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In a time when college graduates return to live under their parents’ roofs and top careers require years of internships and graduate degrees, the age of adulthood is receding, practically into the 30s. Adolescence, loosely defined as the period between puberty and financial independence, now lasts about 15 years, twice as long as it did in the 1950s. Part of this is due to the declining age of puberty in both males and females, but most of that extension appears in the 20s, when an...

Adolescence can be a stressful period for the parent-child relationship. Could mindfulness help? A new pilot study took an innovative approach to the problem, combining classes for both preteens and parents with brain scans of the parents and reports from their children on how mom or dad were doing. Previous studies found that mindfulness practice can lessen stress, depression, and anxiety in parents of preschoolers and children with disabilities —and that mindful parenting is linked to more...

This morning I was moved to write a letter to the editors of the New York Times, after reading the opinion piece "Schools That Work" in the Sunday Review section. The article begins with the story of a now high-school age African American student, Alanna Clark, who has a reading disability. Alanna's mother managed to find her a spot in a charter school "outside her neighborhood," after she "repeatedly asked the school for help, without success."

The majority of teachers, administrators and other educators have very little experience recognizing "pain based behaviors" in kids. Pain based behaviors look like disrespect, disobedience, willfulness, moodiness, excessive anger, not being able to sit still, and a whole host of behaviors that are "punished" in our schools. So we continue to use the more politically correct term of "consequences" as our most troubled children behave in a manner that seems to leave very little options for the...

The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated its seventh annual World Mental Health Day on October 10. The organization uses this date to call attention to the need for the entire world to recognize the international impact of mental health disorders on the global economy and human rights. To support this initiative, the WHO created a 2013-2020 Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan with four major objectives: strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health; provide...

In 2015, Masui Segun was conducting research for a report on attacks on teachers and students in camps for internally displaced people in northeast Nigeria. She's the senior researcher for Nigeria for Human Rights Watch , an international nongovernmental group that publishes about 100 reports a year on human rights issues. The people she met wanted her to look into a different topic. "People walked up to us and asked why we were not researching the violence against women in the camps," she...

Last year, the Texas legislature approved a $350 million cut in Medicaid reimbursement rates to early childhood intervention therapists and providers. The cuts, made to help balance a billion dollars in property tax relief, affect the most vulnerable Texas children — those born extremely prematurely or with Down syndrome or other genetic conditions that put them at risk for developmental delay. For months, providers of in-home physical, speech and occupational therapies have continued to...

Connecting with professionals between sessions who are familiar with the effects of domestic violence Last week, I did a presentation about ACEs science and trauma for 150 people who attended Stanislaus County's 17th Annual Family Domestic Violence Conference in Modesto, CA. The conference participants work in family court, social services, education, law enforcement, and probation. (L to R) Dave Lockridge; Honorable Linda McFadden of Family Court; and Dick Monteith, Stanislaus County...

Students at JLA are reminded that change starts with themselves In 2004, after nearly a decade as program director at Jubilee Leadership Academy (JLA), a Christian alternative boarding school for troubled boys ages 13-18 in Prescott, WA, Rick Griffin decided to take a job in Phoenix, AZ, to work with adults with developmental disabilities. There, he began to see similarities between the issues they were having and what he saw in the kids at JLA. “There was a cognitive reason these adults I...

This network allows us to collaborate and learn about so many other great individuals, organizations and initiatives. One of my favorite groups is the The Trigger Points Anthology which is led by two amazing women, Joyelle Brandt and Dawn White Daum. Both are survivors, activists and parents. They are also ACE-informed. In fact, the first link on their resource page to parents is all about ACEs. This week they published the first two stories in their Survivor Empowering Survivor series . You...

Naja Tunney’s home is filled with books. Sometimes she will pull them from a bookshelf to read during meals. At bedtime, Naja, 5, reads to her 2-year-old sister, Hannah. “We have books anywhere you sit in the living room,” said their mother, Cheryl Tunney, who curls up with her girls on an oversized green chair to read stories. Naja and Hannah are beneficiaries of Reach Out and Read, an early intervention literacy program that collaborates with medical care providers to provide free books...

A pioneer in the field of medicine, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is a leader in the movement to transform how we respond to early childhood adversity and the resulting toxic stress that dramatically impacts our health and longevity. By revealing the science behind childhood adversity, she offers a new way to understand the adverse events that affect all of us throughout our lifetimes. As a pediatrician, a mom and the founder/CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness, Dr. Burke Harris has brought these...