Blog

By Jamie Bussel, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 13, 2019. This Sunday, families around the country will celebrate Father’s Day and pay tribute to the special caregivers in their lives. It’s a time when I find myself feeling especially grateful for all the positive ways my own father has influenced my life and the crucial role my husband plays in raising our daughters. I also think about the many dads I have been lucky enough to meet throughout my life. These are the special dads who...

by David Washburn, EdSource, June 11, 2019. Butte County’s Oroville City Elementary School District, which has a suspension rate that is three times the statewide average, is under state investigation for its discipline policies and practices. The investigation, by the California Bureau of Children’s Justice , is focused on the district’s record of suspending and expelling students and its alternatives to those punishments, according to a district statement . The statement also said the...

By Landon Funk, Tennessean., June 12, 2019. You can’t go to therapy without first going to yoga – that’s my belief anyway. We store all of our thoughts, emotions and traumas in our bodies, predominantly in our shoulders and hips, which is why those areas are so tight all of the time. When we practice yoga, we access those uncomfortable traumas through movement and mindfulness. And in trauma-informed yoga, we sit with that discomfort and those painful memories, taking the time to process each...

By Dan Levin, The New York Times, June 12, 2019. Inside an elementary school classroom decorated with colorful floor mats, art supplies and building blocks, a little boy named Riley talked quietly with a teacher about how he had watched his mother take “knockout pills” and had seen his father shoot up “a thousand times.” Riley, who is 9 years old, described how he had often been left alone to care for his baby brother while his parents were somewhere else getting high. Beginning when he was...

By Maya Brennan, Emily Peiffer, and Kimberly Burrowes, How Housing Matters, June 12, 2019. Zoning rules dictate more than just how we can use and build on land. They also shape our communities and our lives. Land use laws determine where we can find housing, schools, and parks—and who has access to them. Policymakers initially created zoning codes to protect public health —for example, to stop residents from getting sick from living too close to factories. But from the start, zoning has...

The Gender Phluid Collective will connect you to resources you need. 1:1 sessions, support groups, medical referrals and other services in your local area. Click HERE for the website.

Most people are familiar with PTSD flashbacks -- the kind we associate with combat veterans who are haunted by a war memory. With Chronic PTSD (CPTSD), we may have "emotional flashbacks" -- mood states from childhood that are disconnected from present day events, though we don't always know it. My new Dysregulation Bootcamp will be open for registration in a few weeks. You can join the list of people with first access here. You can access my online course "Healing Childhood PTSD" here. If...

By Jeremy Loudenback, The Chronicle of Social Change, June 12, 2019. After a new report found that more than 90 percent of youth in the county’s juvenile halls had an open mental health case, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors pledged to improve mental health care to justice-involved youth in county. That includes both more services for youth detained in the county’s juvenile detention facilities and more options to divert youth away from incarceration and into less restrictive...

By Wilson Criscione, Inlander, June 5, 2019. Dr. Robert Zarr steps into the patient room and sees a teenage girl. Lately, the 17-year-old has been experiencing repeated panic attacks, giving her so much chest pain that she had to be rushed to the emergency room each time. She's looking for answers from Dr. Zarr. Instead, it's Zarr who asks a question. "Do you have a way to spend time outside?" he says. "Well, there's this hammock at my dad's house," she replies. "What about lying there for a...

By Lallia Allali, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 6, 2019. The increase in hate- and discrimination-motivated incidents in the United States has a major impact on children and their learning journey. These traumatic incidents are the leading factors in childhood trauma, because they pose a threat to the child’s life or bodily integrity. Childhood trauma is also identified as one of the barriers to high academic achievement and success for students. Yet, this issue has largely been ignored...

Editor’s note: This article was included in the monthly update from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child that featured the campaign “Let’s Tell the World about #ServeAndReturn.” If you’re not one of the 55 million + viewers of this video, don’t miss it. It is heartwarming and funny (the father is a Tennessee comedian), and wonderful example of a child learning love and language. Last week, a video of a dad talking to his 19-month-old son broke the internet . In the clip, Tennessean...

By Charlotte West, EdSource, June 10, 2019. While earning her associate’s degree at Santa Monica College and working 30 hours a week with her mother cleaning houses, Maritza Lopez didn’t always know where she was going to sleep. When her family was evicted from their apartment, she spent a lot of time hanging out on campus, often crashing on friends’ couches at night. Her search for a place to sleep reflects a challenge facing a growing number of college students caught between the pincers...