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Children born to low-income, first-time mothers who received home nursing visits showed increased mental health, stronger social and emotional development and academic gains, according to researchers who analyzed the impact of the Nurse-Family Partnership program, one of the largest home visiting programs in the country. The research team that conducted the analysis was led by James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in economics and professor and director of the Center for Economics of Human...

Tomorrow (July 26), Building Community Resilience will co-host a briefing on childhood trauma-- The Need to Address Childhood Trauma: Implications for Child Welfare and Education-- at the U.S. House of Representatives. Honorary Co-Hosts are Rep. Danny K. Davis (IL-7) and the Congressional Foster Youth Caucus. Featured speakers include Wendy Ellis , Milken Scholar, doctoral candidate and BCR Project Director, Olga Price , Director of the National Center for Health and Health Care in Schools.

For Tom Williams, a Chiropractor from Chicago, every day is bring your son to work day. At his family-based practice , which he runs along with his wife, Lauren, Tom is used to having kids in the office. After some recovery at home, the couple wanted to get the business back up and running again, but as parents and entrepreneurs, it was a challenge. Tom loved helping take care of his wife and new son (Oliver), but wanted to get back to taking care of his patients too. A few days per week,...

I almost felt slapped in the face – a wakeup slap; not a punishment – when I read Cissy White’s groundbreaking post describing her joy in finding out her “ACE score.” Her writing about her elation at learning about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study and questionnaire was an unintentional throw-down on her part. As I read her post I was compelled to reframe my shame, fear, and overall sense of dread about my own high ACE score. (Cissy has given me permission to use her name and to...

I saw this article linked on the Vital Village Facebook page today. It's fascinating. Now for the first time, there's a study reporting on what happens when psychologists give the marshmallow test to kids outside Western culture, specifically 4-year-old children from the ethnic group Nso in Cameroon. " The Nso are a community who live off subsistence farming, mainly corn and beans," says Bettina Lamm , a psychologist at the Universitaet Osnabrueck, who led the study. "Most of the children...

Pregnancy is often welcomed with joy and hope however, many challenges and distress may still occur during a mother’s pregnancy. Any concerns simple or complex may impact the wellness of the mother, her baby and cause stress on her multiple relationships. Oftentimes, mothers have to face planned or unplanned life changing events.

Scientists from Ditch the Label , an anti-bullying charity, conducted a study to determine how social media can cause anxiety among youth. By surveying more than 10,000 people aged 12 to 20, they examined cyberbullying on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. But Instagram was the most concerning. They found that 42 percent of Instagram users had been bullied on the platform compared to 37 percent for Facebook, 31Â percent for Snapchat, 10 percent for YouTube and 9 percent for...

A groundbreaking new play about trauma, TRIGGER, was most recently featured at part of the training and inspiration provided to community members participating in the 4CA Policymaker Education Day on July 11, 2017 in Sacramento at the state Capitol.

Here's an excerpt from an article by Christopher Bergland. Genevieve Dingle of the University of Queensland School of Psychiatry , who is the lead author of this study, described the findings in a statement: "People with chronic mental health conditions tend to experience difficulties with emotion perception and regulation, which can have a big impact on their social relationships. These symptoms are not well treated with medication or psychotherapy . The findings of this study are exciting...

Cissy's note: I love the gentle tone of this article and the advice given from the lessons learned and been there kind of a place. That said, please know it's not survival mode the way everyone means survival mode. It's more survival mode as in sleep-deprived or stretched feeling and not so much the survival mode of single parenting, poverty, health challenges, having to work and being or feeling unsafe. However, I share it for the gems that it does have and the reminder to perhaps try on a...

Here's some writing by Laura Parrott Perry on that whole forgiveness thing. It's clear, honest and helpful. Excerpted from her blog: “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” Khaled Hosseini Recently, I’ve found myself part of many conversations around the topic of forgiveness. Forgiveness is something I think many people fundamentally...

Great article by Kimberly Poovey And when the answer is a huge resounding NO, (as it most certainly is about 90 percent of the time in the early days/weeks/months), the asker will often give a deeply pitying look and respond with the fact that their child slept 15 consecutive hours a night from day three of life because they did Baby Wise/CIO/Ferberizing/witchcraft/etc. How is the shell-shocked new parent supposed to respond to this exactly? Because there is literally nothing less helpful in...