The Kids Will be Alright
The Mindset List is a guide published annually by Beloit College that attempts to illuminate [...]
The Mindset List is a guide published annually by Beloit College that attempts to illuminate [...]
Humans take an awfully long time to grow up! Even at a "normal" pace we [...]
Until recently, it was just a cute potato chip slogan, "you can't eat just one" [...]
Is there a teenager in your life who is a constant drain of energy? Someone [...]
When I was a high school English teacher, here's how every morning went: slug a [...]
Recent research from the Salk Institute, Johns Hopkins, UC Irvine, and many other neuroscience research institutes, strongly supports the idea that physically, cognitively, and socially complex and challenging environments may have the power to actually heal neurological damage and stimulate brain change and growth.
Regardless of impressive advances in technology-based therapies, my own policy is to proceed with curiosity…and caution. For now, the only therapist I’ll stick in my own pocket is one who promises little things. Like some help falling asleep.
Schools, psychiatric practices, residential treatment facilities, and even correctional facilities like the one I worked at early in my career can maximize their outcomes only to the extent that they make sleep an institutional priority.
Many of the families I’ve worked with feel that they have lost everything. They are financially tapped out. Their basic assumptions about family, love, success, and life have been turned upside down. They feel betrayed and embarrassed and sad and angry. How does a family rebuild in the wake of trauma, or addiction, or mental illness, or betrayal, or loss? A little bit every day. If you can do that, you can find your way forward a step at a time. You can heal. You can hope.
When faced with the serious issues that often drive family dysfunction, humor can seem out of place. But the next time you feel the urge to suppress a funny observation in the face of grave circumstances (or in the middle of family therapy), remember Abraham Lincoln’s wise counsel to his Civil War colleagues: "Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do." Then, go ahead and tell and you joke. It might be just what everyone needs.