Tagged With "Rural Docs Help Moms Fight Addiction"
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Family First Scholarships for 21st Annual Families and Fathers Conference
21st Annual Families and Fathers National Conference February 24-27, 2020 Hilton Los Angeles Airport 5711 West Century Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90045 I am honored to announce The Family First Scholarship supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as a Title Sponsor and State of California First 5 as a Co-Sponsor for the 21 st Annual Families and Fathers Conference, Next Level 2020! the terms "putting family first" and "it takes a village to raise a child" parallels with why we have...
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Family Media Plan helps parents set boundaries for kids [AAPPublications.org]
It can be overwhelming for parents to manage all of the media options available to children and adolescents around the clock and sort out the pros and cons of screen time. While media use can help build kids’ social skills, it also can put them at risk of obesity, lost sleep, bullying, addiction and violence, according to new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). To help families navigate the digital world, the AAP has developed a Family Media Plan. Parents and children can...
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Family Spirit program aims to help Native parents improve kids’ prospects [minnpost.com]
Everyone loves their children but not everyone understands that the way we care for the youngest among us will have an impact on our society for years to come. With that reality in mind, a new program run by Headway Emotional Health Services , a Twin Cities-based mental health provider for families, aims to improve the parenting skills of at-risk American Indian parents by helping them learn to give their infant-to-preschool-aged children the support they need to be prepared for success...
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Family Triggers: 3 Mindful Techniques To Help You Respond With Skill and Wisdom Instead of Reacting Impulsively (by Robert Oleskevich) (heysigmund.com)
A trigger is a reaction that is more instinctive and immediate, lacking our typical skill or thought, that has ties to our conditioning of the past. At the point our conditioning takes over, our amygdala amps up, which is the little almond in our brain that detects danger and tells our fight or flight reactions to kick in. Our amygdala comes in very handy at times, however, it’s not the best at determining when danger is real or not. So, let’s use three mindful approaches with roots in...
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Fathering as a Survivor - Ray Charles (www.triggerpointsanthology.com)
We hear too little from men about having survived childhood abuse and even less about how that abuse impacts their fathering. This series about fathering as a survivor is helping to change that. They've done a complete interview with Ray Charles. Here's an excerpt. 7. What would you tell another survivor father who is expecting their first child? You have 9 months and counting to help yourself to try and climb out of your own issues (sounds easy, its not). This little person will need you...
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Fathering as a Survivor (www.triggerpointsanthology.com)
We don't hear enough from men who have been abused as children. Byron Hamel is helping to change that. This is an interview done with Hamel by the Trigger Points Anthology website . It's the first in a series they are running about fathering as a survivor of childhood abuse. If you can't read the entire thing, and you should, please read this: I honestly think most people believe an abused boy is inherently going to become an abusive or neglectful dad. I gotta call bullshit on that one,...
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Fatherlessness is harder on Father's Day, but 'father figures,' other role models fill in (usatoday.com)
More than one in four fathers in the United States who have children 18 or younger now lives apart from their children, according to Pew. A movement is growing toward shared parenting or at least collegial “co-parenting” that recognizes the importance of having two parents in children's lives. And in states like Virginia and Kentucky, legislation was recently passed to encourage joint custody. At the same time, federal health officials, educators, doctors, social workers and researchers are...
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Fathers & ACEs with Trauma Dad & Father's Uplift CEO: Tuesday, September 12th
What supports exist to "uplift" fathers who have survived abandonment, abuse or torture as children? Where can men go to discuss the joys, struggles and issues of being a father with ACEs? Where are the men who face hard, heavy and complicated realities to make life easier and lighter for all who come after? We found two of them and they will be the featured guests in the next Parenting with ACEs chat . Meet Charles Clayton Daniels, Jr. of Father's Uplift and "Trauma Dad" Byron Hamel. Both...
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Fathers, Sons, and Intimacy: A Story of Moving Past Childhood Adversity
Seth’s natural impulse was to shy away from showing affection to his girlfriend. That made perfect sense to me since he grew up with a father who rarely showed affection to anyone in the family. Seth’s grandfather was an alcoholic who punished his children harshly. Seth understood his father received very little love and tenderness and probably never received any physical comfort like a hug or pat on the back. The lack of intimacy between father and son extended back through the generations.
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Findings from the Preventing and Addressing Intimate Violence when Engaging Dads (PAIVED) Study [futureswithoutviolence.org]
From Futures Without Violence, March 2020 Webinar Description: This webinar will explore findings from the Preventing and Addressing Intimate Violence when Engaging Dads (PAIVED) study , and presenters will identify approaches that fatherhood programs take or could take to help prevent and address intimate partner violence among fathers.The PAIVED study examines the approaches that fatherhood programs take to help prevent and address intimate partner violence (IPV) among fathers. The webinar...
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Five Ways to Help Kids Manage Frustration [greatergood.berkeley.edu]
When parents hold their newborn infants, they naturally want what’s best for them. They want to protect them, nurture them, and give them all the opportunities to have a happy life. At the same time, however, children must learn to cope with frustrations and disappointments. Luckily, there are frustrations from the very beginning of life, such as when babies want a bottle and have to wait even a few minutes while you are preparing it. Later, as toddlers, they have to wait until they can get...
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FLYERS: Understanding ACEs & Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs
We are excited to share two flyers which can be downloaded, distributed, or used freely. One is brand new and the other is a revision. They are titled as follows (and attached below): Parenting to prevent and heal ACEs Understanding ACEs 1. Parenting to prevent and heal ACEs This brand new flyer us based on the work of Donna Jackson Nakazawa who worked with us and generously allowed us to paraphrase content from her book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology & How...
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For girls with moms in prison, growing up is hard to do [WashingtonPost.com]
I met Jane in 2013 at a women’s prison in Washington state. She was 6, and while other girls her age may have been camping in the woods with their Girl Scout troops, Jane was camping overnight at the prison where her mother was incarcerated. On the day we met, Jane was participating in Girls Scouts Beyond Bars, a program begun in Baltimore in 1992 as a pilot project between the Girl Scouts and the Institute of Justice. The idea was for girls to have formal visits with their incarcerated...
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For Parents with High ACE Scores
When I lecture at universities, advocacy groups, hospitals, schools, etc., I’m often asked: what advice do you have for parents who have high ACE scores if they are trying to raise children with fewer ACEs? Children with ACEs find “resiliency” because an adult provides a safe environment – in which they feel known, validated. So that means that the most important thing adults can do is to manage their own stuff. Self-regulation by adults is a first step to help kids self-regulate themselves.
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France's Early Learning / Positive Parenting Train set to launch tomorrow
"I'm not sure I like that metaphor!" Nathalie exclaimed. "I don't want to be burned at the stake!" I had just compared Nathalie to Joan of Arc, the symbol - for me - of the person willing to trust their inspired vision "against all odds," the person not fazed by the prospect of being considered crazy if it can just help to advance awareness of a new reality about which the general population is only dimly aware. Nathalie Casso-Vicarini is the creative genius behind France's Early...
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FREE COVID-19 RESOURCE: Fighting the Big Virus: Trinka, Sam, and Littletown Work Together
This story was developed in collaboration with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network to help young children and families talk about their experiences and feelings related to COVID-19 and the need to stay inside. In the story, the virus has spread to Littletown causing changes in everyone's lives. The story opens doors to conversations about family and community strengths, challenges and feelings related to COVID-19, ways grown-ups help children keep safe, and our gratitude for...
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Free Mind Matters Online Series -- Build skills to overcome anxiety and increase resilience
In appreciation of and support for the tremendous work you are doing under challenging circumstances, Dibble will be hosting a free, 12-week Mind Matters online series with Dr. Carolyn Curtis and Dixie Zittlow. Unprecedented times, such as these, are stressful and call for everyone to think about ways to help others and themselves. Thus, we see this as an opportunity to offer free, professional development and help you and your staff practice self-care. Join us as we teach the Mind Matters...
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FREE WEBINAR: Rules Without Relationships Lead to Rebellion: A Live Parent Interview
You can have all the limits and rules in the word, but without nurturance or relationship your child will rebel to your face or behind your back. And during the COVID-19 crisis, this risk increases as our stress level skyrockets. As a result, we tend to go strong on lecturing and limits. And our nurturance with our child or teenager can get put on hold or not attended to as needed. In this live interview with Sarah, a single parent mom, I discuss concrete and practical tools to parent with...
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From One Survivor to Another, Helping Survivors of Human Trafficking Escape and Stay Safe [sandiegotribune.com]
By Lisa Deaderick, The San Diego Tribune, December 22, 2019 Marjorie Saylor remembers a woman who was looking for help leaving her trafficker. The woman was pregnant and waiting for a bed at a shelter to open up, but she had to wait on the street, alone and in the cold. Her trafficker found her and took her with him. “I never heard from her again. She only had a week left to go before her bed opened up, but the two weeks she toughed it out waiting on the street kept her in harm’s reach,”...
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Frontiers of Resilience - Echo Changing the Paradigm Conference 2018
"Frontiers of Resilience" is the theme of Echo's Changing the Paradigm conference in March 2018 and we wanted to make sure that ACESConnection members got a preview of our not-to-be-missed speakers and workshops as well as a special discount (see end of article). The much anticipated Dr Ken Hardy will be speaking on the "Healing the Hidden Wounds of Racial Trauma." (He was scheduled to speak at our conference in March but a snowstorm prevented him from traveling.) The preeminent scientist on...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation Chapter III
I never believed that a man who abuses anyone physically, emotionally or verbally is simply a monster.That's too simple.There is a reason why men do what they do, and don't do and in order to help men and women to not be hurtful to themselves or others we must as I said in my last post ”help them heal.” We must advocate for a world in which we don't punish, we transform. I have always believed this on many issues, from domestic violence to drug addiction to other acts of criminality. We...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation continued
We can not solve problems from a distance from ourselves or from each other. The way we muster the courage to heal is to walk the journey together. Any effort to create policy change, structural change, or even programatic change will not succeed unless there is an explicit healing perspective. It begins with a deep understanding that we all come hurt and that those hurts often mean that in striving to relieve our own pain we hurt each other. “Hurt people, hurt people.” It is simplicity on...
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Girls are Bearing the Brunt of a Rise in US Cyberbullying [apnews.com]
By Sally Ho, Associated Press, July 26, 2019 SEATTLE (AP) — Rachel Whalen remembers feeling gutted in high school when a former friend would mock her online postings, threaten to unfollow or unfriend her on social media and post inside jokes about her to others online. The cyberbullying was so distressing that Whalen said she contemplated suicide. Once she got help, she decided to limit her time on social media. It helps to take a break from it for perspective, said Whalen, now a 19-year-old...
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Girls From Low-Income Backgrounds Are Truanting Because They Can’t Afford Sanitary Products (www.buzzfeed.com) & Commentary
Girls from lower-income backgrounds are missing days of school because they can’t afford sanitary products. A campaigner with Freedom4Girls, a organisation that provides women and girls in Kenya with sanitary products, told BuzzFeed News they were contacted by a concerned police officer working in a school in Leeds who had noticed a pattern in some girls’ truancy. “There is a problem, but we just don’t know how big,” campaigner Tina Leslie told BuzzFeed News. She was told by the officer,...
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Going beyond asking what happened: building beloved community
“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” –bell hooks One of the most notable descriptors of trauma-informed care is shifting the question of what is wrong...
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Good Parenting vs. Bad Neighborhood
Hello my name is Julius Patterson. I am currently a intern at Hopeworks N' Camden. I am twenty three years old and i am also a student at Camden County College. I found this article very intriguing because of past situations that i have encountered and i feel like i can relate on a personal level. Growing Up In Disadvantaged Areas May Affect teens Brains, But Good Parenting May Help By: Sarah Whittle, Julian G.Simmons, Nick Allen Summary & Analysis by: Julius Patterson Growing up in...
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Great Basic Parenting Tips & Why I Have Such a Hard Time Sharing Them
At least once a week I struggle about what to share here. This is my most recent example. It's a series of tips on the U.S. Department of Education . These are great hand-outs with comprehensive information about child development that's not too long, abstract or hard to read. Here's the list (also attached below). I especially like the flyer for talking about feelings which has the tag line "Talking is teaching." And the short summary of milestones at different ages and stages from birth to...
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Great pandemic resilience building activities for youth by ITRC CA steering committee member Lil Milagro Henriquez
I hope everyone is staying safe during these perilous times. I wanted to share some of the resources that Mycelium Youth Network is putting together. I'm extremely proud of the programming that we've put together and the community partners that we're working with for these projects. We've put together comprehensive youth and adult programming all designed with mental, socio-emotional, and physical resilience in mind. A full listing of classes can be accessed on our website . All of our youth...
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Greatest Mother’s Day Gift
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I have been given the greatest gift a mother could ask, my daughter- back. Last year a month before Mother’s Day I began a heart wrenching journey. My oldest daughter was in a serious car accident. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, broken neck, broken back, broken foot, but she was alive. She was a single mom. I became the guardian of my toddler grandson. I wasn’t prepared to become a mother in that way again. I was prepared to be a doting, spoiling...
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Growing up in disadvantaged areas may affect teens’ brains, but good parenting can help [TheConversation.com]
New research has found growing up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood may have negative effects on children’s brain development. But for males, at least, positive parenting negated these negative effects, providing some good lessons for parents. Living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood (where there are more people who have low income jobs or are unemployed, are less educated, and have less access to resources) can cause stress, and has been linked with psychological and social problems in...
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Growing Up in Today's World is NOT Easy: One Student's Story
Growing up in today's world is NOT easy. I have heard hundreds of students tell me this. Despite this fact, many of them have also told me that many of the adults in their lives don't seem to understand this, including parents, teachers, and society. Adults who are disconnected from the reality of the lives of the youth that they are around will not be able to completely understand how to provide the support that might be needed for those youth needing it most. I recently met a young woman...
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Guidance for Teachers and Counselors to Help Kids at Risk at Home
People are beginning to be aware that one result of the increased stress around COVID-19 is the tragic fact that child abuse and neglect is increasing, but the safety net provided by schools is no longer in place. Teachers and counselors can continue to be a hero to students in this time of crisis, and can help mitigate the negative impact of traumatic events and stress. Caregivers might not be able to do it alone. We (Dr. Rachel Gilgoff, a child abuse pediatrician and trauma expert, and...
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Guilt vs. Shame (www.nicabm.com)
There's a blog post by Ruth Buczynski, PhD on the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine website that links to a great infographic explaining the difference between guilt and shame. It's worth checking out. What I found most helpful though is something I've never really heard of or understood - irrational guilt. Irrational guilt is defined as "a feeling of psychological discomfort about something we've done against our irrationally high standards." Who knew? I...
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Happy Halloween
Goblins and ghosts don’t scare me. What scares me is what scares many grandparents across the U.S., a grandchild at risk. Recently I was talking with a friend about my situation as guardian of my grandson, and she confided in me. She told me she’s scared every time her grandson goes back home with his mom. My friend “helps out” when her daughter finds herself in a tough spot. My friend worries there’s enough for her grandson to eat when he’s home with his mom. She worries he’s safe from the...
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Listening to Ebony Stewart's Voice: The Complexity of ACEs (www.youtube.com)
Ebony Stewart doing spoken word about her father and her mother and childhood from an adult perspective. Ebony Stewart doing spoken word about adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences as lived. Ebony Stewart speaking about speaking up and silence and using her voice and the experience of being threatened and silenced. Too often, when we talk about ACEs we aren't speaking in first person or about the complexity of real-life experiences. Often, we're speaking in general...
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Happy Mother's Day! Remembering The Greatest Generation of Moms...
“I waited.
And waited…
And then…I waited some more.”
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Harvard Infographic on ACEs and Toxic Stress
This was just posted by Harvard. I thought all of us could use access to it, for use in our schools and the settings we work in. The full image is on the attached PDF.
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'Haven't Hugged My Mom in a Month:' Kids of Health Care Workers Feel the Strain [kqed.org]
By Sasha Khokha , Asal Ehsanipour Apr 17 As front line health care workers dedicate long hours to caring for patients during the COVID-19 crisis, life has changed for their own families — especially their children. Some hospital workers are staying away from their families to protect their kids. Others are living in the same house and taking extra precautions to avoid passing along the virus. Many children of nurses and doctors are navigating the unpredictability of life without regular...
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Having-a-baby.com / Ann Douglas
Few things challenge my attention span more than sleep deprivation or anxiety. Combine both with with parenting babies or toddlers and retaining anything at all is unlikely. It's why I love videos. I discovered some short, warm and accessible ones today done by mother and author, Ann Douglas, on the www.havingababy.com website. Her videos are only a minute long and geared towards parents of infants, toddlers and kids in grade school. I would have loved these when my daughter was younger.
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Healing ACEs
I am writing you this post as a past president of the Michigan Association of School Psychologists and adoptive father of two foster children with special needs. My wife, Barbara, and I have written two books concerning educating and raising abused and abandoned children. Because these books will be helpful to both parents and teachers I am posting this letter to education and parenting pages. They are: Some Way Home – A Memoir in a Myth and Crossing Infinity – Healing Our Children Ourselves...
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Healing Developmental Trauma
Last week I posted an article about the Harvard study on happiness, which found that strong social connections are the primary driver of happiness. No surprise there. What struck me, however, is how these findings relate to ACEs. I had just finished reading Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship , which addresses this very issue. From the back cover: “Although it may seem that people suffer from an endless number...
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Healing from Codependency and the Freedom that Awaits
There is no healing without recognition of that which needs to be healed. Someone who has clogged arteries cannot heal those clogged arteries if they are unaware they have clogged arteries. To heal mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, or cognitively first requires an acknowledgment of some kind of deficit or wound. In order to acknowledge a wound one must become conscious or self-aware of such wound.
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Healing in place: Game on to flip the COVID19 threat into a positive experience for our children
As I was considering the children sheltering-in-place this morning and reflecting on lessons from my own childhood, I wondered: Can we heal-in-place too? I was born after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, another collective trauma affecting everyone. Yet, it was nevertheless passed on to me by the adults in my life in the form of constant reminders that the U.S. could be blown into bits any second. When I started school, there were constant “hide under the chair” earthquake drills I took to be...
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Healing Is Possible
I devoted half of my book, Childhood Disrupted , to science-based interventions on how individuals can heal from the effects of ACEs. Here are some of the basics. H ere are some really important healing steps we can all take – which the science shows can help reverse the changes to our brains and DNA that might have occurred, growing up with ACES Writing to heal. Research shows individuals who write about emotional upheavals and stressful experiences for 20 minutes each day, over a period of...
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Healing through Trauma through Writing & Peer Support (www.grassgetsgreener.com)
I was interviewed by Melissa Wilson for The Grass Gets Greener podcast. She's interviewed over 100 survivors and I was honored to speak about developmental trauma, PTSD and the healing process - and even a little about ACEs and this group. It's a little bit embarrassing to share here because I have not exactly been speedy when it comes to healing. The process, which started in my early 20's, had been slow and isolating. However, I know I'm not unique and in general, there's still too little...
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Health Care's Role in Meeting Patients' Needs [rwjf.org]
By the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, July 11, 2019. Purpose The purpose of this call for proposals is to identify grantees who can lead an effort to provide: Part I: Clear Principles that set a high standard for the health care sector to provide equitable care that fully addresses people’s physical, emotional, and social needs; and Part II: Guidance for implementing care delivery that is fully responsive to patients’ goals, needs, and life circumstances, using maternal morbidity and...
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Health Care System Fails Many Transgender Americans (npr.org)
In the basement of Casa Ruby in Washington, D.C., transgender men and women in their late teens and 20s, mostly brown or black, shared snacks, watched TV, chatted or played games on their phones. Many of them, said Corado, are part of the 31 percent. That's 31 percent of transgender Americans who lack regular access to health care. The finding comes from a new poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Corado pointed to one crucial word...
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This Chicago doctor stumbled on a hidden epidemic of fetal brain damage (PBS.org)
CHICAGO — The agitated mom had three kids in foster care and she wanted them back. But she didn’t understand how to parent. She’d never worked. She had a short fuse. She was slow and didn’t seem to learn from experience. Dr. Carl Bell studied the young woman. Flat cheeks. Thin upper lip. Folds at the corner of her eyes. It hit him like a thunderbolt: She had subtle features of fetal alcohol syndrome. Bell had seen thousands of patients like this over the past 40 years and been baffled by...
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Helping A Child Whose Parent is Struggling with Addiction [npr.org]
By Kavitha Cardoza, National Public Radio, February 6, 2020 What can you do if you're a teacher, a neighbor, a churchgoer, a coach ... and you suspect a child is being impacted by a parent's addiction? Maybe you're thinking, "I'd love to help but it's not my business." Or "I want to reach out but I don't know much about addiction." Remember that episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, where he tells children to "look for the helpers"? You can be that helper simply by being present for the...
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Helping Children in Emergencies: Keep Your Child’s Developmental Stage and Temperament in Mind
By Karissa Luckett, RN, BSN, MSW Common reactions to stress will fade over time for most children. Let’s be honest: Your exploring, tactile toddler won’t suddenly start keeping their hands to themselves. Your continually forgetful preschooler won’t suddenly start hand-washing properly just because you’ve told them it’s important. Depending on their ages, stages and temperaments, some children will require more reassurance or more time to shift than others. This situation is unique, and so is...