Tagged With "Children"
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2017 Children's Mental Health Report
Of the 74.5 million children in the United States, an estimated 17.1 million have or have had a mental health disorder — more than the number of children with cancer, diabetes and AIDS combined. Half of all mental illness occurs before the age of 14, and 75 percent by the age of 24. In spite of the magnitude of the problem, lack of awareness and entrenched stigma keep the majority of these young people from getting help. Children and adolescents struggling with these disorders are at risk...
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43 Amazing Benefits of Child-led Free Play
Self-directed free play is vital for the healthy development of children. Here we see 43 science-backed benefits it brings.
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75 Calm Down Strategies for Kids
I came across this webpage and wanted to share with my parent and caregiver small groups. My intern typed it up into a handout. Feel free to share.
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A New Program Helps Foster Kids in Orange County Avoid Homelessness when They Age Out of Public Care [ocregister.com]
By Theresa Walker, The Orange County Register, December 20, 2019 For three years after he aged out of foster care, at age 18, Christian was homeless. During that time, he was hit by a car and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for six months and his speech and memory were affected. Over most of the last year he’s lived at The Link, a homeless shelter in Santa Ana. This week, Christian, now 22, moved into his own one-bedroom apartment, in Tustin. That change is the result of...
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An Invitation to Co-Create Change and Shift Your Mindset
We are not born “normal” or “disordered” or with a “disability” we “are born” and “we develop” in many different ways. Along our path of development we will encounter various influences and each individual will respond to those experiences differently. The brain actually continues to develop well into adulthood!
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Attention Teachers! Resilience from a Brave Deaf Girl (Trauma & Recovery)
This story is based on my dear friend Opal Fleming born in 1931. I promised her before she died that I would get her story published. She wanted children to know about the schools for the Deaf and how American Sign Language became a well-known language today by being passed on by other Deaf people. Opal was taken to the Oklahoma School for the Deaf by her father after he had learned about the school from a young Deaf man he had met on a train. The young man explained how he learned to read...
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One Teacher’s Heartfelt Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings—And It’s Not About Guns [msn.com]
A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase’s class for
tutoring. I’d e-mailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, 'Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home
is math—but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.' She
e-mailed right back and said, 'No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.' And I said, 'No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.' And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth-grade classroom while Chase’s teacher sat behind me,...
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Ordinary Magic-Resiliency Research - The Power of Connection
Resilience and Positive Psychology The message from three decades of research on resilience underscores central themes of the positive psychology movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Snyder & Lopez, in press). Psychology has neglected important phenomena in human adaptation and development during periods of focus on risk, problems, pathology, and treatment. Attention to human capabilities and adaptive systems that promote healthy development and functioning have the potential...
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COACHING is recommended by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
Coaching helps people tap into their potential, unlocking sources of creativity and productivity.” Positive results in the areas of “improved communication, increased self-esteem/self-confidence, increased productivity, optimized individual and team performance ”
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Coming soon: Philly School District families will have access to grief counseling, coronavirus support [inquirer.com]
For Philadelphia students and families having trouble coping with the loss of months of in-person school amid the trauma of a pandemic and a changing world, help is on the way. On Monday, the Philadelphia School District and Uplift, the Center for Grieving Children, will launch the Philly HopeLine, a hotline that will connect district children and families to grief support services, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said at a news conference Thursday. The resource comes in response to a...
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Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference - Exhibitor Information
Attachment & Trauma Network wants YOU and your organization to exhibit at our 2nd Annual Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference. Join hundreds of educators from across the country and around the world to learn more about the trauma-informed education movement and how to Create Trauma Sensitive Schools. February 17 thru 19 in Washington, D.C. at the Washington Hilton! This is a great opportunity to increase your organization's exposure and be in-front of hundreds of education...
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Do’s and Don’ts of a Trauma-Informed Compassionate Classroom
The summer break is upon us and right now parents and teachers are taking a much-deserved deep breath before jumping into the new school year. One of the programs Echo provides each summer is the salary point Trauma-Informed Compassionate Classrooms training to help educators meet their professional development requirements and to give them the space to think about the classroom environment they would optimally like to create while not yet inundated with the day-to- day demands of the school...
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Does Betsy DeVos Understand the Impact of Poverty and Trauma on Children’s Learning? [commondream.org]
Educators who look at learning from a developmental perspective know that the trauma and toxic stress associated with poverty can seriously interfere with a child’s brain development and inhibit learning. Children who have been overwhelmed by stress or exposure to violence, and experience lack of security frequently have difficulty controlling impulsive behavior and focusing their attention on tasks at school. While these behaviors are disruptive in classrooms – they are devastating to the...
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Early childhood educators learn new ways to spot trauma triggers, build resilience in preschoolers
A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe.
That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.
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FOCUS Program Aids Children Exposed to Trauma [davisenterprise.com]
By Special to The Enterprise, The Enterprise, October 25, 2019 Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig and Yolo County Superintendent of Schools Garth Lewis announced the launching of FOCUS, a notification system designed to decrease the negative impacts on children who are exposed to violence and trauma. The goal of the FOCUS program is for children to succeed to the best of their ability, regardless of the environment in which they live. Under FOCUS, law enforcement officers and other...
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For those that ordered... the trauma-informed curriculum for churches is headed out the door this week!
It's been a labor of love more than a year in the making, and it is exciting to see the curriculum come together and head out to those that will give this first version a "test drive" this spring and (hopefully) give me some great feedback so I can make improvements over the summer and make the curriculum better! It is called "Bruised Reeds and Smoldering Wicks: a six week study of trauma-informed ministry and compassionate care for children from hard places and situations." The study is...
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How COVID-19 Impacts Children’s Mental Health
Mental health among children and youth is already a concern. In 2018, there were 41,087 hospital discharges for mental health issues among California youth ages 5-19, a 38% increase in the last decade . With the emergence of COVID-19, children with existing mental health issues must endure the added burden of a pandemic. Children often rely on schools to provide mental health services, but school closures have made it difficult to access and preserve the quality of these services. Historical...
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How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
Karen Murphy, who is principal at Free Orchards Elementary School where I work, is a champion of trauma awareness and is working hard to lead our school in the direction of trauma sensitive practices -and away from the policies & procedures that have historically made well-intentioned school districts part of the "pipeline to prison". One of her sayings is "fix yer face", which means simply to put a warm expression on your face, consciously and regularly.
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"How Neglect and Abuse Change Children’s Brains — and Their Futures" by Katharine Gammon [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
Childhood adversity comes in different forms. When Katie McLaughlin, director of the Stress and Development Lab at the University of Washington, talks about stress and early childhood development, she brings up two different fictional children: One who faces the constant threat of violence at home, and one who is neglected. [For more of this article by Katharine Gammon, visit: https://www.centerforhealthjou...amp;utm_medium=email ]
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How to Keep Children's Stress From Turning Into Trauma [nytimes.com]
By Stacy Steinberg, The New York Times, May 7, 2020 Children may be processing the disruptions in their lives right now in ways the adults around them do not expect: acting out, regressing, retreating or even seeming surprisingly content. Parents need to know that all of this is normal, experts say, and there are some things we can do to help. “Our natural response to scary things is biologically to release stress hormones,” said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris , a pediatrician and surgeon general...
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How to Talk with Kids About COVID-19 [healthier.stanfordchildrens.org]
By Erin Digitale, Stanford Children's Health, March 10, 2020 As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread, experts at Stanford Children’s Health have advice about how families can prepare their children for the continued news coverage and conversations around the outbreak. Parents and caregivers should communicate in an age-appropriate way that addresses children’s questions without stoking anxiety, says Stanford Children’s Health psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD , who also directs...
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Simple & Fun Yoga Lesson Plan
I wanted to share an outline of my Yoga Lesson Plan that I do with my preschool class. It is easy and fun to do with any age group, especially on a rainy or cold day. If you are not familiar with yoga or yoga poses, there are millions of videos, tutorials, and charts that are available online. Preparation Move all furniture out of the way to create a large open space Implement some type of yoga mat or defined space for each child (carpet squares as yoga mats) Turn off or dim the lights Play...
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Talking to Children About Tragedies & Other News Events [healthychildren.org]
After any disaster, parents and other adults struggle with what they should say and share with children and what not to say or share with them. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents, teachers, child care providers, and others who work closely with children to filter information about the crisis and present it in a way that their child can accommodate, adjust to, and cope with. No matter what age or developmental stage the child is, parents can start by asking a child...
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Teacher's Guide to Trauma
This excellent book is part story and part 20-step manual for creating trauma informed schools and classrooms. I have had the honor and challenge of raising a traumatized child. In addition, I have spent my career in education, as a special education teacher, principal of a public school, principal of an alternative placement school for children with behavioral challenges, and currently as a special education director, confronted with the challenges of educating children with trauma...
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The Brain and Troubled Children and Youth
Troubled kids are distinguished by their regrettable ability to elicit from others exactly the opposite of what they really need. ( L. Tobin ) Connecting with troubled students is not easy work. Many of these young people come into our classrooms and schools on a daily bases depressed, hostile, discouraged, unmotivated and angry. Underneath their sometimes outrageous and provocative behaviors these young people's lives come up way short on joy and long on despair and hopelessness. Their...
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Mindful-Based Practices, Therapeutic Activities, & Ways to Relax: For Teachers, Parents, & Children
Yoga is a great activity for children and adults and is easy to do just about anywhere! Children need to have multiple healthy ways to express their feelings and have opportunities for mind and body awareness. Yoga is beneficial because it is... Non-competitive Gender neutral Enhances motor skills and balance Improves listening skills in a fun approach Children can focus on what is happening in the moment A healthy way to express feelings Supports social and emotional learning and...
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New Study on Child Welfare-Involved Youth in Special Education
Dear Colleagues, Wanted to share my new study out in Exceptional Children . I look at maltreatment patterns & their consequences for child welfare-involved children in special education. Findings can inform how educators support these youth, who are often overlooked. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0014402919870830?journalCode=ecxc If you don't have journal access, feel free to email me for a copy of the study: kagee@ucdavis.edu . Regards, Kevin Kevin A. Gee, Ed.D. Associate...
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Nurturing Children During Times of Stress: A Guide to Help Children Bloom by Yolo CAPC and YCCA
The Yolo County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC) and Yolo County Children’s Alliance (YCCA) are excited to share Nurturing Children During Times of Stress: A Guide to Help Children Bloom. This guide for parents and caregivers, which we are launching during Child Abuse Prevention Month, contains tips and resources that parents and caregivers can use to promote resilience in their children and themselves. Nurturing Children During Times of Stress explains the effects of intense stress or...
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Back to School but Nothing's Normal. Schools Mobilize to Help Children of Immigrants After Traumatic Summer [laschoolreport.com]
By Conor P. Williams and Rosario Quiroz Villareal, LA School Report, September 16, 2019 It was a busy, if often frustrating, summer for the Trump administration’s many efforts to destabilize U.S. immigration policies. Federal judges ruled in August that, under a longstanding legal agreement, the administration was required to provide detained children at the border with “edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste.” So the administration announced that it would write new regulations to...
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Child Bullying And The Long Term Effects Of Negative Body Image
Childhood bullying can have lasting harmful effects on kids, lowering their self-esteem and causing some to become suicidal when left unchecked. It’s crucially important for parents, teachers, and other adults to get involved and fight back when it comes to children being bullied. Bullies have a tendency to pick on children who have deformities or disabilities. Sometimes the bullies themselves have their own, similar issues and tease others so as to feel better about themselves. Whatever the...
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Children's Mental Health Network
Website: Children's Mental Health Network Info: The Children’s Mental Health Network provides weekly news and unbiased analysis of key issues focused on children, youth and families’ mental health and well-being. The Network reaches a widely diverse audience. Readers and contributors to the Network come from all walks of life – parents, youth, community leaders, policy-makers, state and federal officials, and increasingly, similar groups from countries across the globe. Common among all who...
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Children's Self-Control Improves When Cooperation with Others' Results in Rewards [psychcentral.com]
By Rick Nauert, PsychCentral, January 31, 2020 New research finds that children are more likely to control their immediate impulses when they and a peer rely on each other to get a reward than when they’re left to their own willpower. Investigators say their experiments are the first to show that children are more willing to delay gratification for cooperative reasons than for individual goals. In the study, researchers used a modified version of the “marshmallow test,” a classic...
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The Importance of Physical Activities, Yoga, and Mindful Based Practices for Young Children
The topic of this blog post is the importance of physical activity for children. In terms of physical activity, I chose to focus on yoga practice for young children. I believe that children are a big part of our society and their health is a reflection of their surroundings, which is why children’s health is so important. I researched three unique and professional studies that show how yoga builds resilience, self-awareness, self-image, self-esteem, quality of life, and dramatically reduces...
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Toxic Stress: Issue Brief on Family Separation and Child Detention [immigrationinitiative.harvard.edu]
By Jack P. Shonkoff, Immigration Initiative at Harvard, October 2019 Background The separation of children from their parents and their prolonged detention for an indefinite period of time raise profound concerns that transcend partisan politics and demand immediate resolution. Forcibly separating children from their parents is like setting a house on fire. Preventing rapid reunification is like blocking the first responders from doing their job. And subjecting children to prolonged...
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Trauma-Informed Practice Is a Powerful Tool. But It's Also Incomplete [edweek.org]
By Simona Goldin & Debi Khasnabis, Education Week, February 19, 2020 Science has a pernicious history of doing violence to communities of color. Examples abound: Consider the infamous Tuskegee study in which the U.S. Public Health Service spent decades withholding treatment from hundreds of African-American men suffering from syphilis. Or consider more recent research that shows that doctors, informed by discredited theories of racial difference, are significantly less likely to...
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Trauma-Informed Schools Need Trauma-Informed Policies [http://childsworld.news/09/28/2018/trauma-informed-schools-need-trauma-informed-policies/]
Childhood trauma is in the news every day, from school shootings to the opioid crisis to separation at the border. While some stories are highlighted in the media, every community has children we never hear about who are dealing with violence, addiction, poverty, mental health issues, and abuse. The good news is that the public is becoming more aware of trauma’s devastating effects. Terms like “toxic stress” and “adverse childhood experiences” (ACEs) are no longer used only by mental health...
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Understanding Trauma's Impact on Learning: A pathway to creating a school culture where every child living through adversity can grow alongside peers [my.aasa.org]
Susan Cole, director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative at Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children, believes the most effective school settings weave trauma sensitivity into other affairs of the school day. The principal of a small elementary school in central Massachusetts was approached by his staff with a request. They asked about their school becoming more responsive to trauma owing to the number of children in their classrooms who seemed to be facing...
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We Have to Better Understand What Foster Parents Need [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Ross Hunter, The Chronicle of Social Change, October 11, 2019 As a new leader in the child welfare space, I thought it would be worth my while to do some listening before I made any big changes. So I went on a tour all over the state of Washington. I talked to caseworkers, foster parents, birth families, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and anyone else I could find who had an opinion. I got an earful. “Everything is broken.” “I had a great experience.” “The caseworker never called...
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We need to prepare for the mental health impact of coronavirus on kids [latimes.com]
By Sonali Kohli, Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2020 Four-year-olds have playdates through closed windows, sliding their toy cars in unison on either side of the glass. A high school student worries about his mother going to work in a food-packing warehouse, at risk for contracting COVID-19. Another teen says “there is nothing to look forward to,” as he tries to avoid sliding into depression. Worried parents are calling school district hotlines seeking help for their troubled children. Experts...
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When Students Are Traumatized, Teachers Are Too (www.edutopia.org)
"Data shows that more than half of all U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma in the form of abuse, neglect, violence, or challenging household circumstances—and 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)." "“Being a teacher is a stressful enough job, but teachers are now responsible for a lot more things than just providing education,” says LeAnn Keck, a manager at Trauma Smart...
Ask the Community
Can Trauma-Informed Mermaids Help Children & Families? (New Kids Book Series)
Dear ACEs in Education Community, We just launched a new trauma-informed children's book series called Venus and Her Fly Trip . The series has been developed in collaboration with therapists, educators, parents and healers and is designed to promote mental/social/emotional health, body positivity and imaginative play in kids 4-10 , with the ultimate goal of preventing self-hatred. We will also be developing an elementary school curriculum to complement the story books. I would greatly value...
Calendar Event
How D.C. Schools Can Help Traumatized Students Succeed
Comment
Re: How Facial Expressions of Adults Affect Children
We are our children's mirrors , they reflect our moods and actions. Putting on a happy face is one skill we parents need to learn. It is tough but crucial for their mental well-being.
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Re: One Teacher’s Heartfelt Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings—And It’s Not About Guns [msn.com]
Laura - thank you so much for re-posting this blog. I turn to it again and again. The part about how every outward act of violence begins with inner loneliness is a kernel of truth that feels like the very reason we talk about the importance of relationship building, and asking questions like what happened to you? What's going on at home? I sent this to a handful of teachers at my kids' elementary school as well as to principals in the district I'm working with to support trauma informed...
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Re: One Teacher’s Heartfelt Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings—And It’s Not About Guns [msn.com]
You're welcome, Jennifer. I shared it here because I feel like the teacher described in the article "gets it" -- and it's at the heart of why I believe so many of us choose to gather here on ACN for sharing and discussion.
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Re: Trauma-Informed Practice Is a Powerful Tool. But It's Also Incomplete [edweek.org]
Simona and Debbie (and Raphael), Thank you so much for your courageous articulation about the missing component around trauma informed practices. Our work around creating and maintaining hopeful cultures has shown us the need to be careful that our well-founded intentions in understanding trauma doesn't result in the unintended consequences of defining our children by their trauma rather than by their hope. As you well know this is exactly what happened when we began to focus on "risk"...
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Re: Child Bullying And The Long Term Effects Of Negative Body Image
I have had scoliosis(curvature of the spine) since my 13-14 years. Unfortunately, I had no support or help. It affected me terribly, to say the least. Only recently have I been able to overcome the overwhelming shame and lack of confidence due to having had this deformity. I was not bullied but kind of people don't want to hang out with someone whose body is off the whack. I have finally been able to put things in perspective and get over my shame. ...
