Tagged With "Alaskan Native Teens at Highest Risk"
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10 ways to avoid ACEs (during the pandemic)
How can we reduce ACEs and toxic stress during the COVID-19 pandemic? Many of us are concerned that increased stress might increase the risk for ACEs. For example, most child abuse happens when adults reach their breaking point. However, we are not powerless in the face of these challenges. HOPE - Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences - is a natural fit for ACES Connection, We invite you to join our new Balancing ACES with HOPE community . Let us know how you think HOPE about HOPE and...
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Two Decades Later, A Mother Writes Back to the WIC Program She Used
One of my best friends, Heidi Aylward, is a high ACE scoring mother of two. She's also a feisty, funny and has a full life balancing work, parenting, friends and all the responsibilities of tending to home and loved ones. And she is a woman who used WIC . WIC defines itself as "The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant,...
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2019 State Trends in Child Well-Being [aecf.org]
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The 30th edition of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT® Data Book begins by exploring how America’s child population — and the American childhood experience — has changed since 1990. And there’s some good news to share: Of the 16 areas of child well-being tracked across four domains — health, education, family and community and economic well-being — 11 have improved since the Foundation published its first Data Book 30 editions ago. The rest of the...
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4 New Facts About ACEs Parents Need to Know [yahoo.com]
By Lisa Heffernan, Yahoo Lifestyle, January 24, 2020 Many Americans have at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE) before the age of 17. These ACEs include child neglect and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, household challenges like substance abuse, mental illness, incarceration, parental separation, or divorce, and witnessing intimate partner violence. A collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente San Diego, the original ACE...
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4 years after integrating ACEs science, Pueblo, CO clinic improves services for families; cuts ER costs, doctor stress
Four years ago, Dr. Leslie Dempsey would never have talked about ACEs — adverse childhood experiences — with her patients. Now ACEs is a common topic. “Just as I don’t feel awkward asking someone if they smoke or do intravenous drugs, I don’t really feel awkward talking about their childhood traumas in a way that it relates to their health. It’s just integrated into obtaining background and social history,” she says. Dr. Leslie Dempsey Dempsey is a physician in obstetrics who oversees a team...
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5 Ways Caring Parents Make Teen Anxiety Worse (heysigmund.com)
Your happy-go-lucky child has turned into an anxiety-ridden teen . It is a painful thing to watch. Activities that were once enjoyable are now avoided. Going to school is a daily miracle. Instead of driving to the mall, you are driving to the doctor with mysterious stomach issues. So how do you make this nightmare go away? How do parents help with teen anxiety? You can start off learning what not to do – and then go from there. Teen anxiety can look very similar among teens, but how parents...
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50 calm-down ideas to try with kids of all ages (www.mother.ly) & Note
Note: I usually refrain from parenting advice and how-to-do anything. To me, it's about as effective as how-to-eat healthy advice and sharing nutrition facts as though people eat chips because they don't know vegetables are healthier. However, for parents looking for ways to get, feel and be more calm, this is a list with a lot of ideas. A parent who is less stressed, overwhelmed and feels less stretched is going to parent better. That's good for kids, too and parents can do some of these...
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A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity - Conference Tomorrow (Come Say Hi!)
I'll be talking about parenting and self-care tomorrow afternoon (why it's both hard and essential for those of us parenting with ACEs) at this conference hosted by the Federation for Children with Special Needs . I'm really looking forward to being in a room with a lot of other parents, speakers and writers. I'm almost too excited to be nervous. Here's more about the conference , organization , topics and speakers. RTSC's 6th Annual Making a Difference Conference for SESPs, Foster/Adoptive...
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A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity / Making a Difference Conference in MA in November
The 6th Annual Making a Difference Conference for SESPs, Foster/Adoptive and Kinship Caregivers and their Professional Partners will be held in Marlborough, MA on November 14, 2017. The theme is A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity. There will be at least two talks will be about ACEs! Speakers/Topics: Keynote: Managing the Hearts and Souls of Many, Dana Royster-Buefort, M.Ed., C.A.G.S. Workshops Tackling ACEs by Building Resilient Communities , Renee D Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD . Note:...
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A Conversation with Nadine Burke Harris: How Should Pediatricians Address Childhood Adversity?
Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris is a masterful storyteller. I learned in a conversation with her at Wheelock College before her presentation for the Brookline, MA organization Steps to Success , that before she decided to become doctor, Dr. Burke Harris wanted to be an author. Only after the smashing success of her TED talk: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime , when she was approached by a literary agent, did she find her way to writing. Her newly released book The...
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A Landmark Study Has Found Self-Control to be One of the Most Important Predictors of Success – Here’s How to Increase Self-Control In Children (heysigmund.com)
The need for self-control can feel like a tease at times and a bit of a pity, but its influence is spectacularly powerful. A landmark study conducted over three decades has found that the level of self-control children have as five-year olds, is one of the greatest predictors of their health, wealth and success as adults. Knowing how to increase self-control in children can help them on a path that sees them thrive. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study , a New Zealand...
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A New Look At Young Children Who Experience Trauma [WNPR.org]
An estimated 95,000 young children in Connecticut under age six have experienced a potentially traumatic event. There's a new effort underway in the state to expand services focused on their developmental needs. Early childhood trauma could include physical or sexual abuse, chronic neglect, a serious accident or illness, or loss of a loved one. According to a brief by the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut , nearly 45 percent of all youngsters between the ages of two and...
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A New Year's Message
Happy New Year and forget about old-time resolutions! I’d like to pose something different than loosing weight or getting organized: giving ourselves a gift, the gift of attention. I have a very particular activity to recommend – one that served me very well as I describe in Chapter 5: Coming Our as a Survivor in my book Healing My Life from Incest to Joy: “It came to me one morning as I sat in front of my mirror doing my hair and makeup. I looked into my own eyes and said, “I’m proud of...
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A Reflection of Real Life and the Amazing Influence of People: The Saga of C-PTSD Continues
Cissy Note on Leisa's Amazing Post: This post isn't about parenting, specifically, but it is about C-PTSD which many parents are living with, sorting through and recovering from. I felt so much compassion for and admiration of Leisa reading this. I even felt some compassion for myself. I wonder how many others, while facing our ACEs feel the compassion of others or ourselves? I wonder if anyone, while battling symptoms, feels respected or admired? There can be so much shame. I hope that if...
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Empowering Kids In An Anxious World [NPR.org]
Rates of anxiety and depression among teens in the U.S. have been rising for years. According to one study , nearly one in three adolescents (ages 13-18) now meets the criteria for an anxiety disorder, and in the latest results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 32 percent of teens reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. And there's more bad news, grown-ups: The authors of two new parenting books believe you're part of the...
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Ensuring Young Children Have Healthy Meals During the Coronavirus Pandemic [clasp.org]
By Rebecca Ullrich, CLASP, March 23, 2020 Practically overnight, the coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered the daily lives of our nation’s children and families. While everyone—regardless of race, age, gender, or socioeconomic status—is experiencing the pandemic’s effects, the long-term fallout won’t affect all of us equally. Families with low incomes, communities of color, immigrant families, women, the elderly, and people with disabilities who have long been economically...
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Erasing My ACES
Why I hid ACES from my medical records in order to receive equal treatment.
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Every Woman Was Once a Girl: Why We Need to Talk About the Unique Biological Effects of #ToxicChildhoodStress and #FemaleAdversity on Women’s Bodies and Brains
This is Part Two of my Female Adversity: The Female Body and Brain on Toxic Stress series. (CRUCIAL NOTE HERE BEFORE YOU READ: Boys’ immune systems become dysregulated in response to #toxicstress too, and that leads to disease and changes to the brain that we also need to talk about more openly AND compassionately. Today I’m focusing on girls’ unique immune response to #toxicstress.) So, exactly what happens in a girl’s body, in response to #toxicstress, that leads girls to be more likely to...
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Exposure to Abuse May Lead to Poor Heart Health in Kids [medpagetoday.com]
Children and adolescents who suffer adversity, including abuse, throughout childhood tend to have poorer cardiometabolic health, according to an American Heart Association committee report. All forms of abuse, including bullying, neglect, or witnessing violence, are linked to a greater increased risk of cardiovascular disease, said the report, authored by Shakira F. Suglia, ScD, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, and colleagues writing in Circulation.
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Exposure to Household Pet Cats and Dogs in Childhood and Risk of Subsequent Diagnosis of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder [journals.plos.org]
By Robert Yolken, Cassie Stallings, Andrea Origoni, et al., Plos One, December 2, 2019 Abstract Background Serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have been associated with environmental exposures in early life. Contact with household pets such as cats and dogs can serve as a source of environmental exposure during these time periods. Methods We investigated the relationship between exposure to a household pet cat or dog during the first 12 years of life and...
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Extra love and support doesn't make up for being a helicopter parent [MedicalXpress.com]
It's time for helicopter parents to land and stay grounded. New research by professors at Brigham Young University revealed that parental warmth cannot neutralize the consequences of helicopter parenting . Additionally, a lack of...
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Family Media Plan helps parents set boundaries for kids [AAPPublications.org]
It can be overwhelming for parents to manage all of the media options available to children and adolescents around the clock and sort out the pros and cons of screen time. While media use can help build kids’ social skills, it also can put them at risk of obesity, lost sleep, bullying, addiction and violence, according to new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). To help families navigate the digital world, the AAP has developed a Family Media Plan. Parents and children can...
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Family Spirit program aims to help Native parents improve kids’ prospects [minnpost.com]
Everyone loves their children but not everyone understands that the way we care for the youngest among us will have an impact on our society for years to come. With that reality in mind, a new program run by Headway Emotional Health Services , a Twin Cities-based mental health provider for families, aims to improve the parenting skills of at-risk American Indian parents by helping them learn to give their infant-to-preschool-aged children the support they need to be prepared for success...
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Fathers: Powerful Allies for Maternal and Child Health [nichq.org]
NICHQ . “Maternal and child health programs and professionals have become increasingly more cognizant of how fathers, specifically, affect their children’s health and development,” says NICHQ President and CEO Scott D. Berns, MD, MPH, FAAP. “Moving this conversation forward, and highlighting strategies that support father engagement and involvement, is a critical opportunity to improve children’s health outcomes in the decades to come. This is not because fathers matter more than any other...
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Fearing Coronavirus, Many Rural Black Women Avoid Hospitals to Give Birth at Home (PEW TRUST)
By April Simpson, April 18, 2020, PEW Trust Black women are two to three times more likely to die from causes related to pregnancy than white women, regardless of income or education. Black midwives could be part of the solution, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, but restrictions on midwifery make it difficult to practice in many states. Pregnant women in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi have been calling nonstop to CHOICES Midwifery Practice in Memphis, but the center is...
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FLYERS: Understanding ACEs & Parenting to Prevent & Heal ACEs
We are excited to share two flyers which can be downloaded, distributed, or used freely. One is brand new and the other is a revision. They are titled as follows (and attached below): Parenting to prevent and heal ACEs Understanding ACEs 1. Parenting to prevent and heal ACEs This brand new flyer us based on the work of Donna Jackson Nakazawa who worked with us and generously allowed us to paraphrase content from her book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology & How...
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For Kids, Regular Exercise Seems to Put Depression on the Run [Consumer.Healthday.com]
For generations, parents have told kids to go outside and play. Now, a new study suggests an added benefit to that advice -- physical activity may lower children's risk of depression. The researchers assessed about 700 children at ages 6, 8 and 10. Kids who got regular moderate-to-vigorous exercise were less likely to develop depression over those four years, the investigators found. Previous studies have found that physically active teens and adults seem to have a lower risk of depression.
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FREE WEBINAR: Rules Without Relationships Lead to Rebellion: A Live Parent Interview
You can have all the limits and rules in the word, but without nurturance or relationship your child will rebel to your face or behind your back. And during the COVID-19 crisis, this risk increases as our stress level skyrockets. As a result, we tend to go strong on lecturing and limits. And our nurturance with our child or teenager can get put on hold or not attended to as needed. In this live interview with Sarah, a single parent mom, I discuss concrete and practical tools to parent with...
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Gathering in Topeka, Kansas for the Educators’ Art of Facilitation continued
We can not solve problems from a distance from ourselves or from each other. The way we muster the courage to heal is to walk the journey together. Any effort to create policy change, structural change, or even programatic change will not succeed unless there is an explicit healing perspective. It begins with a deep understanding that we all come hurt and that those hurts often mean that in striving to relieve our own pain we hurt each other. “Hurt people, hurt people.” It is simplicity on...
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Going beyond asking what happened: building beloved community
“Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” –bell hooks One of the most notable descriptors of trauma-informed care is shifting the question of what is wrong...
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Good Parenting vs. Bad Neighborhood
Hello my name is Julius Patterson. I am currently a intern at Hopeworks N' Camden. I am twenty three years old and i am also a student at Camden County College. I found this article very intriguing because of past situations that i have encountered and i feel like i can relate on a personal level. Growing Up In Disadvantaged Areas May Affect teens Brains, But Good Parenting May Help By: Sarah Whittle, Julian G.Simmons, Nick Allen Summary & Analysis by: Julius Patterson Growing up in...
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Great Basic Parenting Tips & Why I Have Such a Hard Time Sharing Them
At least once a week I struggle about what to share here. This is my most recent example. It's a series of tips on the U.S. Department of Education . These are great hand-outs with comprehensive information about child development that's not too long, abstract or hard to read. Here's the list (also attached below). I especially like the flyer for talking about feelings which has the tag line "Talking is teaching." And the short summary of milestones at different ages and stages from birth to...
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Great Resource for Educators and Parents - New Online training from CDC
CDC has launched a new free online training to prevent adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). It includes information about the risk and protective factors and outcomes associated with ACEs and evidence-based prevention strategies. Module 1 is an ACEs overview. Module 2 is a public health approach to preventing ACEs. Additional modules for specific professions such as mental health providers and medical providers are coming soon. No cost CEs are available. ...
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Guidance for Teachers and Counselors to Help Kids at Risk at Home
People are beginning to be aware that one result of the increased stress around COVID-19 is the tragic fact that child abuse and neglect is increasing, but the safety net provided by schools is no longer in place. Teachers and counselors can continue to be a hero to students in this time of crisis, and can help mitigate the negative impact of traumatic events and stress. Caregivers might not be able to do it alone. We (Dr. Rachel Gilgoff, a child abuse pediatrician and trauma expert, and...
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Happy Halloween
Goblins and ghosts don’t scare me. What scares me is what scares many grandparents across the U.S., a grandchild at risk. Recently I was talking with a friend about my situation as guardian of my grandson, and she confided in me. She told me she’s scared every time her grandson goes back home with his mom. My friend “helps out” when her daughter finds herself in a tough spot. My friend worries there’s enough for her grandson to eat when he’s home with his mom. She worries he’s safe from the...
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Healing From Childhood Trauma — AVAIYA University online course, July 29 - Aug. 6
AVAIYA University is hosting a free online class, Healing From Childhood Trauma, July 29 - August 6, that features 18 physicians, therapists, psychologists & more who share life-changing strategies to heal from childhood trauma. Featured in the course are Dr. Dan Siegel on "Trauma & Mindfulness", Dr. Jamie Marich on "Healing the Wounds of Childhood Trauma", and Ann Kelley and Sue Marriott on "U nderstanding Unresolved Attachment to Heal From Loss & Trauma." I'm doing a session on...
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Heavy Kids Face Triple the Odds for Depression in Adulthood [Consumer.HealthDay.com]
As if it isn't tough enough being an overweight kid, a new study shows it could have long-lasting repercussions for psychological health, too. When compared with normal-weight kids who become overweight adults, overweight or obese youth in the study faced three times the risk of depression in adulthood, the research found. And, that risk was more than four times greater if they were overweight or obese in both childhood and adulthood, the investigators reported. [For more of this story,...
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Helping Children Succeed—Without the Stress [TheAtlantic.com]
In the now-famous “marshmallow” experiments, researchers at Stanford tested preschoolers’ self-control and ability to delay gratification by sitting them in a room alone with a tempting treat and measuring how long they were able to wait. Years later, those kids who resisted temptation the longest also tended to have the highest academic achievement. In fact, their ability to delay eating the marshmallow was a better predictor of their future academic success than their IQ scores. Further...
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Helping Kids Find the Wisdom in Overwhelm
In an unprecedented global shutdown, many of us, especially without the noise and distraction of everyday life, are facing intensified, often destabilizing feelings. And that includes kids—whether they’re able to say so or not.
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Holding Space for Our Kids?
This is an excellent article about "holding space" published a few days ago in Uplift . The visuals are exceptional. It's making me think about 'holding space' as it pertains to parenting. For me, it can be harder for me to drop my "I'm in the mom teaching role" and just hold space, as a parent. To listen rather than advise. To be with rather than make better. To offer myself rather than impose myself. To accept where my kid is at in a moment and be with that moment - and her - at the same...
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Home Gun Safety Queries in Well-Child Visits [jamanetwork.com]
By Carole H. Stipelman, Greg Stoddard, Kyle Bata, et al., JAMA Pediatrics, October 28, 2019 Firearms are a leading cause of death in US children, and the rate of suicide by firearms in people aged 10 to 19 years has increased since 2008.1 In the United States, 4.6 million children (approximately 7%) live in households with at least 1 gun that is stored loaded and unlocked.2 Safe storage of guns and ammunition may decrease the occurrence of self-inflicted or unintentional firearm injury to...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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How Living in a Black Female Body Incites Perpetual Attack [psmag.com]
Before scores of professional athletes brought black Americans' thorny relationship with love of country center stage, did you know that, in 2014, a black girl in Texas had started her own protest ritual of sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance? Much like how today's athletes are citing racial injustice as reasoning to exercise their First Amendment rights, the Houston senior, who has declined to be named, recently stated the following: "We live in a country where there isn't justice and...
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How Much Free Time?
Be There. But Not Too There. My parents worked. A lot. But they made sure they were home every night, and they were there every morning. And they were very diligent about the important stuff. They checked that I did my homework. But in the hours between getting home from school and going to bed, my sister and I were left to our own devices. So, my afternoons could be spent doing any number of things, from bothering my sister to listening to music with her to watching the Diff'rent...
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How One Connection at CYW’s ACEs Conference Sparked Awareness into Action
Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.
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How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants [npr.org]
Editor's note: This story contains language that may be offensive. In February 2009, Samantha Pierce became pregnant with twins. It was a time when things were going really well in her life. She and her husband had recently gotten married. They had good jobs. "I was a kick-ass community organizer," says Pierce, who is African-American and lives in Cleveland. She worked for a nonprofit that fought against predatory lending. The organization was growing, and Pierce had been promoted to...
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How Self-Compassion Can Help Teens De-stress (mindful.org)
Teen stress is on the rise. According to a new study, learning mindfulness and self-compassion can help a teen cope. In a 2014 national survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, 31 percent of adolescents aged 13 to 17 said that their stress increased in the previous year, and 42 percent said they were not doing enough to manage their stress. Adolescents who experience frequent stress are more prone to depression and perform worse in school Many teens turn to external...
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The Tragic Myth about ADHD [blogs.psychcentral.com]
A new report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the number of teen-aged and young adult women being medicated for ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) has risen by 344%. The CDCP noted that in 2006 about 1% of the female population were medicated for ADHD, but by 2015 the percentage had climbed to 4%. The study focused on women between the ages of 15 and 44 who had private insurance. About 5% of the general population has ADHD. The disorder used to...
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The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy (Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association)
Grabbe L, Miller-Karas E. The Trauma Resiliency Model: A “Bottom-Up” Intervention for Trauma Psychotherapy. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association. 2017; 24 (1): 76-84.
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The Trauma-Sensitive Parenting Summit & Commentary
"Having a history of trauma or loss does not by itself predispose you to have a child with disorganization. It is the lack of resolution that is the essential risk factor. It is never too late to move toward making sense of your experiences and healing your past. Not only you but also your child will benefit." That's a quote from the book Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, which was published fifteen freaking years ago. It's...