help. When I look back at that time, I marvel at the love of GOD and the love from both parents as they began to realize that the harmful consequences of their domestic violence squabbles and of my father’s...
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Why Girls Who Face Toxic Stress are More Vulnerable to Adult Illness: The Shocking Relationship Between Being Female, #ACEs, Autoimmune Disease and Depression
This blog is about WHY Adverse Childhood Experiences are a #METOO ISSUE. I want to talk about how and why toxic childhood stress – also as #ACEs — is a #metoo issue of the greatest magnitude. For girls and for the adult women they become. One thing readers know about the work I do and the books I write, including Childhood Disrupted , The Autoimmune Epidemic , and The Last Best Cure , is that I focus on the intersection of neuroscience, immunology and emotion – while shining a spotlight on...
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Why Mandating Mental Health Education in Schools is a Band-Aid on a Gaping Wound
Don’t get me wrong: of course I care deeply about the mental and physical health of children, including my own son’s. I don’t want students to suffer in silence and shame. But I am very concerned about just how this topic will be taught in schools.
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Women and men military veterans, childhood adversity and alcohol and drug use [medicalxpress.com]
Results of a national study led by public health scientist Elizabeth Evans at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the University of California, Los Angeles, suggest that risk for alcohol and drug use disorders among United States military veterans is increased by childhood adversity, and in ways that are different between women and men and different compared to the civilian population. Evans, an assistant professor of...
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World Premiere: Stress & Resilience: How Toxic Stress Affects Us, and What We Can Do About It [developingchild.harvard.edu]
By Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, November 13, 2019 When the stress in your life just doesn’t let up, and it feels like you have no support to get through the day—let alone do everything you need to do to be the best parent you can be—it can seem like there’s nothing that can make it better. But there are resources that can help, and this kind of stress—known as “toxic stress”—doesn’t have to define your life. In this video, learn more about what toxic stress is, how it...
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Writing to Heal, Yoga to Feel & Survivor-Led Resources Online
I love yoga and writing. I need yoga and writing. Both are relatively affordable and can be done alone and at home or in community. Both have been central to my survival, recovery and growth which I write about below. I also love sharing and supporting survivor-led resources created for survivors and others. Here are two links to those if you want to get to those right away. There are more details about each following the essay: Write Your Story, Heal Your Life Summit: Alaura O'Dell...
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NBC’s Al Trautwig Apologizes for Rude Comments About Simone Biles’ Parents (www.theroot.com)
If you like gymnastics or have been watching the Olympics you probably already know that Simone Biles is an amazing athlete . Did you know she has ACEs as well? Biles lived in foster care, had an absent father and parents who reportedly struggled with addiction to drugs. I didn't know any of this unitl NBC commentator, Al Trautwig, refused to call her adoptive parents her parents, first on air and later via Twitter. This angered many people. Luckily, Biles' coach and the public responded...
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Negative fateful life events and the brains of middle-aged men [sciencedaily.com]
Writing in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, a research team, led by senior author William S. Kremen, PhD, professor of psychiatry and co-director of the Center for Behavior Genetics of Aging at UC San Diego School of Medicine, found that major adverse events in life, such as divorce, separation, miscarriage or death of a family member or friend, can measurably accelerate aging in the brains of older men, even when controlling for such factors as cardiovascular risk, alcohol consumption,...
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New ACEs data on Kidsdata.org
On behalf of California Essentials for Childhood, I am very excited to announce the release of a new Child Adversity and Resilience data topic on Kidsdata.org! This has been a collaborative effort between the CA Essentials for Childhood Initiative's Shared Data and Outcomes Work Group and the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. I represent ACEs Connection Network on Essentials and am the co-chair of the Shared Data & Outcomes Work Group so I couldn't be more thrilled about...
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New Toolkit Issued to Help Providers Measure Trauma With ACES Survey [youthtoday.org]
A new toolkit is out that aims to help services providers give a survey about traumatic childhood experiences that are linked to negative effects on health and well-being. The toolkit, developed by The National Crittenton Foundation , offers recommendations about the Adverse Childhood Experiences survey, including how to talk to children and parents about the survey, track results and use the data for public education and policy advocacy. The toolkit also includes a sample protocol, case...
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Opioid Addiction: Advice for Parents
Given the way the media portray opioid addiction, it's natural to react with panic or moral outrage when you discover your child struggling with the problem. It's not natural to calm down and try to view your child as someone who is using opioids to cope with serious problems, though that is likely the case, according to research.
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Our Most Vulnerable Population - Grandparents Raising Grandchildren
Before the pandemic, grandparents raising grandchildren were already in a precarious situation. They were struggling to meet the needs of children exposed to maltreatment and trauma while also supporting the family financially. But now, we fear, things have made a critical turn for the worse while those grandparents become unemployed, sick, or in the worst-case scenario, die due to Corona Virus.
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Parentification: Growing Up Too Soon
“ We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end. How to take the raw stuff of life and make it a thing of worth and beauty - that is the test of living.” Joseph Fort Newton This week in the childhood trauma education series, I will tackle parentification . I discovered so much while researching this topic that explains a lot for me. Have you heard...
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Parentification: Growing Up Too Soon
“ We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end. How to take the raw stuff of life and make it a thing of worth and beauty - that is the test of living.” Joseph Fort Newton This week in the childhood trauma education series, I will tackle parentification . I discovered so much while researching this topic that explains a lot for me. Have you heard...
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Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (The National Academies Press 2016)
A study published by The National Academies of Sciences in 2016 resulting in 10 Recommendations to build support for parents... "Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting- related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting- related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important...
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Parenting’s Troubled History
As we learned from the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , negative childhood experiences are often kept secret, downplayed, or repressed because of our powerful desire to put such things behind us. Unfortunately, our minds and our brains don’t work that way. Patterns can play out automatically, no matter how hard we try to be original and create our own realities. Just as it is important to know family medical history (e.g., diabetes or tuberculosis) it is equally important to know about our...
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Passive/Public Parenting Education
It seems to me that if we want to reduce adverse childhood experiences we must work to improve the quality of parenting in communities. Visit advancingparenting.org to learn about a small nonprofit organization pioneering passive/public parenting education. Our plan is to 1) employ increasingly impactful media to display the parenting tips (appealing school age spokespersons presenting them on conventional and electronic billboards and semi trailers), and 2) expand geographically until...
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Physical abuse and punishment impact children's academic performance [sciencedaily.com]
A Penn State researcher and her collaborator found that physical abuse was associated with decreases in children's cognitive performance, while non-abusive forms of physical punishment were independently associated with reduced school engagement and increased peer isolation. Sarah Font, assistant professor of sociology and co-funded faculty member of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, and Jamie Cage, assistant professor in Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Social Work,...
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Pioneering Research Study on Child-Parent Psychotherapy Incorporates ACEs
The Child Parent Project , a five-year, $3 million federally funded project in Philadelphia, is the first research study in the U.S. partnering with public health agencies and family courts to gauge the impact of child-parent psychotherapy (CPP)...
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Positive Childhood Experiences offset ACEs: Q & A with Dr. Robert Sege about HOPE
Tufts University medical professor Dr. Robert Sege directs the Center for Community-Engaged Medicine and is nationally known for his research on effective health systems approaches that address social determinants of health. He is also the principal investigator for the HOPE framework (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences).The HOPE framework is based on research that shows how positive childhood experiences can mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Sege and colleagues...
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Progress Stalls on Child Poverty, According to New Data [datacenter.kidscount.org]
By Kids Count Data Center, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, September 27, 2019 In 2018, 13 million children in the United States — 18% of all kids — were living in poverty, and for the first time since 2014, the percentage did not decrease compared to the previous year. This is discouraging news; all children should have the economic security that provides them the opportunity to thrive. However, the share of children in poverty remains significantly lower than its recent peak of 23%, seen in...
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Re: ACEs-, Trauma-Informed, and Resilience-Building Parenting Programs
Another program addressing reducing ACEs, particularly related to addiction is Celebrating Families!™ - a family-centered, skill-building program serving children ages birth through 17, their parents, and caregivers. This evidence-based program, available from the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA),emphasizes healthy living skills including addiction prevention/recovery; attachment; the development of a sense of hope and expanded life view; reduction of stress/anxiety;...