Just for Today

Social Early Neutral Evaluation

• SENE
If you're just embarking on divorce, consider doing it the best way: without litigation and without harm to your children.

ADHD

• New Guidelines Released Today
In my experience, a majority of (non-infant) children in CHIPS are being prescribed drugs, most often for a diagnosis of ADHD. Treating the underlying causes of ADHD-like behavior means addressing the child-parent relationship.

• Dissent is Growing
A growing chorus of scientific voices are questioning the prescribing practice, here and here.

• Calming Your Child's ADHD Symptoms
ADHD behaviors are symptoms of problems with regulation of behavior, emotions, and attention. The question to answer is "'What is making self-regulation difficult for this particular child?' followed by 'What can we do to help?'"

Scholarly Research

• Parenting After Separation
This Australian Psychological Society 2009 position paper succinctly summarises current research relating to parenting in the context of separation and divorce, and considers some of the services, policies and community- based interventions that might be supportive of positive parenting functions during such major life changes.

MN Rule 114 Neutrals

• Sorting Out Professional Roles

There has been an explosion in the use of outside professionals to assist parties both going through the marriage dissolution process as well as in dealing with its aftermath. Here is a lexicon based on MN Rule 114.

Books I'm Reading

• Claudia Gold, MD writing for a lay audience
When both parent and child can be 'at their worst' behavioral pediatrician Dr. Gold shows the magical effect of wondering about the meaning of a child's behavior. Unlike other books of advice which show a parent what to do, hers shows how to be with a child.

• What traumatized children can teach about loss, love, and healing
Psychiatrist Bruce Perry explains what happens to the developing brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress and discusses compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, measures that can be taken to ease a child's struggles and help him or her grow into a healthy adult.

Having Empathy for Parents

• Claudia Gold, MD writes the blog Child in Mind
"I believe one can always work with parents to support efforts to think about their child's mind and subjective experience....[n]ot a treatment for the parents, it is instead a focal intervention whose aim is to, in a sense, support the parents' efforts to hold their child in mind."