Raising a child with autism takes extra skill and educational support. Many parents have reached out to ABA therapy centers like JoyBridge to get that extra support. Centers like this one offer evaluation and treatment using only clinically-proven tools and applied behavioral analysis. ABA Therapy Center Programs JoyBridge Kids serves over 40 children from their […]

View Full Article - ABA Therapy Is the Gold Standard for Tennessee Children With Autism

Pediatric neurologist Jane Tavyev, MD, has advice for parents looking to help their children learn social skills after pandemic isolation. Tavyev’s strategies include: Staying engaged at home. Tavyev, also an assistant professor of Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai, pointed out that kids who turned 2 or 3 during the pandemic might have little experience interacting with people who […]

View Full Article - Five Tips to Ease Kids’ Social Reentry

As discussed in parts one and two, social emotional learning (SEL) skills have become an even greater focus now that students are limited in their opportunities to socialize, collaborate, and communicate with peers in person at school. By the time students reach middle school, the basic foundational skills for social-emotional intelligence are in place. Preteens […]

View Full Article - Social Emotional Learning Skills by Grade Level: Part III

As discussed in part one, social emotional learning (SEL) skills have become an even greater focus now that students are limited in their opportunities to socialize, collaborate, and communicate with peers in person at school. We all know that academics are just one facet of education; the SEL skills that students learn and develop when in school are […]

View Full Article - Social Emotional Skills by Grade Level, Part II

Social and emotional (SEL) skills involve more than just the concepts surrounding educational buzzwords like growth mindset, grit, and self-advocacy. SEL skills are being emphasized at an even greater extent now that students are limited in their opportunities to socialize, collaborate, and communicate with peers in person. Distance learning and virtual schooling created various obstacles […]

View Full Article - Social Emotional Learning Skills by Grade Level, Part I

Distance learning has been hard on everyone, but even more so for families dealing with the challenges associated with executive dysfunction. In part one, we discussed the basic background of executive functioning skills, the effects of having executive dysfunction, and the way in which educators can implement strategies even during hybrid or distance learning. Now […]

View Full Article - Executive Functioning and Distance Learning: Part II

Many of us don’t actually remember learning how to read. We may remember sitting on our kindergarten carpet squares, picking out new picture books at the school book fair, or feeling the excitement of turning the final page of a book read independently for the first time. Those fond memories are certainly associated with the […]

View Full Article - Essential Building Blocks for Reading Comprehension

Across school districts, students’ grades, scores, and standardized test results indicate a widespread drop in foundational skills, some of the more critical skills affiliated with academic writing. Writing is not just an English-specific necessity. The ability to construct cohesive, clear, organized thoughts in written form is essential for all aspects of college and career readiness. […]

View Full Article - Virtual Writing Instruction

As educators and mental health professionals, helping students manage their executive functioning is a critical aspect of building the foundation for academic, social, and emotional success. For neuroatypical students, particularly those with ASD and ADHD, addressing executive functioning skills within the classroom setting is already challenging enough. However, with current hybrid models and distance learning, […]

View Full Article - Executive Functioning and Distance Learning: Part l

Creating engaging lessons and activities for learning is no easy task. With today’s technology, the Gen Z group has access to the most realistic and stimulating gaming graphics, digital art programs, and communication platforms. Their familiarity and use of technology is practically innate. Therefore, it is no wonder that holding students’ attention in the classroom […]

View Full Article - Gaming in the Classroom to Boost Engagement

As students progress through their education, reading assignments and materials naturally become more intense and time consuming. The literature itself becomes more complex and the workload or required reading outside of class lengthens. This is all to be expected, especially as students enter honors–level classes, take AP courses, and look ahead towards higher education. For struggling or reluctant […]

View Full Article - Remedies for Reluctant Readers

In 2020, the population of homeless people grew for the fourth year in a row, and a single night count in January of that year revealed 580,000 people were experiencing homelessness. But while the homelessness crisis is widely acknowledged, a problem that is less recognized is how (and why) LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately represented among […]

View Full Article - The Causes, Risks, and Solutions for LGBTQ+ Youth Homelessness

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has developed training resources that will give child welfare workers, social workers, foster parents, and others who work with older youth critical information about how the adolescent brain develops. The knowledge professionals acquire through NASW’s Integrating Adolescent Brain […]

View Full Article - NASW to Educate Social Workers, Others About Adolescent Brain Development

Sponsored Article  Teen substance abuse and addiction to drugs are all too dangerous epidemics occurring across the United States. The most recent national data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that 3.7 adolescents (ages 15 to 19) per 100,000 died from a drug overdose in 2015. To put that statistic in […]

View Full Article - Treating Teen Addiction With Compassion and Empathy

State-wide school closures for an extended amount of time due to a worldwide pandemic is truly unprecedented. Families, school systems, and entire communities are now in a position like we have never known before. Aside from the logistics involving everything from last-minute childcare to methods for providing meals to local FARMS (free and reduced-price meals […]

View Full Article - Remote Learning: Making Use of Time at Home During School Closures

Every day, an astonishing 115 Americans die from opioid overdoses, according to a 2017 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately half of these deaths are due to the misuse or abuse of prescription opioid painkillers (such as Vicodin, Oxycontin, and morphine). Beyond that, increasingly, deaths come from overdoses of the illicit drugs […]

View Full Article - How To Win America’s Fight Against The Opioid Epidemi

Rising Ground, a leading human services provider in New York City, is piloting a new practice in which parents and foster parents will co-parent a child while the child is in foster care, announced Alan Mucatel, CEO of Rising Ground, today. He noted that similar programs in other states have shown that shared parenting reduces […]

View Full Article - Rising Ground to Expand the Role of Foster Parents in Supporting Both the Child and Family to Speed Up Reconciliation

Female adolescents are experiencing relationship abuse at alarming rates, according to a new Michigan State University study that specifically researched reproductive coercion – a form of abuse in which a woman is pressured to become pregnant against her wishes. Heather McCauley, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, and co-researchers found nearly one in […]

View Full Article - Michigan University Social Work Study Shows Teens Feel Pressured to Get Pregnant

Imagine this scenario: A young black man is falsely suspected of illicit behavior, stopped, and questioned by police. Because of media depictions of police encounters with people of color, the youth perceives the stop as an injustice (whether it was or not). On edge, he signals his anxiety to the police, making it more likely […]

View Full Article - How To Reduce Harmful Police Contacts With Youth

While most of the mainstream media has failed to report on this momentous piece of legislation created to address the inequities of systemic racism impacting child welfare reform and parental rights, Rep. Rena Moran, DFL-St. Paul, and Sen. Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis quietly introduced the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act (HF 3973). The bill was […]

View Full Article - The Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act: One Small Step in the Right Direction Towards A More Just Child Welfare System