June 2018

Registration is now open for my new self-paced online course , for adults who are feeling the effects of early trauma. Inside the course you’ll find 32 videos (more than three hours of content) covering: What we know about Childhood PTSD and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and their effects on our adult lives The root problem with Childhood PTSD — dysregulation of the brain, nervous system, emotions and impulses Instruction in following my daily re-regulation practice with simple,...

This column was originally written for VOXatl.com . Dayonn Davis was 15 when he committed a crime that would get him tried in court as an adult. A Facebook sale of a pair of Oreo Nikes, priced at around $100, went sour when the Columbus, Georgia teen attempted to steal them. Without the knowledge of Davis, a friend pulled out a pistol and everybody ran. Reluctantly, Davis finally gave up the name of his armed friend, but the victim could not pick him out of a lineup. For that 2016 crime,...

“Are little kids really being put in jail?” That was the question my daughters asked me when I picked them up from summer camp last week. For a minute, I was stunned into silence. I took a deep breath, overwhelmed by sadness that we live in a world where kids — younger than my own girls — are indeed living this reality. My daughters had talked with friends about what they are hearing on the news. They didn’t understand why anyone would take children away from their mom or dad. They didn’t...

Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes —car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. [For more of this story, written by Erika Christakis, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/the-dangers-of-distracted-parenting/561752/]

As a growing number of states pass laws permitting discrimination against LGBTQ people interested in foster care and adoption, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation has released a toolkit to help the child welfare field better serve LGBTQ families. The toolkit is part of HRC’s All Children-All Families program and provides webinars, assessment tools and best practices for professionals and caregivers working with people in the LGBTQ and child welfare communities. Numerous national...

The Trump administration's decision to separate children from their families as a way to curb illegal immigration is adding fuel to an already fiery debate over immigration. A group of House Democrats converged on an immigration detention facility in New Jersey on Sunday, days before a planned vote by House Republicans next week. Meanwhile, Trump administration officials alternately took credit and sought to distance the administration from the family separation policy. [For more of this...

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the opioid epidemic claimed the lives of more than 64,000 people in 2016, nearly double the number of people who died in deadly automobile accidents. These numbers are shocking, and yet they don’t begin to communicate the full impact of this deadly epidemic. In fact, there is a growing consensus among brain science experts that addiction may actually be a symptom of an even larger problem — one that can have its roots in childhood trauma.

It’s 6 p.m. at Central City’s A.L. Davis Park, and coaches Edgarson Shawn Scott and Claude Dixon have managed to corral the 9- and 10-year-old boys into something resembling a straight line. With a piercing blow of his whistle, head coach Scott starts the Panthers football practice. The players run a lap from light post to light post. Their cleats kick up the dirt patches some say are a leftover from the days following Katrina, when the field was blanketed by limestone and 69 FEMA trailers.

When the survival responses take hold, you still think you’re in control. In fact, for a trauma survivor it is imperative to delude ourselves into thinking we are in control because lack of it is how we got hurt in the first place. We need the illusion that we have choice, and that choice just happens to be… fight, flight, freeze or befriend.

Father Father

Have you ever had the experience of becoming the living embodiment of an illustrated children’s book character? Yeah, that’s happened to me. I am Froggy. The Froggy that goes to school Froggy. In the children’s story, Froggy feels anxious about his first day of school. His healthy and natural nervousness (the body’s stress response system is activated by novelty) manifests in his dream. In his dream, he misses the bus and shows up to class in his underwear. I am feeling “Froggy.” Two...

I wanted to share a few ideas I've used in the classroom that have really helped my ACEs students (mostly middle school, but could be tweaked to use for younger kids): 1. Write the event/name of person upsetting them on an index card. Have them slowly tear the paper and put the pieces in a trash can while calmly repeating, "you are not worth my anger." Write the event/name again on another index card. Tear up the card and throw away the pieces while calmly repeating, "I control myself."...