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By Mary-Ann Etiebet and Raj Panjabi, USA Today, September 28, 2020 Erica Garner died on Dec. 30, 2017, just four months after she gave birth to a baby boy and three years after her father Eric Garner died in the chokehold of a New York City policeman. After having multiple heart attacks (the first came shortly after childbirth ), she experienced one of the hundreds of pregnancy-related deaths that year in the United States. She died in a country where Black women are more likely to die due...

By Alexandra Sakellariou, Babygaga, October 11, 2020 Mental health is important no matter what age you are, which is why it’s important for parents to be aware of their infant’s mental health . Early interactions with our environment and those in it greatly shape our emotional well-being , including our ability to process and express emotions in addition to forming and maintaining relationships with others. It’s important that parents and caregivers are aware and attentive to a young child’s...

By Sara Al-Mulla, Arab News, October 7, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic has been awfully stressful for families with children. Many parents have had to struggle with unemployment, financial insecurity, and a lack of recreational activities, with minimal support from child care services or their social networks. Research shows that these factors intensify parental burnout, as well as increase the likelihood of child abuse or neglect. It is especially important, therefore, to offer a suite of...

By Dan Levin, The New York Times, October 12, 2020 Michelle Macario was struggling to follow online classes through the tiny screen of her smartphone. She had no laptop and no Wi-Fi at home, and the library where she normally studied at her community college in Los Angeles was closed. So two weeks into the coronavirus shutdown in the spring, she dropped all of her courses to avoid failing. Things are not much better this semester. Ms. Macario, 18, who is majoring in psychology at Santa...

6 new communities have joined the ACEs Connection. Details about each of them are below as is information about starting and growing your community initiatives and joining the Cooperative of Communities.

The week of the fall equinox was Mino-Bimaadiziwin Wellness Week at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy (SCA) in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, a pre-K through 5th grade school of about 130 students. “Mino-Bimaadiziwin” is an Anishinabe phrase meaning “to live the good life.” At the school, it started with “Mindfulness Monday”—students were encouraged to wear their favorite “thinking cap”—then segued to “Take care of our bodies Tuesday,” a “Love Your Community Wednesday" that included talking circles, and...

Mary Mueller likes to call herself an “opportunistic infection.” What that means is that Mueller, project coordinator for trauma-informed systems in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), is determined to share the science of ACEs and resilience wherever she goes. After Mueller attended the state’s first ACE master trainer two day session hosted by the Michigan ACE Initiative , she wanted to bring the foundational science shared by ACE Interface back home—to her MDHHS...

I'd like to share a rather unusual free resource...parenting tips bumper stickers. Advancing Parenting, a Camarillo CA nonprofit organization, produces parenting tips bumper stickers and makes them available at no cost to schools, organizations, agencies, clinics, businesses, and individuals. There are fifty-one in a set and each one communicates a parenting behavior or practice generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children. Bumper stickers are a unique and powerful...

Until I read “The Deepest Well” by Dr. Nadien Burke Harris, I had never heard of Adverse Childhood Experience, toxic stress, or epigenetics. Yes, I was aware that trauma can be transferred genetically, but my knowledge stopped and ended at trauma’s impact on the body due to major world and life events. In essence, I knew of trauma’s impact of the body only in terms of contexts like slavery, 9/11, and the holocaust. I did not know that the shortening of telomeres, stunted amygdala growth, and...

Don't miss out on the free viewing tomorrow 10/13: Access from www.cope24.com View “How Many ACEs Are You Holding?” for FREE! Use code ACES-FREE on October 13th, 2020 to see the entire video free . Use this link to view. Coupon will only work on the Vimeo rental page for How Many Aces are You Holding? , not the subscription page.

Samantha Wettje has an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University and a B.S.in Financial Economics from Binghamton University. In addition to her work with the 16 Strong Project, Samantha is actively involved with the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s EASEL Lab for social-emotional learning, Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project and Journey into Education and Teaching (JET), a non-profit aiming to increase teacher diversity in Massachusetts.

On October 12th, Frist Nations is proud to stand with Native communities across the nation in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day . This day, which began as a counter-celebration to Columbus Day, raises awareness of the true history of the United States while celebrating the culture and resilience of Native people. It is a day of recognition and respect, and a holiday that more and more states and local governments have been observing every year. Still, at First Nations, we believe that every...