November 2017

Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, may lead to poor outcomes later in life. When a child is shot or beaten, for instance, it increases the likelihood that he or she might develop substance-use or eating disorders in adulthood. With that in mind, leaders in the Kansas City area have banded together to launch an initiative called Resilient KC, which has brought community members together to help battle childhood trauma and prevent those long-term health issues that can arise from such...

Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...

When educators learn about the devastating impact of ACES and toxic stress on a child's developing body, brain, and behavior, they often remark, "well, now what?" In this interactive workshop, participants learn to create a classroom that generates psychological safety and invites emotional and behavioral regulation via the nervous system. Co-presented with a seasoned educator, participants take a deep dive into a regulated learning environment; and they learn by doing. Participants will...

A few Sundays ago, at the first weekly service of New City Church in Minneapolis, the Bible wasn’t the only book Rev. Tyler Sit used to preach his sermon. The other text was How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood. Peter Moskowitz’s book , which was published in March, takes readers into cities such as New York and San Francisco, where low-income residents of the inner city have been displaced by mostly white middle- and upper-class people moving...

During World War II 50,000 Finnish children were sent away from their parents to temporary foster care in Sweden. A new study builds the case that adverse events like this in childhood can have deep psychological consequences not only for those directly affected, but also for their descendants. Past research has shown that many of the Finnish war children who were evacuated went on to have a much higher rate of psychiatric hospitalization than the children who stayed. The new study, by the...

Between 2003 and 2013, an estimated 740,000 to 920,000 parents of children who are U.S. citizens were deported from the United States. In 2013, for example, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) reported that it deported 72,410 parents of American children. The pace of parental deportations was slower in 2016, when 28,860 parents were deported. The numbers for 2017 have not yet been reported, but many anticipate an increase given reports that ICE has targeted parents for...

When my daughter was a toddler, I regularly spilled milk in front of her during meal time. “Oops, oh well, no big deal, let’s clean it up!!” I would say in my high-pitched, goofy mom voice. Before she could speak, I sensed that she was wired for perfectionism (something very familiar to me), so I attempted to normalize day-to-day mistakes and to show her how easy it was to bounce back from them. We’re in the thick of the spilled-milk journey right now—learning to accept and embrace mistakes...

In an effort to remove obstacles for Californians trying to succeed in the labor market, a new law could make access to child care easier for low-income parents taking classes to learn English or complete high school. The law will expand the eligibility requirements for subsidized child care. It will make low-income parents who are are enrolled in English as a second language classes (ESL) or a program to earn a high school diploma or general education development certificate (GED) eligible...

Why do good people suffer? Five words to take you into a dense maze of ideas philosophical, psychological and theological. Where to start? What suffering looks or feels like is probably one of the most subjective notions we can ponder. Even the way we usually categorise suffering – “physical” or “mental” – is blurry, because rarely does one come without the other. Our minds hurt when our bodies hurt, and vice versa. If we put aside the “good” or “bad” ranking – for now – and ask why any...

Three months ago, Hurricane Harvey ripped through Houston and coastal Texas, killing 82 people, displacing more than 60,000, and leaving parts of Houston with severe wind and flood damage. As the city recovers from the strongest hurricane to hit in more than 50 years, many of its residents in historically Black neighborhoods continue to struggle for resources and support. “Houston is the tale of two cities,” explains Andrew Cobb, cofounder of West Street Recovery, a nonprofit disaster...

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=254&v=8gm-lNpzU4g

Below is the text of an article appearing in Forest of the Rain Productions with a special thanks to Dr. Michael Robinson. Link to piece is: https://forestoftheraineducation.weebly.com/we-donrsquot-teach-educators-enough-about-trauma-we-should-do-more-karen-gross.html TEXT: Hardly a week goes by without some trauma in the US. Some events are nature made; some are human-made. There appear to be fewer and fewer “safe” places and spaces. The usually “safe” places – schools, universities,...