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Helping kids cope may not be easy, but county officials are hoping the answer is child's play. "Children have their own language," said Sarah Holland, peer support specialist at Crossroads Area Veterans Center. Saturday, the Crossroads Area Veterans Center will debut the first session of a new therapy program just for kids, Holland said. Although play therapy, which is free for children and their parents, is currently only open to the children of women who have served in the military or who...

You could call it the obscene phone call heard 'round the world. The May 1967 Supreme Court ruling that threw out Gerald Gault’s six-year commitment for lewd remarks over the telephone has led to half a century of juvenile justice reform. And how to keep that momentum going for another half-century will be the focus when lawyers and other advocates for children facing lockup convene in Atlanta June 2 and 3. Organizers hope to send them home with “some new tricks in their bag,” said Whitney...

In today’s world, academics, practitioners and even lay people throw around terms or buzzwords such as “best practices” or “evidence-based practices” or “transformation efforts” when discussing juvenile justice practices and needs. These phrases are embedded in every conversation, training session and publication specific to juvenile justice. Yet too often these terms remain vague and disconnected from our daily work with juveniles. One of these buzzwords is the term “trauma.” I openly admit...

Residents of Grays Harbor County have shorter lifespans than any other county in the state. Local health officials say the key to reversing the trend is focusing on the early development of children age 2 and younger, instructing the parents of young kids how to spot the signs of normal childhood development and giving those parents the tools to provide their children with an environment that will lead to a healthier lifestyle as they grow. “What we have to do is look below the surface, and...

Gratitude has become a hot topic in recent years. Celebrities from Oprah to James Taylor to Ariana Huffington have promoted an “attitude of gratitude,” and gratitude journals, hashtags, and challenges have become immensely popular. Much of this enthusiasm has been fueled by research linking gratitude to happiness , health , and stronger relationships . [For more of this story, written by Christina N. Armenta and Sonja Lyubomirsky, go to ...

The National Housing Trust Fund is one of the only new social safety net programs in a generation. It was launched by the bill President George W. Bush signed into law in 2008 to try to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the subprime mortgage crisis. The fund was designed to create and preserve affordable housing for families with worst-case needs, but it only recently came online. When the financial crisis threatened to become a global catastrophe in 2008, the Housing Trust Fund was...

Since the Great Recession, the economy has recovered on several key fronts—the stock market has rebounded, unemployment is down, the labor market has tightened, and employers are looking to fill jobs with talented workers. But for many millions of Americans, that recovery remains invisible: Their wages and productivity—two key measures of economic dynamism—have stagnated. Worse, both remain highly unequal and uneven across the nation, according to two new analyses. The first analysis by the...

The Netflix show 13 Reasons Why has caused some recent controversy. Some feel that the show encourages teens to think about suicide as a viable option to deal with their problems while others feel it spotlights the issues of youth suicide, bullying, and sexual assault which plague our society. What’s important is that the show has people talking, especially about the taboo subject of suicide and we’re overdue for this discussion. [For more of this story, written by Nicholette Leanza, go to ...

City life seems to take a toll on the adolescent mind, new research suggests. The study included more than 2,000 18-year-olds in England and Wales who were interviewed about psychotic experiences (such as hearing voices and feeling extremely paranoid) since age 12. The research team from King's College London and Duke University found that teens raised in large cities were over 40 percent more likely to report psychotic experiences than those who grew up in rural areas. [For more of this...

As reports of the carnage at Monday's Ariana Grande show in Manchester, England, continue to pour in, many teens with tickets to concerts during the coming summer music season may be reluctant to attend an event. But child and adolescent psychiatrists say it's important that parents let their teens follow through on their plans, even if the adults themselves are anxious about their letting kids go out. [For more of this story, written by Dennis Thompson, go to ...

We had our first Parenting with ACEs Group chat a few weeks ago. The full chat transcript is saved online. The topic was talking about tough topics with kids. I can't not think about the tragic world news . As we drove to school I asked my teen if she'd heard about the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert. We'd only been up for an hour. We hadn't been watching the news. But of course she had heard about it already. She learned about it on social media just as I had. Sometimes, I can still...

When her eldest son was in elementary school in the Oakland Unified School District, Ruth Woodruff became alarmed by the meals he was being served at school. A lot of it was frozen, processed foods, packed with preservatives. At home, she was feeding her children locally sourced, organic foods. Woodruff believes that feeding children well is a foundation of good education. “If kids come to school hungry, if they don’t have access to adequate nutrition ... their brains aren’t going to be...