Blog

It's time to start getting children and teens into their school-year sleep routine, an expert says. School-aged children need nine to 12 hours of sleep a night, according to sleep specialist Dr. Susan Manganaro. And teens need eight to 10 hours. "It may take a few weeks for your child to get adjusted to an earlier bedtime," said Manganaro, an assistant professor of pediatric neurology at Stony Brook University Children's Hospital in Stony Brook, N.Y. Ideally, two to three weeks before school...

Feeling overwhelmed? These tips are a total game-changer. Are you stressed? I’m not going to tell you to “relax.” Instead, I’ll actually show you how to regulate it. For many people, stress is a daily occurrence. When stress overruns your life, you’re left feeling “stressed out” and depleted. You can’t get enough rest, life “comes at you” super-charged, and your ability to bounce back or be resilient to the everyday challenges of living becomes harder. [For more of this story, written by...

Where did the summer go? We can't believe it's time to go back to school. Whether you're a student looking for some study tips or a parent looking for some reassurance, our Back to School Guide will get you back on track to have a successful school year. We know that getting back into the swing of the daily school schedule takes some time, so you should give yourself a break if you find the first couple of weeks a little difficult to break free from that vacation mindset. That's natural! But...

It's increasingly clear that bad experiences during childhood are associated with long-lasting health effects, including higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and depression. And childhood abuse in particular has been associated with psychiatric problems and chronic diseases years down the line. But whether that translates to a higher risk of early death for abuse survivors isn't well studied. According to research published Wednesday, there is an association between reports of childhood...

The saying goes that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. For some people, this is nothing more than an aphorism, but for millions of children who receive free or reduced-priced lunches at school, during the summer it’s a harsh reality. Nearly 21.5 million kids in the U.S. are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals, yet according to a 2016 report from the Food Research Action Center, only 1 in 6 of them receives that benefit over summer break. “The summer is a really tough time for...

This post originally appeared at TomDispatch . Once upon a time, I was a journalist covering war in Indochina, Central America and the Middle East. I made it my job to write about the victims of war, the “civilian casualties.” To me, they were hardly “collateral damage,” that bloodless term the military persuaded journalists to adopt. To me, they were the center of war . Now, I work at home and I’m a private eye — or PI to you. I work mostly on homicide cases for defense lawyers on the mean...

Healing. Rest. Self-care. Restorative justice. Restorative yoga. Trauma-informed dynamic mindfulness. Compassion. Love. Community healing. When I get desperate, which is pretty often, I ask myself how to not be overwhelmed by despair or cynicism. For my own sake, for my family, and for my sangha, I need to vow to not burn out. And I ask others to vow similarly so they’ll be around when I need them for support. In fact, I’ve formulated a “Great Vow for Mindful Activists”: Aware of suffering...

A three-step contemplation to give yourself the compassion you need (and deserve). Put both hands on your heart, pause, and feel their warmth. You can also put your hand anyplace on your body that feels soothing and comforting, like your belly or face. Breathe deeply in and out. Speak these words to yourself, out loud or silently, in a warm and caring tone: This is a moment of suffering . Suffering is a part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I...

Dr. Tami DeCoteau, holds the sign-up sheet for a North Dakota trauma initiative, flanked by Dr. Zach Kaminsky, (left), Dr. Mary Cwik, (right) of the Center for American Indian Health, Johns Hopkins University, and Megan DesCamps, health policy advisor for U.S. Senator Heitkamp ________________________ There is often a distinct event that leaders in the trauma movement mention when asked about how it all got started in their community. Many times it is when one of the authors of the ACE...

Mindfulness has an extraordinary capacity to build a strong body, mind and spirit in ourselves as adults, as well as in our children. Science has told us that it can help to protect against stress, anxiety, depression, illness and pain, ease the symptoms of autism and ADHD, improve academic performance and social relationships, as well as expand the capacity to experience positive emotions. Children are wonderfully present in what they do, but as life picks up speed, the capacity to...

I don’t typically post twice in one day, but this blog “Open Letter” on Huffington Post caught my eye and I thought it should be shared. The focus is on education, and there are a number of themes we can see in the letter. First, the author, Diane Ravitch, has an academic background and insight, but states that she has abandoned the reform efforts of the day because the favored reforms among politicians are “useless and counterproductive….” What she seems to be staying is that the story she...

Society absorbs a lot of costs that are associated with childhood inflicted trauma (ACEs). Yet we fund programs regularly, and don’t really require solid data on results. That just seems to be a byproduct of people managing programs. We commit to results, secure funding based on that commitment, then do everything we can to prove that we have results. We secure data that suggests progress, and hide any data that then problem might be getting worse (at least in my experience). Fortunately, we...