October 29, 2015
by Anne Kip Watson
With recent headlines for the National Football League on head injuries revealing devastating results, more questions are now being raised about how to keep kids safe from similar future outcomes. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University, new research examining the brains of 91 deceased football players found signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE in 96 perfect of them.
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October 27, 2015
by Agnes Oh, PsyD, LMFT
Contrary to the common notion, researchers concluded that children with ADHD rely heavily on movement and motor activity to perform their executive functions, as the majority of them have been found to perform better when they are moving.
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September 28, 2015
by Agnes Oh, PsyD, LMFT
After three years of joining efforts with more than 100 high-level health care professionals, attorneys, foster youth/caregivers/advocates, and the Department of Social Services, California has unveiled a sweeping set of guidelines aimed at cracking down on the overuse of psychiatric medication in foster care (de Sá, April 2015). The exhaustive efforts began in 2012 and have given birth to the new proposed measures which recently passed the Senate and are now in the Assembly to be finalized (de Sá, July 2015).
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A Los Angeles reporter asked Andrew Macias, 4, if he was excited to start pre-school. With a nice polo and combed hair, the young boy hesitantly said “yes” to the reporter. The following question, however, left little Macias in tears, as the reporter asked, “Are you gonna miss you’re mom?” Macias at first says “no,” but the video catches Macias have a moment of realization that his mom would not be with him at pre-school. This led Macias to break into tears as the fear of leaving his mom finally set in.
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August 24, 2015
by Carol Campbell, M.A
On August 4, 2015 the streaming video company Netflix, located in Los Gatos, CA, announced a shockingly generous new policy for its employees who become parents: unlimited fully paid leave for mothers and fathers in the first year after the child’s arrival. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, this amount of time and leave is “practically unheard of”. (Lang, M.) Employees are now allowed to work as much or as little as they see fit in that first year as they adjust to bringing a new life into their family. This policy is perhaps a logical extension of Netflix’s long-standing vacation policy, which is that employees may take as much vacation as they want, without any records kept. (Lang. M.)
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June 21, 2015
by Lorna Hecht, MFT
Angel Soft toilet tissue has posted an interesting and provocative ad for this Father’s Day. The short video features adult men and women thanking their single mothers for fulfilling the role of mother and father. The ad ends by wishing all the mothers a Happy Father’s Day. The sentiment is sweet; grown children acknowledging the difficulty of solo parenting by mothers, and is clearly designed to bring a tear to the eye of the viewer. However, and perhaps predictably, the ad has turned out to be something of a lightning rod for controversy.
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Toya Graham is a single mother who lives in a run-down and dangerous neighborhood in West Baltimore. She was not a likely candidate for national recognition, and yet, there are many who are hailing Toya as a hero. Riots broke out in Baltimore following the death of Freddy Gray, a 25-year-old African American man. Toya would not let her son participate in the riots and took a stand on this.
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Summertime is known to be a time of relaxation, fun, family time, and long and lazy days. It is also a time when children are a little more independent, as they are off with friends, away at camp, on vacations and field trips, and learning and trying new things. Generally speaking, parents are prepared to send children on their adventures. Their backpacks are armed with bug spray, bottled water, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, and with extras of everything just in case. But what is often missed is the opportunity to arm them with safety from those who may try to harm them.
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Why designate a month to recognize military children? What makes them any more special than neighborhood civilian children? Improving awareness of military family life and its associated stresses and sacrifices broadens the knowledge base of those who interact with military children but who may be unfamiliar with the nature of the sacrifices made by military children
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It is a well-known fact that parenting does not come with a manual of standard procedure (which would indeed be helpful) and at times, various topics arise which make parents second-guess themselves. Recently, the topic of praise and narcissism has been at the forefront of social media and sensationalized pop-culture blogs. However, what is missing is an expert opinion on the matter based upon a combination of empiricism and years of experience with hundreds, even thousands of children.
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