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How to Parent With This New Lens

Welcome to your new parenting lens: Now you know that your child is not malicious, bad, manipulative, and non-compliant when they show you their worst behaviors. Congratulations on considering this different point of view. The next step is to further dissect what is underneath these behaviors. Read on for more ideas of what may be triggering and contributing to your child exhibiting their worst self. Just understanding the why of behaviors can help you help them to improve. Compassionately appreciating what is behind the behavior can change how you react. And of course, you will need some new parenting strategies to match this new lens. Explore concrete parenting techniques you can use to help your child heal, learn to regulate, and grow! There may even be some advice about caring for your own mental and physical health tucked into then end. Keep reading…

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News Article

What is Your Child’s Developmental Age: Impact on Meltdowns

Research now tell us that when a child experiences early and prolonged trauma, other parts of development are affected. Makes sense? If you are constantly on high alert for real danger in your home, you will have trouble paying attention. What about if you frequently go to bed hungry? Or what if you don’t even have a stable place to live? Learning new things becomes a challenge. Social skills are not important to your brain as you are just trying to stay safe, fed, or housed. If you are 13 years old, people come to expect age-appropriate things from you: your parents, your teachers, and even your friends. If inside that 13-year-old body, certain areas about you are really only at an 8-year-old level, there will be a mismatch. You will get frustrated due to expectations that are too high. And because you are already stressed, a meltdown soon follows.

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News Article

Co-Regulation Leads to Self-Regulation

A typical infant and her mother play a game called serve and return. Learn why when this crucial games is missed, a whole host of problems arise. That infant never learned how to self-soothe or self-regulate. In other words, she goes straight to a meltdown when she is stressed or frustrated.

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JFS Newsletter

Trauma from Riverfront Park Fourth of July shooting scare is real

Originally published on Pennlive By Kay Broderick Thousands of people were at Riverfront Park in Harrisburg on July 4, celebrating the holiday and waiting for the traditional fireworks display. Then panic struck. People heard a shout of “gun!” That was followed by what sounded like gun shots causing terror and people to run. In the

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Dear Director: The Podcast Edition

It was my father who told me that if you are not learning, then you are preparing to die. He was a voracious reader, crossword-puzzle doer, lecture attender, conversationalist, and life-long learner. He seemed to know something about everything, except the trivia that was my mother’s job. They lived their life astounded by the new things that happened in their time on earth. You should too. You never know when the thing you really need was just figured out and someone is ready to teach you about it.

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News Article

Dear Director: The Hard-To-Parent Child Edition

Do you remember Spirographs?  They are still out there, those silly cogs with the pen holes so you can make designs?  I loved mine as a kid.  I loved the shapes and colors and the designs. But mostly I loved how little change it took
to get a whole new pattern. Just one cog tooth over and voila! Difference! So apply that same approach to parenting your daughter  Violet when what you are doing is not working.  Change how you respond, and she will change too, and pretty soon, voila! New pattern.

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