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"There is a series of 20 elements to the program. There may be a victim that steps forward that wants two or three of us those. We don't put what we believe someone needs on the person who was victimized. We let them tell us what they need and that's a real shift from the traditional law enforcement response which can be pretty assumptive of what someone needs or wants or should want if they've been victimized." Detective, Carrie Hall on WBUR's Here and Now program today speaking about the...

I have a tween now so I'm no longer on the floor most of the time. But I spent a lot of my daughter's early life being down on the ground. I remember being a bit shocked by how important crawling and exploring the world, from all fours was supposed to be and that for a child there's little except food and love needed more than play. Also, my child seemed mysterious at time. Though I knew many others parented for all of recorded time, she was my first kid and so it was my first time...

Thanks to Jane I just discovered this FABULOUS website - Zero to Three . The thing I love most is the same thing I love about the entire ACEs Connection community. It's a blend or research, personal experiences and social policy all blended into a fabulous incubator for social change. The Zero to Three website which has resources, articles, videos and podcasts too. It's ALL good. But today I'm going to share some insights from a parent survey recently done. The results are fascinating. It's...

We’re all well aware that education leads to better jobs and higher income. Just as important, research also links education to reduced risk of illness, increased vitality, longevity and academic success that extends to future generations . That’s why the situation for schools in Lawrence, Mass., was particularly concerning back in 2010. At the time, more than one out of every four Lawrence kids dropped out of high school . This led the Massachusetts Department of Education to put Lawrence’s...

It is encouraging to hear Dallas ISD and districts across the country working hard to integrate social emotional health education back into our schools. However, without two key factors in place, these efforts will not succeed. There is no curriculum that is going to provide the reset that we are looking for in our schools (or in our country for that matter). The first factor that cannot be ignored is that as adults, we must practice what we preach. Explicitly teaching social emotional...

About 7 percent of all Danish children are born prematurely. This is of significant importance not only to the child's development, but it also affects the mother's body that -- unexpectedly -- has to produce the necessary nutrition for the newborn baby. Research has previously demonstrated that breast milk from women who give birth prematurely is different from breast milk from women who give birth to full-term babies. The examinations focused on the milk's content of macro nutrients such...

If you like gymnastics or have been watching the Olympics you probably already know that Simone Biles is an amazing athlete . Did you know she has ACEs as well? Biles lived in foster care, had an absent father and parents who reportedly struggled with addiction to drugs. I didn't know any of this unitl NBC commentator, Al Trautwig, refused to call her adoptive parents her parents, first on air and later via Twitter. This angered many people. Luckily, Biles' coach and the public responded...

“If your parent is the bear in the living room, it is biologically impossible to run to that parent when they are either over or under reacting. If your parent is scary you can’t run to them. And you also can’t run away from them because you are a child, you can’t function in the world on your own. You can’t make it out there." Donna Jackson Nakazawa We can get so lost in theory, data and facts that our language about trauma, abuse and adverse childhood experiences can become clinical and...

I shared the blog post below on ACEsConnection a little while ago. I keep thinking about images when it comes to PTSD and also ACEs. The cultural image of PTSD is something that still tends to be of soldiers. How do we go about changing that. I'm hoping a better understanding of ACEs, in the general public, will eventually change the images we tend to have and use as well. But what images should be shown? What images do people have of ACEs and what do we hope they (we) will have? I know even...

"In a sense, it doesn't matter from a policy point of view, whether bad health is transmitted down the generations through a biological mechanism, a social one or a mixture of both - because we largely already know how to fix it. The good news is that even if you start life with a low stock of health, if you live in a society with good public health, you can, to some extent, build up your stocks as you go along." This BBC radio show shares stories and research which are hopeful, horrible and...

Eight years ago I wrote a brief review of The Whole Parent: How to be a Good Parent Even if You Didn't Have One by Debra Wesselmann. It was, and still is one of the few titles on this important topic. While the article is older, and geared towards adoptive parents, the content is still useful and this book can help any of us who are Parenting with ACEs. Here's an excerpt: This book is fantastic because it manages to be non-shaming about our weak spots while stressing the importance of...

The Boston Globe's spotlight team continues to do great reporting. In May, they ran a story about hundreds of students who had been sexually abused by staffers at close to 70 private schools in New England. Yesterday, they ran a story about the retaliation many faced at private schools after reporting. When a small boarding school in the Berkshires discovered that a music teacher was having a sexual relationship with a female student, administrators responded in a way many parents would...