(Original Post 11/20/14)
Children, they have rights too...

(Original Post 11/7/14)
So to follow up a bit on that last post...

I read this incredible book this spring called 'til the end of June by Cris Beam. It explored the foster care system in New York state in hope of drawing some light on the foster care system in this country as a whole. I would be lying if I said this book was not alarming, disturbing, and incredibly eye opening. I have worked with children in the foster care system in the past, both as a teacher and as a therapist, and in reading this text, I feel like I have an even better understanding of the disjointed-ness of the system that we have developed to "protect" children in need of support and ultimately... love.

Beam speaks to this so well in this text (having been under the "care" of the foster system as a child) and addresses the fact that even a moment of attention from a genuinely caring adult can exponentially shift the experience of a young person. Beam accentuates that offering children the "opportunity to believe that they can become something good" can be life altering. If only, as a society we could take a second to notice how incredibly true that is and embrace it, make it the crux of our systems.

(I cannot begin to get started on my frustrations with child welfare/ care/ educational systems as a whole..)

Having a child witness themselves being seen by an adult can be so validating, and even life saving. Allowing oneself to be seen requires vulnerability... a hard thing to access sometimes. A child must feel safe... safe in being seen, heard, and understood. In essence, they must feel held, connected to, and embraced as they are. 

As adults, many of us also have this desire. To be seen. In our own personal relationships we seek individuals or groups of people who love us for who we are, and see us as just that. Just us. No embellishments, no frills. 

Imagine being young (a child) and experiencing that... with less resources, less support, less faith. Consider for a moment what it might mean to you to be seen... potentially by someone who can even help.

Hope (which I deem as equitable to magic.)
Magic 

My point here I guess is that every contact counts. Make it meaningful. Make it kind, authentic, real. You might truly change someone or something for the best better there is. Be aware.

It works..

(Original Post 9/29/14)

Seasons set the stage for such powerful shifts for me... I truly have no comprehension for what it must be like to live in a place like Santa Barbara, where it is constantly 70 and sunny. Now, I live in Colorado, the place famous for 340 days of sunshine (or something like that) so that offers a rather different perspective on seasons than, say, Boston. BUT... even so, I feel like seasons are so often reflective of cycles, not only of life, but also emotion.

We all experience periods of struggle, hardship, challenge... and though many of us have various levels of struggle, the essence of knowing that there is often another side to the struggle (the light at the end of the tunnel if you will) is essential to cultivating the hope and energy to move forward. For me, fall is a time that represents this kind of experience...

When you think in terms of nature's process... it so very much appears to mirror, to me, a natural struggle. The light around us begins to shift... Darkness becomes more visible. Small signs and details, reminders of change, that another year is passing, that nothing is permanent... they are everywhere... The grasses grow dormant. Rain creeps in. The soft lap of the summer breeze has a hint of harsh chill. The colors of the deciduous trees become brilliant, if only for a moment, and then, as time goes on, they begin to drain themselves of life, and fall... fall... fall....

It is this act of brilliance, and falling... only to be caught by the earth beneath, held, destroyed, consumed and reintegrated, that feels powerful. Yes sometimes things get dark... and the smallest experiences can become noticeable... almost profoundly so. Even overwhelming... These experiences may not always feel good. In fact, they are hard... painful... make you feel like letting go of everything... And yet, reminding ourselves, our children, that though the process may hurt... (the release from the tree and the fall to the ground, the dramatic land, and the possibility of being tread on) it is something that can be beautiful, healing, regenerating... and it is temporary...

As the season rambles on though... change is inevitable... and ultimately, after the time of cold, darkness, chill... the warmth returns, and that which we had shed, let go of, destroyed, recovered from becomes part of our landscape once again... but this time it is what greens the grass, fertilizes the soil, makes room for the buds of new experience, another chance, another opportunity, another season, another year...

In the dim light, our whitened knuckles hold... hold on and on and on... and then let go, fall, transform, and become again.

(Original Post 8/26/14)

Sleep patterns and needs definitely change as we travel through the varying stages of our bodies development.

As infants we challenge our parents to function on as little sleep as possible, sleeping when they are awake, and waking when they are asleep.

I remember, as a younger child, perhaps through 7th grade, shooting out of bed at 5 am ready to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Granted, I went to bed around 7 or 8 (and though tired-- with resistance), allowing myself a healthy 10 hours of sleep. I had the lineup memorized and didn't want to miss a second of them. One of my parents would begrudgingly get up and start motoring around on auto pilot so that I was not completely unsupervised.

As an adult I cannot force myself to sleep in. I can lay there and stare at the ceiling, hoping to God that I will be able to shut my eyes and fall into a lovely slumber... and just it doesn't happen (partly because I have 5 pairs of eyes staring at me, and partly because... I just cannot do it.)

But then were my "teen" years where sleeping until 1pm was no problem. In fact, I don't really recall making plans anytime prior to one, of course unless I was working. I also recall never getting to bed before 9 pm. Going to bed at nine was, like, so uncool.

Interestingly, it appears that there is science behind all of this!! Our sleep cycles are manages by what is called a circadian rhythm (or at least some schools of thought believe this), which is effected by the seasons among other variables. Essentially our brains shoots off endorphin like energy at different times of the day to maintain wakeful alertness. In the diagram below this "chemical" for lack of a better word is represented by the blue arrows.The orange line represents our actual energy. (Anyone ever felt the need for a caffeinated beverage or piece of chocolate between 2 and 4 pm? Totally normal... that is our afternoon lull.)

In recent years, studies have focused a lot on how sleep effects development from the infant through the elderly and how it differentiates and becomes more or less necessary or crucial as far as number of hours are concerned. Turns out our educational system is not aligned with what adolescents need in terms of sleep, and could actually be dramatically effecting the mental health of our kiddos.

According to some of the conclusions researchers have made, adolescent sleep cycles shift roughly two hours later moving the circadian rhythms back, which appears to explain the adolescent tendency to go to bed late and wake up even later... Though they are not going to bed early, they still require 10 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, with high school start times ranging between 7 and 8:30am on average, that eliminates supporting this natural shift in sleep cycles and tends to overtire our high school kids.

Try and think back for a moment to being 5 years old (or so) and totally flipping about about something... crying, screaming, kicking, being mad... about something (who knows what), and then someone saying to you "I think you might be tired... " (which ends up making you more mad?) Well... there's a lot of truth to that suggestion... we have less emotional resourcing when we are tired. We cannot handle the same amount of stress, cannot problem solve as well, and have a higher rate of re-activity... now add to this all of the pressures and hardships that just come with adolescent territory... oof!

The NPR article below begins to discuss the efforts groups are trying to make to shift high school start times to better support the emotional health of our teens. I wonder if we would see a dramatic shift in substance abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, and violence if we allowed are kids a few more hours of sleep... Currently there is no bona-fide proof, but the correlations certainly are a cause for looking deeper into this... I mean if these are epidemics that we can actually eliminate through a two hour shift in work hours, why not give it a try.... for the sake of our kids...

NPR article on sleep, school start times, and adolesence

(Original Post 8/22/14)

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

I had a student arrive in my office today... feeling like said fish.

Working with adolescents in public education in a therapeutic context, I often find that my students attribute their brilliance to a letter grade or GPA. Often times this perspective on their brilliance in turn reflects their own self worth. I am reminded of when I was in seventh grade in the "stupid math class." I mean we ALL knew it was the "stupid math class." Both people who were IN the class and those who were NOT IN the class. Anyways, I digress. 

My POINT here is that there are so many ways to look at brilliance. In 1983, Howard Gardner, I believe still a professor at Harvard University, developed a model for working with intelligence called "The Multiple Intelligences Model for Learning." This was developed to address the different ways in which students might not only successfully learn, but also aided in looking at and more closely isolating children's strengths. As a master's degree student in educational psychology, we were challenged to approach kids from this standpoint when both teaching and assessing. Ironically, our educational systems only honor and "teach to" two of the eight (though there may be up to eleven) identified intelligence. Using the metaphor of the quote that opens this post, this tends to put a lot of fish out of water. If only we could embrace more in our scholastic programs.

I discussed with a student today how important it is to look deeply at ALL of our selves rather than assess ourselves part by part. If overall strength and success was measured by GPA, mostof history's well known scholars, inventors, artists, composers, writers and scientists would have been overlooked. Maya Angelou, for example, one of the most note worthy female inspirations of the literary and pro feminist world, never went to college. Now, I am surely not saying that students should drop out of school or not pursue higher education. I just want to draw attention to the fact that there are plenty of variables that weigh in on intelligence, and we have to remind our children, teens, and adults that there is a lot more to them than their ability to complete a math problem, or read a book with flawless fluency and comprehension. 

Letter grades, GPAs, standardized tests, etc... they polarize intelligence to the point where kids, hell even adults, begin to think that their wisdom is measured solely through academia... In looking at the above wheel, I must admit that not only is the aesthetic more fulfilling than simply black and white, but I also relax a little, knowing that there are so many opportunities for me to feel smart than my 7th grade, B- average. 

Great article addressing just this...