A friend recently posted a blog from TheVeteransSite.com entitled “Jimmy Stewart Faced His PTSD While Acting in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’” In it blogger Dan Doyle shared what he had learned from another article on the web, “Jimmy Stewart’s Wonderful Life” written by Ned Forney. Both authors described in detail how actor Jimmy Stewart, known […]
Celebrating Life through the Lens of a Grandparent
Our Lakeside Connect blog is intended to surface issues that are relevant to the health and well-being of our children and teenagers. Lakeside is committed to the healthy emergence of children, teenagers and their families. I firmly believe that the way we treat and nurture our children is directly linked to the health and future […]
Philadelphia and the Opioid Crisis
Like many large cities, our own Philadelphia has been struggling and in a significant crisis with opioid deaths and addictions. Almost daily we read and hear about different tragedies related to opioids. It is not simply a Philadelphia problem but a national one that continues to plague our families and communities. The Philadelphia Inquirer just […]
Theory: Can Compassion Reduce or Prevent PTSD
I have been reading a fascinating and very informative new book called Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference. As the title suggests, the authors studied the impact of compassion on health outcomes in hospitals and other medical settings. They define compassion as “the emotional response to another’s pain or suffering, involving […]
Teaching Through Relationships
Many of us grew up with our teachers having somewhat of a distant aura. I know in my school years I had very few relationships with my teachers because many of them appeared to be unapproachable. In fact I think most teachers were not allowed to get “too close” to their students. However the teachers […]
The Anxious Generation
In past posts I have written on the increased number of mental health issues in our children and teenagers. Since Lakeside has relationships with 3600 students per year who attend 45 area school districts we have had a tremendous amount of exposure and feedback regarding the epidemic level of anxiety among our regional students. I […]
The Cost of Trauma
For the last few weeks I have been putting together a presentation I will be making at a local university to some students and professionals who work with children and youth. My goal is to impress on them that trauma needs to be viewed as a major public health issue. The question is, how do […]
January is National Human Trafficking Month
This is the month where there is raised awareness to some of the issues related to human trafficking. Here are some of the comments and statistics related to human trafficking from the Polaris website. Although slavery is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, human traffickers generate hundreds of billions of dollars in […]
Relationships are Important for Teaching Effectiveness
Often teachers are told to spend more time teaching and less time creating relationships. In fact, some teachers are told not to have relationships with their students at all. I totally disagree and I believe most of the research in brain regulation, learning and good decision-making tells us that positive relationships are significant to the […]
The Importance of Releasing Traumatic Energy
Most of us can vividly remember the images of people racing away from the burning NY Twin Towers on that horrible September day in 2001, creating thetrau catastrophe that killed so many people in a matter of minutes. At the Bessel van der Kolk conference I recently attended, Dr. van der Kolk posted a now-famous […]
