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By Amanda Merck, Salud America!, February 26, 2020 Communities are increasingly concerned about the rise of poverty, homelessness, trauma, and opioids among children and families. However, few states address these issues by investing money in Head Start programs, which are proven to strengthen families, promote school readiness, and improve child health. The good news is that lawmakers in 14 states are investing over $400 million each budget cycle for local Head Start and Early Head Start...

There is one ACE in particular that can result in a child experiencing 8 additional ACEs measured in the ACE Study. That particular ACE is having a parent who abused alcohol or other drugs or was addicted to alcohol or other drugs. As someone with 40+ years of experience coping with various loved ones who drank too much and 16+ years of work studying the scientific research on brain development, ACEs , alcohol use disorders , and the family member's experience , this fact is especially near...

photo credit: VG Stockstudio/Shutterstock.com by Alice M. Kenny (pseudonym) (The article below is an excerpt from my new book, Crazy Was All I Ever Knew: The Impact of Maternal Mental Illness on Kid s. I have used a pseudonym to protect the privacy of family members.) It’s not as if you wake up one day and say, “I’m going to be anorexic. I’m going to shrink away and dwindle down to nothing.” The disorder takes hold with Svengali power, and it steals the very life out of you. Oddly enough,...

PSSST! Spoiler Alert!!! Educator friends and parents! Please hear me. I’m going to tell you what’s inside the nutshell. Trauma-informed is NOT about changing the kids. It’s about changing US. You see I have a child that had debilitating meltdowns for YEARS. I became a trauma-informed parent and I taught him all the good stuff about his amygdala and cortisol and oxytocin and water and air. And it started clicking and one night he runs into the room shouting and stomping his feet, “I’m...

This 3-Part series was created to support schools and organizations in planning and implementing effective program evaluation for trauma-informed care (TIC) interventions. Enjoy these excerpts from Part 3 . CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ALL OF PART 3 AND THE WHOLE SERIES FOR FREE Part 3: The Basics of Trauma-Informed Care Program Evaluation ________________________________________ The Measuring Trauma-Informed Care Series was created by the Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) , a global leader in TIC...

By Robert T. Muller, Psychology Today, March 11, 2020 When she was a young girl, Danielle (name changed) was recruited into domestic sex trafficking from her long-term foster home. She was only able to leave this life once her mother regained custody of her. Sex trafficking, a term used to describe the phenomenon of individuals performing commercial sex through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, is an epidemic. It affects about 25 million people globally. The US-based National Human...

By Melissa Valle, Thrive Global, March 10, 2020 The Brain is the only organ that is not fully developed at birth, as a child begins to grow different stages of their development are attached to different parts and functions of the brain. The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences is dependent on the stage of development at which the trauma occurs which will help to determine the way children shut down or hide their pain. For example, if a child experiences trauma at a stage in which they...

By Cliff Despres, Salud America!, March 10, 2020 U.S.-born Latino youth with immigrant parents suffer “significantly increased” anxiety over immigration since the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, according to a recent study. Researchers in California and Arizona studied 397 U.S. citizen children of Latino immigrants. They compared children before the election at age 14 and after the election at age 16, to see if their concerns over immigration policy linked up to worse mental,...

By Colin Diamond, Schools Week, March 8, 2020 Trauma-informed practice is good for everyone and best of all for the most vulnerable. Why would our government favour compliance instead? asks Colin Diamond Speeches like Gavin Williamson’s last week, in which he appeared to endorse the nationwide replication of so-called “no-excuses” or “warm-strict” schools, hardly deserve the attention, let alone the heat, they generate. In truth, even if the political desire is for uber-compliance, it is...

By Kenneth Bailey and Lori Lobenstine, Design Studio for Social Intervention, March 2020 The advised precautions for dealing with the coronavirus ask us to focus on ourselves. Wash your hands. Cover your mouth. Don’t host or attend large gatherings. The precautions make us turn inward to focus on the virus’s impact on our individual health and the interruption of our daily lives. As much as we have to take these precautions, we must also understand that they are doing something to us. They...

From Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, March 11, 2020 What is “serve and return”? What does it mean to have a “responsive relationship” with a child? How do responsive relationships support healthy brain development? And what can parents and caregivers do in their day-to-day lives to build these sorts of relationships? This episode of The Brain Architects podcast addresses all these questions and more! [ Please click here to listen to the podcast and for more resources .]

https://medium.com/@AutieTraumaGeek/neuroception-and-the-3-part-brain-b38f482c34b0