Tagged With "abcnews.go.com"
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Society pays later for not giving vulnerable children a good start [theguardian.com]
Frank Field (Letters, 28 September and 5 October) and Sebastian Kraemer (Letters, 3 October) are right to highlight the £750m cut to services to support vulnerable families. This is indeed a national disgrace, but has gone under the wire partly due to Brexit. Home-Start and Sure Start were truly progressive initiatives, now thoroughly undermined by these cuts. In 2011, Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith published a cross-party governmental report, Early Intervention: Smart Investment,...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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Sonoma Charter tackles social-emotional wellbeing
As you walk through the courtyard of the Sonoma (California) Charter School (SCS) sounds of stomping feet, clapping hands, and children’s voices singing “round and round” and “shake shake” pour from the performing arts space called the Playbox. Inside, 10 first-graders wearing silk tunics, holding brightly colored fabric pieces , wriggle on the floor like worms, jumping like kangaroos, then gently throw feathers from an imaginary bird in the air. You’ve stepped into the world of...
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Spanking Is Still Really Common and Still Really Bad for Kids [theatlantic.com]
The good news about spanking is that parents today are less likely to do it to their children than parents in the past. The bad news is that parents today still spank their kids—a lot. “Some estimates are that by the time a child reaches the fifth grade [in the United States], 80 percent of children have been spanked,” says George Holden, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University who studies parenting and corporal punishment. Spanking is also widespread worldwide . Perhaps...
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Strengthening Families: Increasing positive outcomes for children and families [www.cssp.org]
We engage families, programs, and communities in building key protective factors. Children are more likely to thrive when their families have the support they need. By focusing on the five universal family strengths identified in the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework , community leaders and service providers can better engage, support, and partner with parents in order to achieve the best outcomes for kids. How We Do It The Strengthening Families framework is a...
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Strengthening self-regulation in childhood may improve resiliency later in life [medicalxpress.com]
Millions of families live in poverty in the United States. Associated stressors can often lead to adverse life experiences for children in those families, and negative socioemotional outcomes later in life. Family-centered programs are a well-supported way of buffering against these effects. More than two decades of peer-reviewed research suggests family -focused interventions play a role in improving outcomes over a long period of time. Now, a paper published in Child Development finally...
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Substance Use Disorder and Brain Development
The inputs a brain experiences during its developmental stages have a profound impact on whether that person will develop a substance use disorder (if they choose to drink or use other drugs). In turn, developing a substance use disorder (SUD) as a tween, teen, or young adult dramatically influences that person's brain development. And why is understanding this causality important? The risk factors for developing a substance use disorder are the result of inputs the brain experiences (or...
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Supporters Cheer Focus on Child Health and Wellbeing in Newsom’s Budget [calhealthreport.org]
Efforts to improve the health and education of California’s children would get a giant funding boost under Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget, a prospect that’s generating a swell of excitement among child advocacy groups. The governor’s first budget proposal, released Jan. 10, offers numerous supports aimed directly at bolstering childhood health, including $105 million to pay for developmental and mental health screenings for low-income children, almost $110 million to expand home visiting...
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Supporting Young Children Experiencing Separation and Trauma [zerotothree.org]
Young children and their families can be tremendously affected by trauma, with significant implications for well-being well into the future. And while young children can be very expressive, they often do not have the skills or ability to use words to express how they are feeling. Adults may notice a variety of unexpected, atypical behaviors, and may need help understanding and nurturing infants and toddlers who have been affected. Fortunately, there are infant and early childhood mental...
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‘Teachers must look for physical signs of trauma’ [tes.com]
Teachers should look out for physical health problems among quieter, well-behaved children, as these could be the only signs that they have suffered trauma, a major conference in Scotland has heard. US paediatrician @Nadine Burke Harris said that, while there was a growing understanding that misbehaviour was a sign of trauma or “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) , there were also other types of symptoms. “Behaviour is the canary in the coalmine,” said Dr Burke Harris at Making...
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Teaching self awareness and stress recognition to kids age 4-6
Janai Mestrovich (BS/MS, Family & Child Development), teacher and developer of 'Superkid Power' (Ashland, OR) passed this along to me regarding how she uses finger activated mood card to measure temperature and kid stress levels: 40 Pre-K children learned how to measure their stress level this morning by measuring hand temp. with mood cards. Blue, happy-peaceful-very calm; Green, calm; Red, tight muscles/upset; Black Tense/grit teeth. We chanted and drummed appropriately - tense drumming...
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Teaching Social Skills to Improve Grades and Lives [NYTimes.com]
Re-Posted from ACEs Connection site earlier today. Originally posted by Samantha - thanks Sam! In the early 1990s, about 50 kindergarten teachers were asked to rate the social and communication skills of 753 children in their classrooms. It was...
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The Developing Brain & Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Thanks to an explosion in scientific research now possible with imaging technologies, such as fMRI and SPECT, experts can actually see how the brain develops. This helps explain why exposure to adverse childhood experiences can so deeply influence and change a child's brain and thus their physical and emotional health and quality of life across their lifetime. The above time-lapse study was conducted over 10 years. The darker colors represent brain maturity (brain development). I have added...
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The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected [nytimes.com]
The parents in Overland Park, Kan., were fed up. They wanted their children off screens, but they needed strength in numbers. First, because no one wants their kid to be the lone weird one without a phone. And second, because taking the phone away from a middle schooler is actually very, very tough. “We start the meetings by saying, ‘This is hard, we’re in a new frontier, but who is going to help us?’” said Krista Boan, who is leading a Kansas City-based program called START, which stands...
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The Importance of Positive Emotional Communication Starting From Infancy
“Why do some children become sad, withdrawn, insecure, or angry, whereas others become happy, curious, affectionate, and self-confident?” It has something to do with emotions and emotional communication.
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The Lasting Effects of Bullying [PSMag.com]
The psychological effects of being bullied don't necessarily stop when the bullying does. That's the conclusion of a newly released study published in the journal Pediatrics. "Students who expressed more frequent peer victimization in fifth grade were more likely to have greater symptoms of depression in seventh grade, and a greater likelihood of using alcohol, marijuana, or tobacco in 10th grade," reports University of Delaware psychologist Valerie Earnshaw , the study's lead author. She...
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The Mindful Child [Well.Blogs.NYTimes.com]
It’s long been known that meditation helps children feel calmer, but new research is helping quantify its benefits for elementary school-age children. A 2015 study found that fourth- and fifth-grade students who participated in a four-month meditation program showed improvements in executive functions like cognitive control, working memory, cognitive flexibility — and better math grades. A study published recently in the journal Mindfulness found similar improvements in mathematics in fifth...
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The people taking care of American children live in poverty [LATimes.com]
The people paid to watch America's children tend to live in poverty. Nearly half receive some kind of government assistance: food stamps, welfare checks, Medicaid. Their median hourly wage is $9.77 — about $3 below the average janitor's. In a new report , researchers at UC Berkeley say that child care is too vital to the country's future to offer such meager wages. Those tasked with supporting kids, they say, are shaping much of tomorrow's workforce. "Economic insecurity, linked to low...
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The Perks of a Play-in-the-Mud Educational Philosophy [theatlantic.com]
Most American kids don’t spend large chunks of their day catching salamanders and poking sticks into piles of fox poop. In a nation moving toward greater standardization of its public-education system , programs centered around getting kids outside to explore aren’t normal. But that’s precisely what students do at the Nature Preschool at Irvine Nature Center in Owings Mills, Maryland. There, every day, dozens of children ages 3 to 5 come to have adventures on Irvine’s more than 200 acres of...
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The Preschooler's Empathy Void [TheAtlantic.com]
Back in March, Anderson Cooper famously compared Donald Trump to a 5-year-old. The presidential nominee had tweeted a flattering photo of his wife Melania juxtaposed with a less-flattering photo of the wife of his then-opponent Ted Cruz, and, when Cooper pressed him, he defended the tweet with a kindergartener’s default excuse: “I didn’t start it.” Trump turned 70 this summer. But there may, in the broadest of senses, be science to support Cooper’s analogy—at least when considering what his...
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The ‘Problem Child’ Is a Child, Not a Problem [nytimes.com]
Matt Hannon was in preschool when he started getting into trouble. Teachers quickly labeled his mischievous behavior — like cutting his hair under the table — problematic. His kindergarten teacher warned that if Matt didn’t stop using “potty words,” she would make him do his work in the bathroom. His first-grade teacher forced Matt to copy the phrase “I will not blurt out in circle” 100 times. Matt began to dread school and developed serious separation anxiety. His acting-out got worse. “I...
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The Real Costs of Childcare [PSMag.com]
Meredith Sawyer is an early childhood educator in Greensboro, North Carolina, who has been teaching for more than a decade. But as she reflects on the last seven years as a transitional kindergarten teacher in a childcare center that has the highest quality rating the state can offer — five stars — Sawyer realizes she’s grown tired of watching her peers meet life goals while she’s left unrewarded for her accomplishments and hard work. In a word? Sawyer is stuck. “I wait tables part time so I...
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The Relentless School Nurse: When the Health Office Pass Includes Emotions
The collaboration between school counselors and school nurses creates safe spaces for students at school. Building a coalition between school counselors and school nurses creates a safety net for our most complex and challenging students while benefiting the whole school community. Promoting connections through intentional relationship building, and ensuring a school environment that is physically, emotionally and psychologically safe changes the culture and climate. Read about an amazing...
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The Right Investments in Young Adult Parents Can Make America Stronger [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
Stressful times push people to the limits. For many young people, stress comes from tuition bills, roommates who are late on rent, and job interviews that might have gone better with the right degree or certificate in hand. For new parents, it’s daycare bills, diapers and work days that might have gone better with more than three hours of sleep. Now imagine going through both sets of experiences at the same time. Combining young adulthood with parenthood is not easy, but nearly 3 million...
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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...
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This is what work-life balance looks like at a company with 100% retention of moms [Quartz]
For 33 years Patagonia has had an on-site child care center that bears little resemblance to what anyone might imagine corporate on-site child care looks like. It is run by teachers, some of whom are bilingual and trained in child development. Learning takes place outdoors as much as in. Parents often eat lunch with their kids, take them to the farmer’s market or pick vegetables with them in the “secret” garden . Patagonia buses school-aged kids back to the company’s headquarters, allowing...
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This New York City charter network is taking its lessons to toddlers [chalkbeat.org]
Preschool is already too late, if you ask Ian Rowe. The head of Public Prep charter schools in New York City believes that, when it comes to setting students up for academic success, the key is starting earlier. Much, much earlier. That’s why the network has teamed up with a pair of nonprofits to start getting children ready for school when they’re just toddlers — a full two years before even enrolling in pre-K. The unique partnership sends trained mentors to meet with families in their own...
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TIC: News and Notes for the Week of October 21, 2019 [dhs.wisconsin.gov]
ACEs, Adversity's Impact There is only one boat: The myth of normalcy by Dr. Gabor Mate Understanding historical trauma to strengthen community Childhood trauma linked to early, premarital childbirth and poor health for women Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become 'forgotten' victims. It's time they were given a voice Children's language skills may be harmed by social hardship Does racism...
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Toys to Help Children Emotionally Regulate [Blogs.PsychCentral.com]
With so much going on around the world right now , it’s not unusual that the news are rattling up emotions for everyone at home. We as adults, have (hopefully) found a series of mechanisms to help us calm down and self-regulate. But, for many children, the story is different. Whether it’s the global politics climate or actual climate changes that may cause your child to feel anxious. It’s important that parents empathize and recognize these feelings. But, even more crucial, is that parents...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Calming Corners
In our trauma-informed classrooms blog post last week, we talked about choices. We mentioned the benefit of having a space in the room where a child can go to help them calm down and become regulated. While this has become increasingly common at the elementary level, we have found that this is a tool that can work for students of all ages. Even when we survey adults about the things that help them to calm down when they are upset, one of the most common answers we hear is that they want time...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Choices
One thing that is common among many traumatic events is a complete lack of choices. When a person feels like they do not have a choice or control, it can be triggering and cause the negative emotions that the person ties to the original trauma. While you can do a lot relationally with how you interact with your students, you can also set up your physical space with choices in mind. As you think about choices in your classroom, here are a couple of options you may want to consider. First of...
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Trump’s Childcare Plan Will Only Help the Rich [TheNation.com]
President Trump portrays himself as an expert at marketing designer ties and gourmet steaks, but now, as chief executive of federal social policy, his new childcare plan might be a tougher sell. The promise he has made of universal childcare, accompanied by a marketing campaign led by his glamorous career-woman daughter Ivanka, sounded family-friendly enough on the campaign trail. But to childcare advocates, the vague talking points he laid out in his first speech to Congress last month...
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Victims of Teacher Misconduct Say Schools Should Go Beyond Checking Boxes [voiceofsandiego.org]
By Ashly McGlone, Voice of San Diego, November 4, 2019 “Just so you know, no one else has ever made a complaint,” a Chula Vista High graduate recalls being told by school officials before she complained her show choir teacher was sexually harassing her and groped her repeatedly. “I feel like every adult who was an administrator in my life at the time failed me,” a former Bonita Vista High student sexually abused by his band teacher said. “I had a counselor talk to me for 10 minutes and then...
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Many U.S. teachers can’t afford to buy a house [PBS.org]
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/report-finds-home-ownership-reach-many-teachers
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We must all support children [santafenewmexican.com]
By Janis Gonzales, Santa Fe New Mexican, May 13, 2020 Over the past few weeks, pediatricians have been trying to raise awareness about the steep decline in vaccination rates that we have been seeing as parents cancel well checks and babies go months without being seen by a physician. But there is an equally alarming problem, one that also goes unseen and has remained largely under the radar while the news focuses on the more sensational COVID-19 headlines. The changes that have occurred in...
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We Need a Healing Movement
What if you had developed a cure for the most painful and costly public health problem in America, you had proven that it worked, and you were offering it for free, but could not reach those who need it most because no one wants to talk about the problem? Tragically, this is my reality and the truth about human nature. It is easier to suffer in silence than acknowledge the painful things that happen to us. Over 20 years ago, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser...
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What do preschool teachers need to do a better job? (hechingerreport.org)
One city’s attempt to professionalize early education could be a model for the nation. “We believe that preschool is an integral part of the public school system and public school should be universally available because every child can benefit from it,” said Josh Wallack, Deputy Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education. “Therefore, preschool should be universal.” The changes have come with new money and support to ensure that the city is not only offering preschool to all, but...
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What ‘Lucky’ Looks Like for Many Parents: A Patchwork Childcare Arrangement [PSMag.com]
Twelve million children under the age of five rely on childcare each day while their parent(s) work. Two of them are mine. New America’s groundbreaking Care Report illuminated the myriad challenges parents face in securing childcare, among them that demand is too high to meet the staggeringly low supply of high-quality centers. And when high demand meets low supply, as any Econ 101 student can tell you, the price skyrockets. For those of us making it work, there is usually an asterisk hidden...
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What Makes For Quality Child Care? It Depends Whom You Ask [NPR.org]
When Jolie Ritzo was looking for day care for her son Cannon in Falmouth, Maine, she checked out as many centers as she could. She was looking for a place with the right feel. "Most importantly, the people who are providing the care are loving and kind, nurturing and interested in developing these little beings," she says. There was one center in town that had a great reputation, but it was so pricey, Ritzo says, "It would break the bank." She enrolled Cannon in a family child care based in...
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What Viral Reunification Videos Reveal About the Trauma of Separated Immigrant Children [psmag.com]
A Guatemalan mother falls to her knees as her seven-year-old daughter walks through the door. They've been separated for 55 days, and the mother is completely overcome with emotion. She embraces her child, rocking her and rubbing her back, openly weeping and speaking to her daughter in Spanish. When she pulls back, the child's face appears somewhat frozen, but she clearly has tears in her eyes; her mother wipes her face with the tissue she has been clutching. This video from CNN is just one...
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What You Never Realized You Were Teaching Your Child About Grit & Resilience: MIT Study Captures Techniques That Work for Babies as Young as 13 Months [the74million.org]
Even at MIT, no one’s been able to create a computer as powerful as the brain of a baby. “They’re better at doing this fast learning from one or two examples than any computer algorithm we have right now,” MIT graduate student Julia Leonard said. “That’s a big interest here — everyone’s like, ‘We want a computer to learn like a baby.’ ” Leonard was curious about how babies learn too, so she gathered up more than 200 to analyze their genius brains. Specifically, she was interested in studying...
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When Parents Fear "It's All My Fault"
Many of my colleagues in the field of early childhood mental health work with what are termed "high risk" populations. Children of drug addicted parents, victims of child abuse, and families in abject poverty. While the challenges these families face are daunting, I find myself feeling some envy for my colleagues whose clients are in such obvious distress that the need for intensive treatment of parent and infant is not in question. In my rural, small-town population things are not so clear.
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Where Childcare Is an Economic Engine [TheAtlantic.com]
At the end of a long day of work at a small sports-marketing firm in Atlanta, a very pregnant Micki Velmer is driving to pick up her 3-year-old son, Burke, from childcare when her car overheats and breaks down. Velmer’s husband, Jason, soon swings by to get her and then get both of them to the Frazer Center before it closes and starts charging late fees. Still, Velmer is uneasy. In just a few short weeks, once their second child is born, the Velmers will be paying more than $2,800 a...
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Why Do So Few Americans Take Maternity Leave? [PSMag.com]
You probably already know the United States has some of the worst parental leave laws in the world. Among the 41 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. is the only one with no guaranteed paid time off to care for a new baby. But it’s hard to say how these laws actually affect new parents, since no federal agency collects data on how many workers take parental leave. A few recent analyses, however, might offer some clues. It turns out that...
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Why Focus on Resilience? 2019 BPT Conference Big Idea Session with Teri Barila
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in” -Desmond Tutu. This quote captures the essence of why resilience matters. To Community Resilience Initiative, Resilience is not about “lifting yourself up by your bootstraps” or “bouncing back” from serious harm or injury. To us, Resilience is about self-discovery and self-awareness based on what the ACE Study, neurobiology, and epigenetics tell us...
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Why Parents Are Being Forced to Find Childcare Underground [TheAtlantic.com]
The front door of Nora Nivia Nevarez’s adobe-like house in suburban Albuquerque, New Mexico, opens to blocks and children’s books scattered around the brightly colored carpet, shaped like a puzzle piece. Throughout the afternoon, she keeps a careful eye on her four small charges, ages 4 months to 10 years, by turns reading books and helping them with puzzles. One little boy named Javier cries as his guardian, Guadalupe, picks him up. He’s tired and ready to go home. “I love caring for...
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Why Toddlers Deserve More Respect [theatlantic.com]
In The Emotional Life of the Toddler , the child-psychology and psychotherapy expert Alicia F. Lieberman details the dramatic triumphs and tribulations of kids ages 1 to 3. Some of her anecdotes make the most commonplace of experiences feel like they should be backed by a cinematic instrumental track. Take Lieberman’s example of what a toddler feels while walking across the living room: “If adults experienced and enacted the full range of feelings available to an average toddler in the...
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Why We Should Teach Empathy to Preschoolers [DailyGood.org]
In the fall of 1979, Yalda Modabber had just moved from Iran back to her birthplace in Boston. Her timing was bad: Just weeks later later, a group of armed Iranians took more than 60 U.S. citizens hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. As a result, her fellow students bullied her ruthlessly. Golestan Education's Yalda Modabber “It was nonstop for two years,” says Modabber, who has dark curly black hair and a warm smile. “That period in my life was so hard that I blocked it out. I don’t even...
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Why We Should Teach Empathy to Preschoolers [dailygood.org]
In the fall of 1979, Yalda Modabber had just moved from Iran back to her birthplace in Boston. Her timing was bad: Just weeks later later, a group of armed Iranians took more than 60 U.S. citizens hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. As a result, her fellow students bullied her ruthlessly. “It was nonstop for two years,” says Modabber, who has dark curly black hair and a warm smile. “That period in my life was so hard that I blocked it out. I don’t even remember my teachers’ names. The...
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With a Little Help from my Friends—The Importance of Peer Relationships For Social-Emotional Development [rwjf.org]
The Issue Successfully navigating the social world of peers can be challenging. Children and teenagers benefit from the social and emotional support that friends offer, but they can also experience occasional social stressors and peer conflicts. Key Findings Peer relationships provide a unique context in which children learn a range of critical social emotional skills, such as empathy, cooperation, and problem-solving strategies. Peer relationships can also contribute negatively to social...