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July 2019

Turner: Resilient Payne County discusses adverse childhood experiences

Usually when you read about childhood traumas in the United States, you read about extreme cases. Although these extreme cases are substantial and should be reported on, a lot of Americans miss the point when it comes to what an overwhelming amount of kids are actually dealing with when it comes to neglect. According to the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth , the number of child abuse and/or neglect reports in 2017 in Oklahoma was 79,310. Of those reports, 62,828 were investigated...

Insight Into Trauma Informed

The awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the impact of developmental trauma on both children and adults has begun to spread across Oklahoma. Since Oklahoma’s statistics rank this state as one of the nation’s highest in need of trauma training, this awareness is a vital initial step. As the awareness spreads and many people begin to talk about trauma and how we as people, agencies, and a state respond, our communication and understanding must be consistent with other states...

Emig: Day 6: ACES: Breaking the cycle: How a Tulsa realtor became Mama Linda to foster children

Linda Vincent lets you know straight away: Being a foster parent can be terrifying. “Ter-ri-fy-ing,” she says for emphasis. “My kids come into my home and I see behaviors that would blow other people’s minds. They call them ‘trauma rages’ sometimes.” Foster children tend to have encountered trauma. They tend to have high ACE scores. They typically haven’t encountered stabilizers in their lives. Then they come into the lives of foster parents. They come into lives like Vincent’s. “I’ve...

Emig: Day 6: ACES: Breaking the cycle: Tulsa Big Brother shows the power of being there for a child

Ryan McDaniel’s first experience in Big Brothers Big Sisters was with an 11-year-old boy from south Dallas named Sherman. “He was poor. His father was incarcerated. His mother was in and out of different issues relative to drugs,” McDaniel said. “He couldn’t read, and he was getting pushed through the public school system down there. On top of that, he had been shot, supposedly on accident, when he was 4 years old.” On their first outing, McDaniel took Sherman bowling. Sherman bowled one...

Eger: Day 5: ACES: Breaking the cycle: 'Waking up was miserable'

The kids at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore changed Kristin Atchley as an education professional. Tragedy there changed her as a person. Today, Atchley uses what she learned and lived through to teach others about the impact of chronic stressors on growing kids and how trauma rewires our brains. “I had a fully-developed brain as a 30-year-old. I knew I could get help and get through. Kids don’t always understand that,” she said. Atchley didn’t have the personal or professional...

Buchman: House Panel Takes Up Treatment of Childhood Trauma

WASHINGTON (CN) – During its first-ever hearing on the subject, the House Oversight Committee met Thursday with experts and survivors of childhood trauma, a day after an immigrant mother gave emotional testimony about the death of her baby daughter following their stay at a detention center. Thursday’s hearing comes on the heels of testimony delivered by Yazmin Juarez, the mother of a 19-month-old girl who died after 20 days in detention at a facility in Texas. Her story detailed the...

Overall: Day 3: ACES: Breaking the cycle 'All I ever knew.' Drugs. Alcohol. Jail. Oklahoma's children repeat the patterns of their parents

It was Christmas Eve, and 13-year-old Tara Peterson had a house full of uncles and aunts and cousins. The adults started drinking, and once they started, they usually didn’t stop until they were falling down drunk. “It was normal behavior,” Peterson remembers. “It’s just what people did.” Feeling grown up, she joined them. And that’s how her drinking problem began. Not sneaking around and hiding it but right in front of her closest relatives. With them. Marijuana came next, then harder...

ELEVATE: Enhancing Security for Schools

BETHANY (June 2019) – School security has a new face in Bethany – a full-time school resource officer the kids affectionately call Officer Z. Zack Zamudio left his beat with the Bethany Police Department to walk the halls of Bethany Public Schools at the beginning of the last school year as part of several new measures designed to increase safety at the school. “We’re not policing the school; we’re securing the school,” Zamudio said. “Shutting off the police mode and switching to security...

Jones: Day 2: Soda, cigarettes and trauma: How Adverse Childhood Experiences alter brain chemistry, cultivate unhealthy habits and prompt premature death

Patients would carry soda into Dr. Gerard Clancy’s office, with cigarettes tucked away for after therapy. Often victims of abuse or violent crime, they would seek soothing but risky behaviors to cope. Overweight. Chronic pain. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Type II diabetes. His former patients will die younger than they should, he said. Clancy conducted therapy sessions until he became president of the University of Tulsa in 2016. At his psychiatry clinic, he saw firsthand how a...

Killman: Day 1: Breaking the cycle

T he science is well established and should come as no surprise: children who suffer rough childhoods have a greater likelihood of being adversely affected later in life. Studies have shown that children who incur adverse experiences are more likely to develop mental health issues, suffer chronic health problems and/or take part in risky behaviors such as smoking or drug abuse. Oklahoma children are not immune from this phenomena. In fact we are No. 1, according to various nationwide...

 
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