March 2016

We have a discussion going in the office — should pediatricians screen for poverty during well child checks? The American Academy of Pediatrics is proposing that pediatricians’ offices ask parents, “Do you have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month?” The question poses some rather interesting scenarios. One concern is that if families think they will be judged for their answers, are they likely to withhold information? Also, if a parent does reveal their struggles, what is the...

A few years ago, if a student arrived at an Ascend elementary school wearing the wrong color socks, she was sent to the dean’s office to stay until a family member brought a new pair. Now, the school office is stocked with extra socks. Students without them can pick up a spare pair before heading to class. It’s a simple shift, but part of a revolution in the culture at Ascend, which oversees five charter elementary schools, three middle schools, and a high school in Brooklyn. Making sure...

“The Poverty Cure: Get Married” promises one recent Wall Street Journal headline . Marco Rubio has called marriage “ the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty .” The George W. Bush administration established a (now-defunct) $150-million-a-year effort to shore up people’s marriages , in the hopes of shoring up their finances too. And yet, as a new report from the left-of-center think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP) documents , millions and millions of married...

On Tuesday night, after Donald Trump’s press conference–cum-infomercial at his Jupiter, Florida, golf club, a Breitbartreporter named Michelle Fields approached him with a question about affirmative action. “Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards,” she wrote on Thursday. “Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.” [For more of this...

One of the starkest statistics in the lives of girls today is that 73 percent of girls in the juvenile justice system have been physically or sexually abused, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice figures. A report last summer referred to this as the “sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline." Experiencing abuse is one of the major predictors of girls themselves getting into trouble, according to the report published by the Human Rights Project for Girls, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and...

The number of states completing ACE surveys at least once is now 32 . 7,907 — Number of people who are members of ACEsConnection.com. 40 — Number of countries ACEsConnection.com members represent. 1,752,000 — Number of page views on ACEsConnection.com since January. 10 — Number of states participating in the ACE Interface Master Trainer Program ; 516 master trainers now do presentations about ACEs science * in their communities. 74 — Number of organizations that have earned certification in...

I read lots of news. From my days as a paper boy in Seattle delivering the Post Intelligencer, I had respect for those who reported the news. But over the decades, the role of reporters seems to have shifted and on air reporters have greater prominence. They also seem to require more sensationalism, much of what they create with their reporting. In past blogs, here and elsewhere, I have examined a news article, looked online into the background and reported behaviors of a perpetrator of...

I’m somebody who’s struggled with feelings of loneliness my whole life. It’s a big part of why I decided to become a relationship coach. I wanted to understand why some of my relationships felt more substantial than others. I wanted to understand why sometimes I relished being alone, yet other times being alone evoked feelings of profound sadness. The question I wanted to answer was this: What makes some relationships feel better than others? It was a mystery I was determined to solve. I...

A few weeks ago I wrote this piece about the real reason personal boundaries are powerful: Because they help us define who we are. Boundaries also are “as much about what we let in as what we keep out,” according to psychologist Sherry Walling, Ph.D, in the same article. Which is a great perspective to have when contemplating what decisions to make and how to live our lives. That is, we can turn that sentence into two simple yet significant questions that we can ask ourselves regularly: What...

The Children's Village in the Bronx offers mentors to teenagers who face aging out of foster care. The mentors, or "credible messengers," are former foster children themselves. They use writing and conversation and draw from their personal experiences to motivate these foster teens. [For more of this story, written by Deborah S. Esquenazi, go to http://jjie.org/childrens-village-transformative-mentoring/206329/]

Copy and paste this link into your browser and find one fabulous suggestion for helping kids become more resilient. On the site are many more ideas and strategies! Enjoy! http://www.gozen.com/close-the-compassion-gap-to-boost-resilience-in-kids/ For more information and ideas for supporting the resilience of children and adults, visit www.centerforresilientchildren.org

Christopher Blodgett, a clinical psychologist and Washington State University (WSU) faculty member, spent most of his career working in areas of community violence, child maltreatment and adolescent substance abuse—issues that, too often, occupied separate professional realms. The ACE study put those pressing concerns together. “It gave us the integrating language,” he says. “It moved us from isolated, fragmented conversation to an organized, concurrent process.” New insights into trauma and...