November 30, 2023

By Courtney Wise

This edition also includes a roundup of articles on teen angst, the importance of parental support and a new book to help you support your adolescents through puberty, 

We hear, too, from a grieving mother who is tackling the epidemic of gun violence. In New Haven, Connecticut, Laquvia Jones is using her voice to bring attention to this uniquely American phenomenon. Both of her teenage sons were shot to death in a city that’s home to one of the wealthiest universities in the nation. Though she has support from local law enforcement, Jones told the New Yorker she doesn’t understand the lack of ongoing support from the community for what she calls a public health crisis.

 “Mass shootings are bad, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But there you have a community backup, where everybody worldwide hears about it, comes together. When there are inner-city or suicide shootings, there’s really no awareness…After a couple of months it’s no longer talked about. It’s on to the next one. It’s a kind of pandemic, but it’s not looked at that way.”

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How to break the cycle of childhood trauma? Support the child’s parents

Teresa Cox-Bates told NPR her life completely changed after her father died when she was 11 years old. Resources dried up, housing was unstable, and her mother, who developed substance problems with alcohol, was overwhelmed. “I really remember us not having enough food to eat,” Cox-Bates said “It was just hard. My mom was trying her best to provide everything, but it just wasn’t enough…If we snuck into the kitchen to get something, she’d beat us. With little things, she’d just snap.”

Cox-Bates’s childhood includes various adverse childhood experiences (ACES), which researchers say increases the risk of depression, heart disease, obesity, suicidality and some other chronic conditions if left unattended. In addition, people who survive serious traumas in childhood are more likely to feel more stressed when a child talks back or during other parenting challenges. This can cause them to respond harshly to behaviors that are developmentally appropriate (but frustrating), putting their own children at risk of repeating the cycle of harm. Cox-Bates decided she would do everything in her power to prevent her children from going through what she and her siblings did. 

“I wanted to provide something better for my kids,” she said. So when she and her husband, John Bates, were invited to participate in Zero to Three HealthySteps through their children’s pediatrician’s office, they accepted the support. The program helps families create a healthy environment for children at their earliest stage of development, from 0 to 3 years. HealthySteps connects families with a child development specialist who educates parents about their child’s development, conducts screenings, and gets them in touch with practical support, including food, housing, and mental health treatment, if necessary.

“If I didn’t have [HealthySteps], I don’t think I would have been able to manage my mental health and for me to even press on to be the mother that I am today,” Cox-Bates says.

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One father is grateful, the other still in hell

Today we share a bittersweet update on two fathers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian, navigating the horrors of war. Yoni Asher, whose wife and young daughters were taken as hostages by Hamas amidst their attack on Israel October 7th, was reunited with his family late last week. “I dreamt we came home,” four-year-old Raz Asher told her father. “Now the dream came true,” he said. Their reunion was captured on video and shared by Reuters. The mother and daughters were included in the first wave of hostage releases during the ceasefire in which humanitarian aid is also being sent to Gaza.

On his part, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha has endured ongoing trauma. His house in Gaza was bombed to rubble, and the Jabaliya refugee camp, where his family took refuge, was pounded by bombs, terrorizing the population and killing scores of people. Then, on November 19, The Guardian reports, Toha was seized, detained and beaten by Israeli Defense Forces during a roundup in which the IDF detained scores of Palestinian men trying to leave Northern Gaza,

Toha was attempting to leave the region with his wife and children after receiving word from the US Embassy in Israel that they were all on a list of US citizens allowed to cross into Egypt. (One of Abu Toha’s children was born in the US and is an American citizen.) “We are relieved and grateful at the news that poet Mosab Abu Toha has been released and will be reunited with his family,” said PEN America in a statement. “Poets and writers must be free to speak truth without fear.” (Meanwhile, City Lights Books in San Francisco has started an urgent appeal for expedited visa assistance for Toha and his family.)

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Navigating a high-conflict divorce

Families are forever but over time, they change shape. In the case of divorce, the shift can be messy and filled with conflict. “Imagine spreading everything you care about on a blanket and then tossing the whole thing up in the air,” wrote Amy Poehler in her memoir Yes Please. “The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.” How do people navigate such a sizable change in their lives? The Los Angeles Times spoke with divorce specialist Virginia Gilbert for some guidance. 

Gilbert knows divorce. Twenty years ago, her marriage dissolved, but the experience didn’t look anything like what books told her she could expect. She and her ex-husband struggled with what’s called a ‘high conflict divorce,’ defined as one in which two people stay psychologically engaged with each other much in the way they did during the marriage, even after the divorce is final. The pair needs help changing how they interact with one another to face the reality that their dynamic and reality has forever changed. “So I became the therapist I wished I’d had when my divorce was at its worst. My ex and I are now really cordial, so I know from a personal standpoint that things can get better, but you have to change your behaviors,” Gilbert said.

One way to move forward is to reimagine the relationship as a business partnership rather than a romantic one. Liking your partner isn’t a requirement, but working well together to ensure the success of the children you share is necessary, she said. “This is possible when two people go through the grief process, accept the new reality of their lives, and do the opposite of what high-conflict people do — meaning they learn how to manage their emotions,” Gilbert said. 

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Puberty is still awkward for kids – and the adults helping them grow through it. A new book aims to help

Children tend to enter puberty earlier than they did a generation ago, and technology has changed teens’ global landscape. In other words, being a kid isn’t quite the same as it was in the 1990s. That’s why Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett – who already host the popular Puberty Podcast – decided to get writing. The pair of friends, a pediatrician and youth nonprofit leader, respectively, joined forces to publish This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. The Boston Globe calls the book a handy, fun-to-read manual on everything from teaching your tweens to change the sheets after a messy period to discussing how to navigate online porn and gender identity. Boys are central in the book’s focus, too.

Scientists haven’t figured out why puberty is starting so much earlier, but Natterson and Kroll Bennett know adults haven’t fully grasped that just because kids’ bodies are changing sooner, their brains are developing along the lines they always have. That means us grownups have to treat kids the age they actually are – no matter what they look like. “When we treat kids who are on the earlier side of puberty as older, it affects their self-esteem,” Bennett said. “We place expectations on them that are unfair and unrealistic because their brain is still developing on a linear timeline.” 

In other words, we need to check and correct ourselves before we focus on our kids. “Talk to the kids in your life. Don’t talk at them,” said Natterson. “Talk with them, be in conversation, do a really good job of shutting up and listening.”

In other news…

Are the kids alright? In this trio of essays from The 74, teens and young adults speak up about how surviving a pandemic has changed them, their mental health, their relationships with family and how they learn in school

Bonus: Zadie Smith in the New Yorker on teenage angst: Her own and how it’s nothing and everything like the angst of the teenager she’s currently raising, plus her memory of her 30-foot fall from a window that might have paralyzed or killed her, but instead just ended her habit of writing and rewriting her funeral eulogy.

Poetry as a tool for self discovery and self expression: “Given the state of the world, I always say, poetry won’t end wars. Poetry probably won’t end hunger. Poetry probably won’t reform the school system,” high school junior Charisma Holly tells Detroit MetroTimes writer Eleanore Catalico. “But it’ll give somebody enough hope, enough joy, enough inspiration.”

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If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.

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