Blog

By Carolyn C. Ross M.D., M.P.H. April 29, 2020, Real Healing. What Native American, African Americans, and Holocaust survivors have in common. Have you ever thought about traumatic experiences as having their roots in the lives of your parents or grandparents? Trauma can be defined as the loss of an essential part of ourselves — a sense of safety, of trust or security. Trauma ultimately has the ability to define our behaviors, actions, and sense of self. More and more research is also...

By National Crittenton and Katcher Consulting, Annie E. Casey Foundation, March 2020 Founded in 1883 as a social justice advocacy organization, National Crittenton has been dedicated to the needs and potential of girls, young women and women facing violence, poverty and injustice across the country for more than a century. Additionally, National Crittenton convenes the 26 Yet, systems have turned a blind eye to the ways in which the “safety net” designed for adults is a “trap” for young...

By Sasha Khokha , Asal Ehsanipour Apr 17 As front line health care workers dedicate long hours to caring for patients during the COVID-19 crisis, life has changed for their own families — especially their children. Some hospital workers are staying away from their families to protect their kids. Others are living in the same house and taking extra precautions to avoid passing along the virus. Many children of nurses and doctors are navigating the unpredictability of life without regular...

Every week day, the Ten Percent Happier team shares a live, half-hour "sanity break" which includes five minutes of meditation practice. Earlier this week one of the topics was on addressing (and maybe changing or resolving) family habits and dynamics coming up more often or with more intensity during the pandemic. The video is below and the link to the Ten Percent Happier Live site is here.

Three Change in Mind partners (The Family Partnership, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and Children & Families First in Delaware) were just recognized in an article about TFP’s Executive Functioning Across Generations. Reflection Sciences is the developer of the Minnesota Executive Function Scale, the best tool out there for measuring EF in kids. Here’s the link: ...

Family estrangement is a very grief-ridden and personal experience that family members face when someone leaves or driven away from their family of origin. It occurs in families of all different demographic situations, including all races, religions, and cultures. But why do family estrangements happen? In this article, we shall focus on some of the most common reasons why family estrangements occur including: Abuse Neglect Mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships Clash...

From Wisconsin Department of Health Services, May 6, 2020 Ahead of Children's Mental Health Awareness day tomorrow, May 7, Office of Children’s Mental Health Director Linda Hall today announces the publication of a new fact sheet focused on prioritizing children’s mental health in Wisconsin and how our communities can do that. Highlights include: Almost half of high school students in Wisconsin are feeling anxious A child typically experiences symptoms of emotional distress for 11 years...

These resources provide you with ways you can talk, read, sing, and play your way through the day—just with things you might already have indoors. Pick and choose the ideas that work best for your child’s age and interests. And follow your child’s lead on other ways they want to play! Too Small to Fail is working with partners to help provide educational resources, like this toolkit, and books to families across the country. We also are working to connect nonprofit partners with corporate...

Sheltering-at-home with kids? These questions can help them, and us, focus on the good things in life. Click HERE for the Podcast.

Note: You may receive an unsolicited invite to a class when downloading the article. By Gabor Mate, PESI, May 2, 2020 Have you ever wondered, as I have, how someone with an addiction could go through 21 detox centers and 5 treatment facilities, yet continue to relapse? It wasn’t until I started working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—one of the most concentrated areas of drug use, mental illness, and poverty in North America—that I realized... The reason these treatments do NOT work is...

Problem Solving is extremely important in the resilience process. It can help move us beyond our fear brain and begin working toward healing from trauma. In the resilience narratives I have collected (e.g. Madsen Thompson, 2010) people from very young children in foster care group homes and hospitals to parents living in poverty have told me that taking time to think about a problem helps them through really hard times. Feel free to distribute these as you see fit, but please do not alter...

A risk of the household isolation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, is that constant parent-child conflict will lead to what is called interactional trauma that will cause lost or damaged attachment. This lost attachment can cause deep trauma that can last long after this crisis is over. To lower this risk and heal these wounds, Dr. Sells illustrates the use of the child’s love language and being unpredictable in an online counseling session with a single parent mom in crisis due to...