Healthy Aggression

 

• Understanding Agression and Connecting

When a parent’s own distress distorts their ability to receive and contain their young child’s healthy aggression, a downward spiral of dysregulation for both parent and child may occur.

ADHD for Toddlers

• Quick Fix is to Medicate
"In acting out and being hard to control, they’re signaling the chaos in their environment" The American Academy of Pediatrics standard practice guidelines for A.D.H.D. do not even address the diagnosis in children 3 and younger. Preschoolers are prescribed only after formal training for parents and teachers to improve the child’s environment were unsuccessful. The safety and effectiveness have barely been explored.

Boredom for Kids

I'm Bored
It’s especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they’re young.The ability to handle boredom is correlated with the ability to focus, self-discipline, resourcefulness.

Put Away the Screen

• Ban Electronics in the Classroom

The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them.

Mobile Social Media

• Intimacy & Empathy in the New Age of Media
The communication revolution is degrading the quality of human relationships—with family and friends, as well as colleagues and romantic partners.

The Intricate Emotional Diaper Dance

• Why Diaper Changing is Important
Scientist Suzanne Zeedyk discusses how diaper changing (and the adult reaction to it) affects infant brain development.

Early Childhood Mental Health

• Helping Young Children
“Early childhood mental health consultant” evokes an image of a toddler on a couch talking to a therapist. In fact, the work focuses on helping adults to create healthy environments.

Expand Pre-K, Not ADHD

• Forty Percent Increase in Ten Years
Researchers find the push for academic achievement and increased school accountability parallels skyrocketing A.D.H.D. diagnoses and medication.

Mental Health vs. Behavior Control

• Psychotropic Drugs & Children
Treating children with psychiatric drugs with no other form of treatment precludes understanding children living in poverty, especially those in foster care, and the significant contributing factors of early trauma and loss.

The Selling of A.D.H.D.

• Number of Rx Soaring
A 20-year drug marketing campaign results in medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels, according to the NYTimes.

Dysregulated Mood

• Calming the Dysregulated Child
Dr Claudia Gold discusses a non-pharmacological treatment of problems of regulation of emotion, behavior, and attention.

Fledging Your Child

• College Readiness
Are childhood ADHD drugs responsible for the growth in mental health problems at college?

Behavior Problems

• Understanding vs. Medicating
To help children with "behavior problems," it is essential to listen to their parents....the behavior is a symptom, perhaps even an adaptive response, to the underlying problem.

Sleep Deprivation

• Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit
Sleep-restricting lifestyles began getting more extreme in the 1990s, the decade with the explosion in A.D.H.D. diagnoses.

ADHD

• Cautionary Statistics
Nearly one in five high school age boys in the U.S. have received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to CDC.

Addiction

• Just Take the Meds to See If They Help
"And if they help, ‘You must have A.D.H.D.’....Stimulants will help anyone focus better. And a lot of young people like or value that feeling, especially those who are driven and have ambitions. We have to realize that these are potential addicts — drug addicts don’t look like they used to.”

ADHD Real or Not?

• Is ADHD a Real Disorder?
Here is a thoughtful discussion by Claudia Gold, M.D.

What's Wrong With My Child?

• Wrong Question
Dr. Claudia Gold says don't ask “what is the disorder?” but rather, “what is the experience of this particular child and family and what can we do to move things in a better direction?”

The Misidentified Child

• Family Conflict

The "identified patient" in a larger family dynamic is too often a child, medicated for his behavior symptoms.

Psychotropic Drug Rx

• American Psychological Assoc. states more research needed
The short- and long-term effects psychotropic medications have on children's physical growth, brain development, behavior, mood and cognitive functioning are unknown.