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When I was ten years old, my dad called me into his bedroom (my parents slept in separate rooms). He sat me on his lap and told me the following: "Teri, I've been seeing a doctor. A counselor. And I now realize I never should have hit you. I'm sorry. I promise to never hit you again. From now on you get to decide your discipline." There was more, but that's all I can remember.

Announcement of Request for Proposal ( https://www.dibbleinstitute.org/research-opportunity-mind-matters/ ) The Dibble Institute is pleased to announce a competitive cooperative agreement opportunity to conduct an initial evaluation of Mind Matters – Overcoming Adversity and Building Resilience . ( https://www.dibbleinstitute.org/mind-matters/ ) We will fund up to $15,000 for an 18-month (from award to final report) evaluative study to understand what participants learn, what changes they...

I was 19 years old and had the world at my fingertips. I came from the picture perfect family… two cars in the garage, two successful working parents, nice house, a dog, and two children, a boy and a girl. I was the girl, my name is Crystal Hampton. I had no reason to be attracted to a “bad boy” or someone I knew would break my heart but I did it anyways. When I turned 18 I took my first drink and that is what started a long road of alcoholism for me. I hated the way it tasted but loved the...

“If we take victimization seriously, what’s the significance of histories of victimization and exposure to trauma for people who have harmed others?” asks sociologist Bruce Western . It is a thought-provoking question that is impossible to ignore if you read his latest book, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison , which details findings from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), which followed 122 formerly incarcerated men and women for one year following their release from the Massachusetts...

W hen Meggen Massey learned that she would be able to vote in the 2016 presidential election, she was “ecstatic.” She had always thought of herself as a voter, but when she arrived in jail in Los Angeles County with an arson charge, some of her fellow detainees told her that she had lost that right. “I was devastated,” Massey remembered. “I was like, Oh my God, I’m never going to be able to vote again.” But that turned out to be wrong. With the help of Susan Burton, the founder of the...

The Trump administration’s first year of immigration policy has relied on claims that immigrants bring crime into America. President Trump’s latest target is sanctuary cities. “Every day, sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants, drug dealers, traffickers, gang members back into our communities,” he said last week. “They’re safe havens for just some terrible people.” As of 2017, according to Gallup polls , almost half of Americans agreed that immigrants make crime worse. But is it true...

he first indication to Lt. Dan Stout that law enforcement’s handling of white supremacy was broken came in September 2017, as he was sitting in an emergency-operations center in Gainesville, Fla., preparing for the onslaught of Hurricane Irma and watching what felt like his thousandth YouTube video of the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. Jesus Christ, he thought, studying the footage in which crowds of angry men, who had gathered to attend or protest the Unite the Right rally, set...

The single greatest antidote to poverty and social stagnation is the emancipation of women. Wherever this has been tried, wherever women have been empowered to do as they wish, the economy and the culture have been radically improved. A new book by Augusto Lopez-Claros, a senior fellow at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, an Iranian writer and novelist, is among the first to comprehensively test this proposition by surveying data from 189...

When I was a child, my mom would on occasion make us kids a special breakfast of green eggs and ham. It magically merged worlds for me. The imaginary food from my book became a reality, right there on the table. But a few decades later, as a preschool teacher, I read the beloved children’s story, Green Eggs and Ham, to a class of 15 wide-eyed and openhearted children, and began to feel a just a little uncomfortable. In the era of #MeToo, this story sounded less like a paean to trying new...

We all know the experience of vulnerability, even if we don’t call it by that name. It’s that feeling you get when you’re about to tell someone “I love you,” try out a new skill, or ask for forgiveness. When the risk of getting rejected, laughed at, or criticized is real. In her research , University of Houston professor and author Brené Brown has explored some of the reasons why we shy away from vulnerability. While we often celebrate it as a strength in other people, she discovered, we...

ACEs, Adversity's Impact Adverse childhood experiences increase prediabetes markers in adulthood How parenting affects antisocial behaviors in children Documentary broken places uses archival footage to tell stories of ACEs and resilience over time NYC's first lady urges reporters to tackle mental health issues A guide to toxic stress The quest to find biomarkers for toxic stress, resilience in children - A Q&A with Jack Shonkoff Parent-child bond predicts depression, anxiety in teens...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises parents against the use of spanking as a disciplinary tool, citing multiple potential hards. APSAC agrees and offers alternatives for parents