Free Dental Care

• Annual "Give Kids A Smile" Day

Hosted by the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, children ages 18 and younger will receive any dental care they may require completely free of charge. This includes teeth cleanings, diagnostic x rays, cavity detection, fillings, sealants, fluoride treatment and more. The event is one day only: Saturday, Feb 4th from 8am - 1:30pm at 515 Delaware St. SE Minneapolis. Call 612-625-1669 to make an appointment.

Bi-Polar Disorder

• Are Troubled Children Bipolar? 

This recent Strib article explores the issue. According Libby Bergman, a therapist with the Family Enhancement Center in Minneapolis: "I don't think we have any idea what those types of psychotropic medications can do to the developing brain."

Strollers & Brain Development

• Implications of stroller design for children’s emotional development
This video gives an edited version of the presentation academician Suzanne Zeedyk gave about how buggy manufacturers are taking account of neuroscientific insights.

Consider Giving

• St. Joseph's Home for Children
As you prepare your Christmas or Hanukkah celebration, consider that a boy or girl is being "removed from home by police" and taken to the only emergency shelter left in Hennepin County: St. Joe's. That phrase–– removed from home–– is a euphemism for children rescued from pain and hurt and chaos and abandonment. These are newborns with broken ribs and toddlers who have just seen their mother beaten up and 8-year-olds left alone with no food and teens with no hope. Catholic Charities has kept this last option open for our children who are the most desperately in need. Find out more about St. Joe's programs or make a donation this holiday. Whatever you give, it's more than what these children have.

Your Teen is Upset (and so are you)

• What Enmeshment Means
"In a parent-child relationship this creates a dynamic in which teenagers who need to develop appropriate autonomy become developmentally stymied. They are either too afraid to venture into increased autonomy and become dependent on their parents, or ... run too far in the other direction, sometimes making poor choices in their effort to be independent." More here by David Prior, LMFT.

Putting the Hohoho in the Holiday

•Ten Tips for the (Divorced) Holidays
Boston psychologist Robin Deutsch is the director of the Center of Excellence for Children, Families and the Law at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School.

Wide-spread Use of Psychoactive Drugs in Children

It's a short walk from unhappy teen to Rx: non-psychiatrists prescribe 80% of antidepressant and anxiolytic medications––primarily internists, gynecologists, family practitioners, PAs, and nurse practitioners. Yet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says extensive analysis of clinical trials showed antidepressants may cause or worsen suicidal thinking or behavior in children and adolescents. An in-depth two part discussion can be found in The New York Review of Books by Marcia Angell (former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and now lecturer in social medicine at Harvard), here and here.