Tagged With "White world"
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20 Caregiver Resolutions for 2020
20 Caregiver Resolutions for 2020 Let someone make you a meal at least once a week and that someone can be anyone (including a fast-food chain restaurant Keep a daily Gratitude Journal and start each day with, “ I am grateful that the World has me” Don’t fold any fitted sheets for the entire year, just roll them into a ball Once a month go to a playground with a friend, a neighbor, sibling, spouse, co-worker and ask them to push you on the swing Stay in the shower or tub 5 minutes longer...
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2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference Series - Why Take Course One and Course Two?
Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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7 Reasons the Past is Keeping You Stuck (www.beatingtrauma.com)
Excerpt from blog by Elisabeth Corey.
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7 Ways to Help a Child Deal with Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress feels awful. Thankfully, there are small things we can all do to help relax a hyperaroused nervous system.
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75 Calm Down Strategies for Kids
I came across this webpage and wanted to share with my parent and caregiver small groups. My intern typed it up into a handout. Feel free to share.
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8 changes that were made to a classic Richard Scarry book to keep up with the times. Progress! (upworthy.com)
Scarry was an incredibly prolific children's author and illustrator. He created over 250 books during his career. His books were loved across the world — over 100 million were sold in many languages. Scarry started publishing books in the 1950s, when times were, well, a little different. So some of the details were quietly updated. Here are eight changes that reflect some of the progress society has made: And we need changes to keep happening! Kids should be able to read books with same-sex...
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8 Health Conditions That Disproportionately Affect Black Women [Self.com]
(Cissy's note: Many of these 8 conditions impact early and across the life span which means impacting our kids or us, as parents, and making parenting with ACEs even more challenging.) Although being black in this world certainly comes with its struggles, I wouldn't trade that integral part of my identity for anything. Black-girl magic is real. But it's a sad fact that black women are often plagued with disproportionately high incidences or mortality rates for various health conditions, like...
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9 Signs You Need Better Self-Care and May Be a Trauma Survivor
Self-care is the sum of things you do for your emotional and physical wellbeing. Getting enough sleep, brushing your teeth, and eating well are classic examples of good physical self-care. How to take good care of yourself emotionally may be harder to see from the outside. Your ability to view your inner world with compassion and curiosity is one sign. Noticing your emotions and thoughts with gentle awareness is another inward sign of emotional self-care. Knowing how to find and turn to...
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9 things this adoptive mom would like everyone to know [upworthy.com]
Adoption is amazing. And it’s complicated. It can bring great joy. And it can bring great pain. Adoption is nuanced. And like anything else, it can be hard to see those nuances when it's not part of your life. That's particularly true when the media is so good at circulating adoption narratives that are a little problematic — like the baby left under the Christmas tree for his siblings to discover. I get why people thought it was sweet: A precious new life was placed into an...
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9 ways parents can help bullied kids learn resilience (www.washingtonpost.com)
Here's an excerpt from a Washington Post article by Phyllis L. Fagell: Bullying strips kids of their dignity and leaves scars. Some children bounce back, while others struggle to rebound. There is no one-size-fits-all intervention, but here are nine ways parents can build a child’s resilience. Change the narrative Help kids understand that they are the main character of their story and that bullying is just one small part of it. Matt Langdon, a bullying expert and president of the Hero...
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A Landmark Study Has Found Self-Control to be One of the Most Important Predictors of Success – Here’s How to Increase Self-Control In Children (heysigmund.com)
The need for self-control can feel like a tease at times and a bit of a pity, but its influence is spectacularly powerful. A landmark study conducted over three decades has found that the level of self-control children have as five-year olds, is one of the greatest predictors of their health, wealth and success as adults. Knowing how to increase self-control in children can help them on a path that sees them thrive. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study , a New Zealand...
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A Love Letter To Those Who Break The Cycle Of Abuse (www.scarymommy.com)
So if you are a parent from a wounded background striving to raise your kids differently, if you are silently waging your own battles the rest of the world can't see, I want you to know that you are awesome. Parenting is damn hard, even with good psycho-emotional tools, so naturally it may feel impossible sometimes. But you've got this. Keep choosing that phone booth. Don't give up. When you feel weary, remember this: The rewards for your efforts to break the cycle of abuse are vast and...
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A Moment with Mr. Rogers (dailygood.org)
“I don’t know whether to call you Fred or Mister Rogers,” I said. “Oh, that’s up to you!” drawled the warm, familiar voice from an office in Pittsburgh. “How do most adults approach you?” “Well, many of them have grown up with the Neighborhood and they invariably call me ‘Mister Rogers.’” He paused, then continued with a dash of excitement. “But you know something I’ve discovered? Friends of ours went to Sweden and they brought back—in fact I’ll reach and hold it while I’m telling you—they...
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A Post in Honor of World Mental Health Day: ACEs - Childhood Traumas - Are the Mother of Almost All Addiction and Disease.
Community is the anti-trauma. Children who grow up in trauma are wired for trauma -- it is the lens through which they see the world -- unless that trauma is disrupted by a love of peace. That peace comes from quiet moments reading, time in nature, time when there is no fear or expectation. It takes a lot for a parent with high ACEs to learn how to calm the mind and body enough to provide that calm space for children. ACEs are crafty. Their impact pops up across the lifespan, and for women,...
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A Reconsideration of Children and Screen Time [NYTimes.com]
The digital world is changing around us at a dizzying pace; parents want guidance, and pediatricians want to answer their questions with helpful and scientifically valid advice. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy on children and media is probably best known for two recommendations: to discourage any screen time for children under 2, and to limit screen time to two hours a day for older children. As new technologies have transformed many aspects of daily life, new questions have...
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A Reflection of Real Life and the Amazing Influence of People: The Saga of C-PTSD Continues
Cissy Note on Leisa's Amazing Post: This post isn't about parenting, specifically, but it is about C-PTSD which many parents are living with, sorting through and recovering from. I felt so much compassion for and admiration of Leisa reading this. I even felt some compassion for myself. I wonder how many others, while facing our ACEs feel the compassion of others or ourselves? I wonder if anyone, while battling symptoms, feels respected or admired? There can be so much shame. I hope that if...
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A Sherpa Helping Us Scale Mountains of Loss & Fear: The Impact of Sebern Fisher's Work
“You can recover from all that happened to you.” That was the dose of hope I received from Sebern Fisher during a short telephone interview. She is the author of Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain. Her book is excellent even if you never plan on using neurofeedback. She helps explain why and how developmental trauma devastates and how it is different than single-incident trauma or traditional post-traumatic stress. Honestly – if you read her...
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A Staffer’s Take On The Intersection Of Race, Trauma, And The Summit
Voices for Virginia’s Children held The Virginia Summit on Childhood Trauma and Resilience on April 25, 2019. The Summit featured an array of workshops, including The Intersection of Racial Inequity and Trauma led by The Southside Trauma-Informed Community Network . The presenters identified and discussed the challenges of racial inequities and how trauma may later present within people of color. The supporting organization of the Southside Trauma-Informed Community Network, the Crater...
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A staggering one-in-three women experience physical, sexual abuse [un.org]
24 November 2019, UN News Here is the grim reality, in numbers: A third of all women and girls experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, half of women killed worldwide were killed by their partners or family, and violence perpetrated against women is as common a cause of death and incapacity for those of reproductive age, as cancer, and a greater cause of ill health than road accidents and malaria combined. The prevalence of the issue, “means someone around you. A family...
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Empowering Kids In An Anxious World [NPR.org]
Rates of anxiety and depression among teens in the U.S. have been rising for years. According to one study , nearly one in three adolescents (ages 13-18) now meets the criteria for an anxiety disorder, and in the latest results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 32 percent of teens reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. And there's more bad news, grown-ups: The authors of two new parenting books believe you're part of the...
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Erasing My ACES
Why I hid ACES from my medical records in order to receive equal treatment.
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Families in Limbo: Coronavirus Hobbles Reunifications from Foster Care [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Jeremy Loudenback and John Kelly, The Chronicle of Social Change, April 16, 2020 This week was supposed to be a triumphant one for a Northern California mother of two, a 39-year-old home health aide. Soon after a long-scheduled court date at the Sonoma County Hall of Justice this week, she imagined she would soon be able to gather her 1-year-old daughter in her arms at last and end what has been the most terrifying experience of her life: the seven months her toddler has spent in foster...
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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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Farm Country Feeds America. But Just Try Buying Groceries There. [nytimes.com]
By Jack Healy, The New York Times, November 5, 2019 John Paul Coonrod had a banana problem. The only grocery store in his 1,500-person hometown in central Illinois had shut its doors, and Mr. Coonrod, a local lawyer, was racing to get a community-run market off the ground. He had found space in an old shoe store, raised $85,000 from neighbors and even secured a liquor license to sell craft beer. But then his main produce supplier fell through. The stakes of failure were huge. Farm towns like...
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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, 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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Finding Balance in Family [SocialJusticeSolutions.org]
One of the most important and difficult aspects of recovery work is finding balance in our lives. During our traumatic experiences, our inner parts split off in an attempt to keep us safe. In doing so, they stored their childlike beliefs until they had the opportunity to heal from their past experiences. And these beliefs consider the world from a black and white perspective. It is not a balanced view. But in healing, we can find that balance. Not surprisingly, it takes time and patience to...
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Foster Care Entries for Parental Drug Use Surge [usnews.com]
By Katelyn Newman, US News & World Report, July 15, 2019. INCIDENTS OF CHILDREN entering America's foster system as a result of their parents' drug use have surged since 2000, new research shows, coinciding with the country's recent opioid crisis. Using case data from the federally mandated Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, researchers from Cornell and Harvard universities found that 1,162,668 – or nearly 24% – of 4,972,911 entries of children into foster care...
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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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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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Grace Mattern: The importance of recognizing white privilege [concordmonitor.com]
The last time you handled a challenge well, were you called a credit to your race? When you go shopping, do store clerks watch you closely or follow you? Do you have trouble finding a hair salon nearby that knows how to style your hair? When you buy greeting cards and magazines, is it difficult to find ones with people the same race as you? If you answered no to these questions, you’re almost certainly white. There’s also a good chance you’ve never looked at your whiteness this way.
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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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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 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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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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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 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 Our Ghosts Podcast Debuts (www.wrestlingghosts.com)
Healing Our Ghosts is a new podcast created by filmmaker, Ana Joanes who describes it as follows: Cissy White Victor Lee Lewis, MA Elizabeth Kemler Joyelle Brandt
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Helping Kids Find the Wisdom in Overwhelm
In an unprecedented global shutdown, many of us, especially without the noise and distraction of everyday life, are facing intensified, often destabilizing feelings. And that includes kids—whether they’re able to say so or not.
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Helping New Parents Make Room for Uncertainty
A new program for parents and infants, thanks to generous support from Mill Town Capital , is coming to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The Hello It’s Me Project shines a spotlight on these tender new relationships, investing resources around the birth of a baby with the long-term goal of building a healthy community from the bottom up. When world-renowned child development researcher Dr. Ed Tronick spoke in the spring of 2018 for an audience of a wide variety of practitioners in Berkshire County...
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Helping Someone with PTSD: Helping a Loved One While Taking Care of Yourself (www.helpguide.org/)
"PTSD can take a heavy toll on relationships. It can be hard to understand your loved one’s behavior—why they are less affectionate and more volatile. You may feel like you’re walking on eggshells or living with a stranger. You may have to take on a bigger share of household tasks, deal with the frustration of a loved one who won’t open up, or even deal with anger or disturbing behavior. The symptoms of PTSD can also lead to job loss, substance abuse, and other problems that affect the whole...
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HOPE, Engagement, and COVID19
As children grow and develop, engaging with the larger community around them provides a sense of “mattering” — a sense that their participation in the community really does matter. The emergency conditions now in effect provide numerous opportunities to children and teens to pitch in. Here are a few ideas . . .
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HOPE in the time of Coronavirus: Inequities and Supporting Children
Today's blog is reposted from https: positiveexperience.org/blog/ Link there for the hyperlinks, and for other in this series. Having safe, stable, and equitable environments to live, learn and play forms the second of the 4 Building Blocks of HOPE. Children need homes where they feel safe and secure and have their basic needs met. Children thrive in an environment that encourages curiosity and provides opportunities for learning to play and interact with other children. Today’s blog is...
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How a bench and a team of grandmothers can tackle depression (bbc.com)
Zimbabwe is pioneering a groundbreaking mental health programme with stunning results – and the rest of the world is taking note. Globally, more than 300 million people suffer from depression , according to the World Health Organization. Depression is the world’s leading cause of disability and it contributes to 800,000 suicides per year, the majority of which occur in developing countries. No one knows how many Zimbabweans suffer from kufungisisa, the local word for depression (literally,...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How Parental Incarceration Affects a Child’s Education [TheAtlantic.com]
This past summer,The Atlantics Sarah Yager wrote about the rising popularity of prison nurseries as a means of saving costs, enhancing morale, and reducing recidivism among the ever-growing female inmate population. Such...
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How School Closures Can Strengthen Your Family (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Here in the U.S., millions of families are dealing with school closures. The number of students around the world whose education has been interrupted by the coronavirus is approaching 400 million, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. As closed schools ramp up for online learning, we can retool in our families, too. Here are three practical ways families can cope—and even thrive—despite school closures, event cancellations, and a whole lot more...