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New and better ways to help children with ACEs included in “Big Ideas in Social Change, 2014” [New York Times Fixes]

Screen Shot 2014-12-19 at 10.52.42 AMDon’t miss a great year-end piece in the New York Times “Fixes” series, which looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. Tina Rosenberg features the need to target the “social determinants” to improve health and education as a big idea for social change in 2014. She describes how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) “can decrease the chances of a successful life if parents, educators or doctors fail to recognize them and respond".The article provides a link to another New York Times “Fixes” column that includes an interview with ACEs Too High and ACEs Connection founder and editor Jane Stevens who describes the impact of ACEs on children’s ability to succeed in school, and how alternatives to reflexive punishment can be effective.

 

Excerpt from section TARGET THE “SOCIAL DETERMINANTS” in the NYTimes Fixes article:Screen Shot 2014-12-19 at 3.42.58 PM

 

 

Health isn’t just a medical problem. Health is undercut by substandard housing, air pollution, food deserts, dangerous streets, trauma and toxic stress — the social determinants of health. Being poor can make you sick, and doctors can’t always help.

 

Education, too, has social determinants. “Zero tolerance” has become the fashion in American schools — kids who act up are suspended and then expelled, even in preschool, and sometimes arrested.

 

This policy succeeds only in sabotaging the education of the children who need it most — mostly low-income African-American or Hispanic boys, many of whom have already faced daunting, often overwhelming, problems. When a 6-year old is aggressive, uncontrollable or violent in class, the question shouldn’t be “What’s wrong with him?” but “What happened to him?” The answer, too often, is that he experienced homelessness, divorce, family violence, incarceration, drug use, neighborhood violence, sudden separation or loss — or typically a combination of the above. Researchers now call these things ACEs or “adverse childhood experiences.” Increasingly, they are measuring them and discovering how drastically they can decrease the chances of a successful life if parents, educators or doctors fail to recognize them and respond. But parents and teachers can learn new, and better ways of helping these children — far more effective than reflexive punishment — and the kids themselves can learn ways to calm themselves and manage their strong emotions.

 


 

 

 

 

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