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Greetings to each and every person who has visited this blog during the seven weeks of absence from writing here. I am home now after more than 10,000 miles of traveling during the past seven weeks as I visited family and friends whom I love and who love me.
The time I spent in Alaska, the home of my heart, was everything I needed it to be in order for me to move forward with the writing of my book.
I will at this point be dividing my writing clearly between my book (which will not be appearing on this blog) and other assorted writing specifically for the blog. As my precious Alaskan baby brother (now 44) told me, if it is my desire and my intention to write a book, then I need to do it. He explained it to me this way:
A person might pick up tools and a block of wood intending to carve an image. Perhaps they are not quite sure what image lies within the wood so they begin carving in process until that image becomes clear and the carving can then give it form. If, however, that point never occurs where the image within the wood is found, shaped and born, all that will result from the effort of carving is a pile of wood shavings and dust.
I heard and understand the wisdom contained in my brother’s words, and I recognize that continuing to pour words out into my blog will not accomplish the creation of my book. I will now separate the words that belong in my book from those that do not.
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As I continue through the process of getting my ‘home legs’ under me, I will at least post a few interesting links here for reader consideration! Please follow some or all of these links – THEY ARE IMPORTANT! Please also join me in my gratitude to every single person who is involved with this quality of work to further our understanding about the impact of severe child abuse on human development – and the work of everyone committed to ending child maltreatment around the globe.
Please also remember the abuse being done to the fragile web of life on our glorious planet and the suffering of so many species being caused by the thoughtless harm of all kinds caused by humans.
And, for a load of Alaskan MOOSE FUN….
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Back to School Tips: Parents Should Get Ready, Too!
Posted: 27 Aug 2009 08:21 AM PDT
Tips for parents on helping their kids succeed in school, adapter from information provided by our friends at Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey.
Amid the shopping trips for sharpened #2 pencils, crisp notebooks and new shoes, parents should start thinking about what they can do to become the best possible support system for their child this school year. The beginning of the new academic season is often the most important, as it sets the tone for a meaningful and successful year. Research shows that students are more equipped to thrive academically and socially when parents are actively involved in their child’s education.
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Going Big: Harlem Children’s Zone on This American Life
Posted: 18 Aug 2009 02:17 AM PDT
Hats off to This American Life for shining a spotlight on the solutions to the many problems that plague our nation’s impoverished families. Going Big, this week’s episode, profiles Geoffrey Canada, a pioneer in the fields of child and family support and poverty prevention. His organization, Harlem Children’s Zone, boasts tremendous outcomes for the families and community it serves, including:
- l00% of students in the Harlem Gems pre-K program were found to be school-ready for the sixth year in a row.
- 81% of Baby College parents improved the frequency of reading to their children.
- $4.8 million returned to 2,935 Harlem residents as a result of HCZ’s free tax-preparation service
- 10,883 number of youth served by HCZ in 2008.
Listen to the This American Life podcast.
Below is a five-minute video of moms talking about the challenges of raising children in Harlem and the difference HCZ is making in their lives.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
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Brain Development Altered by Violence
By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 1999; Page A3
LITTLETON, Colo.—More than a week had passed since Krystie DeHoff felt bullets and bombs explode all around her, since she ran in horror past young, dead bodies to safety. Now she was inching toward normality, shopping at King Soopers grocery, when the most innocent sound–a baby crying in his mother’s arms–set the Columbine High School massacre in motion again, this time in her mind. Her heart raced, her muscles coiled. She heard not a baby, but her classmates, shrieking. “All I could think was: MAKE HIM STOP!” she said.
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Using Mental Strategies Can Alter
The Brain’s Reward Circuitry
ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — The cognitive strategies humans use to regulate emotions can determine both neurological and physiological responses to potential rewards, a team of New York University and Rutgers University neuroscientists has discovered. The findings, reported in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, shed light on how the regulation of emotions may influence decision making.
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The Neural Self: The Neurobiology of Attachment
By Phil Rich, Ed.D., LICSW
It is its basis in biology that makes attachment theory unique among theories of psychology and child development. From the biological perspective, attachment is simply an evolutionarily-evolved process to ensure species survival, and is thus as much a part our biology as that of any animal.
From this perspective, cognitive schema and the resulting mental map is not merely a psychological phenomenon, but a physical entity, hard-wired into neural circuits and reflected in neurochemical and electrical activity within the central nervous system.
The mental map into which our experiences and memories are imprinted is thus a neurobiological structure, the result of synaptic processes, out of which human cognition and behavior emerges, resulting in LeDoux’s (2002) description of our “synaptic” self.
Siegel (2001) describes the pattern and clusters of synaptic firing as “somehow creat(ing) the experience of mind” (p. 69). He writes that “integration” reflects the manner in which functionally separate neural structures and processes cluster together and interact to form a functional whole – in this case, our selves.
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Child abuse marks genes, affects ability to cope: Study
By Margaret Munro , Canwest News Service
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The neurologist Paul MacLean has proposed that our skull holds not one brain, but three, each representing a distinct evolutionary stratum that has formed upon the older layer before it, like an archaeological site – he calls it the “triune brain.” MacLean, now the director of the Laboratory of Brain Evolution and Behaviour in Poolesville, Maryland, says that three brains operate like “three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.
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Stop the Storm 