Skip to main content

Parenting with PACEs. PACEs science & stories. Trauma-informed change.

August 2017

A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity / Making a Difference Conference in MA in November

The 6th Annual Making a Difference Conference for SESPs, Foster/Adoptive and Kinship Caregivers and their Professional Partners will be held in Marlborough, MA on November 14, 2017. The theme is A Community Approach to Trauma Sensitivity. There will be at least two talks will be about ACEs! Speakers/Topics: Keynote: Managing the Hearts and Souls of Many, Dana Royster-Buefort, M.Ed., C.A.G.S. Workshops Tackling ACEs by Building Resilient Communities , Renee D Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD . Note:...

Mindfulness: When Not to Use It (www.upliftconnect.com) & Commentary

Note: I have seen lots of discussion about the benefits and risks of mindfulness and meditation for trauma survivors. Most often, sitting meditation has not been desirable, possible or helpful for me. If one has little kids, periods of silence may not seem to ever exist. And stopping or being totally quiet and alone with myself is sometimes anything but calming or quieting. I've used guided meditation or yoga nidra instead to help me shift to a more calm and relaxed state. Sometimes I'll try...

Parenting tips on semi-truck trailers

Three in ten semi-truck trailers have no graphics on their sides. Just 53 feet of blank white space. This is because they are owned by leasing companies and owner/operators who don't have a business or product to promote. Now imagine these parenting tips and forty-four others on the sides of these trailers crisscrossing the United States!!! This is one of Advancing Parenting's goals. AP will partner with the Advertising Council and manufacturers so trailers role off the assembly line with a...

Listening to Ebony Stewart's Voice: The Complexity of ACEs (www.youtube.com)

Ebony Stewart doing spoken word about her father and her mother and childhood from an adult perspective. Ebony Stewart doing spoken word about adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences as lived. Ebony Stewart speaking about speaking up and silence and using her voice and the experience of being threatened and silenced. Too often, when we talk about ACEs we aren't speaking in first person or about the complexity of real-life experiences. Often, we're speaking in general...

Shared Grief: If my daughter could know me it would help her understand her own suffering (www.risemangazine.org)

Rise Magazine is one of the few places I know of that gives voice to the experiences of parents who have children involved with child welfare. About Rise: Every year almost 300,000 children enter foster care nationwide. Media coverage of foster care focuses on tragic child deaths, the need for foster and adoptive parents, and the experiences of young people who age out of foster care at 18 or 21. Less understood is that more than half of children in foster care return home to their parents...

Live in a Poor Neighborhood? Better Be a Perfect Parent (www.nytimes.com)

Note: An article by Emma S. Ketteringham that shows how the system traumatizes and re-traumatizes many children and their parents. My hope is that as we talk about trauma-informed, trauma-aware, self-healing and resilient communities we talk less about how people can do better, try harder and more about we can all be a safer, kinder and treat symptoms of adverse childhood experiences and adverse community experiences and focus on treating the causes of both instead. When I met Eline, she...

“But Daddy, Why Was He Shot?”: How to Talk to Children about Race Today (psychologybenefits.org)

Excerpts from an article by Riana Anderson I read this morning. All parents are concerned for their children's safety, but parents of color shoulder a particularly challenging burden raising children in a racially charged society. In particular, the messages and behaviors that parents express to their children regarding race are known as Racial/Ethnic Socialization (RES). Much has been written on RES ( formal review articles , blogs , more blogs , and even more blogs ) but at a time when...

Happy Monday

Mondays can be hard and slow. Transitions for some can be tricky. Many of us are winding down the summer and gearing back up for the school year. This little gem of insight was said when my daughter was a preschooler. It's timeless and it always makes me smile.

We need to start spoiling our black children (www.washingtonpost.com)

Note: I love this article by A.Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez as it speaks to race and parenting and addresses how racism makes parenting harder. How does one prepare and protect a child from a world where there is injustice? We talk a lot about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and that's crucial. Kids deserve to be safe at home. But the world isn't safe for all children even when children are without adverse childhood experiences the way we talk about them most, That's why we need to talk...

Baltimore enlists doulas to help bring infant mortality rate down [BaltimoreSun.com]

When Kendra Nelson was in labor with her second child, small gestures from a doula helped her get through the strongest and most painful contractions. The woman held Nelson’s hand and spoke words of encouragement. She guided Nelson through breathing exercises and pulled her hair back in a scrunchie to keep her comfortable. [For more of this story, written by Andrea K. McDaniels, go to http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-doula-infant-mortality-20170725-story.html]

Toolkit on Domestic Violence and ACEs Now Available

This blog post is to share our toolkit, "A Resilience Framework for Domestic Violence and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)." The toolkit is a PowerPoint that can be downloaded here and is free to share. This project started nearly 24 months ago with support from the Arctic Fulbright Initiative to examine the intersections between domestic violence and ACEs and create an open access resource. A statewide survey in Alaska and focus groups in Finland provided recommendations on information...

In Posthumous Memoir "Playing Hurt", Sportscaster John Saunders Faces His Demons [wbur.org/hereandnow]

Earlier this week, Robin Young of the NPR/WBUR Boston radio program “Here & Now” interviewed Wanda Saunders, widow of the late sportscaster John Saunders. John Saunders’s memoir, “Playing Hurt”, was published posthumously on August 8, 2017. Saunders died in 2016. The book is about Saunders’s struggle with severe depression, in part a result of abuse by his father. The link below includes audio of the interview, the text of interview highlights, and an excerpt from “Playing Hurt”. I...

Parenting, Menopause & ACEs After-the-Chat Summary: Carey Sipp

Have you talked with friends, siblings or co-workers about Parenting with ACEs while going through the change? Do you have any fascinating facts to share about how your OBGYN prepared or supported you when thrown by midlife, hormonal shifts and emotional residue from traumatic stress? Me either. And it's a shame. A lot of people parent, go through menopause, and have survived a bunch of ACEs. Conversations and information shouldn't be so hard to find. But they are. T hat's the reason we...

Teens are more stressed and anxious, but they don’t know why. Here’s how parents can help. [WashingtonPost.com]

The teenage years can be tough, marked with physical and emotional changes, new choices and responsibilities, and evolving relationships with the people who surround us. But a recent report shows that hormones aren’t the only thing troubling the teen years; young people are increasingly showing a general inability to identify the source of their angst and pain. These results have serious implications for those who care for kids. A review of more than 830,000 calls, text messages, emails and...

Copyright © 2023, PACEsConnection. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×