Youth at our agencies often engage in art projects as part of treatment, education, or recreation while in our care. Here are some inspiring pieces created by our talented youth.
While conversations around children’s mental health have entered the mainstream, often children who are newborns to age six are left out due to misconceptions that they won’t remember the things happening at this point in their life. But science shows us differently – children’s mental health begins developing before they are even born.
The teen years can be a challenge for both teens and parents. The moodiness that often accompanies teens' hormone changes, power struggles, school, and peer stress and emerging independence can be difficult to navigate.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. Here at Nexus Family Healing, our employees, therapists, and foster parents continuously work with youth who have experienced different types of trauma, which often include abuse or neglect. We’ve compiled a list of books that speak about child abuse and trauma that may be fitting for children of different ages.
You may have heard phrases such as “childhood trauma” or “traumatic experience”. But what really is trauma? And how does it affect us? Unfortunately, childhood trauma is incredibly common as one in four children in our community will experience a traumatic event before the age of 16.
Exposure to continuous trauma causes the body’s alarm system to be easily triggered, releasing stress hormones that interfere with reasoning and activate that flight, fight, or freeze response. Children cannot learn or get along with friends or family members when living in a constant state of fight, flight or freeze. Rather, their goal is to survive.
Over the past several years humanity has learned how to become resilient in isolation. Many of our face-to-face interactions and relationships were severed during COVID and as a result, we have developed long-term habitual loneliness. So how do we recover? To state it simply, a first step is "do then feel".
Natural and man-made disasters in recent news can cause stress, especially for children. As a parent, it’s important to remember that your reactions to these disasters can impact the way your child views the world around them. Remain calm, give yourself time to process and create a plan that works for your family.