by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 21, 2018 | Blog
February marks National Library Lover’s Month, and there’s an awful lot to love any time of year! Many libraries are not only home to books and other media, but they are centers of the community, providing music performances, meeting spaces, workshops, book groups and many kid- and teen-friendly activities.
But the main focus of libraries has always been on reading, which leads to more than just book smarts—it also results in emotional, social and mental health benefits as well.
“Children learn by role modeling and experience, so parents who are actively involved in reading themselves and reading to their children help to create lifelong readers,” says Dr. Sue Cohen, Director of Early Childhood and Psychological Services at North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center. “But just as important, reading is a wonderful parent/caregiver and child activity that not only promotes literacy, but builds a warm relationship.”
The Guidance Center’s Marks Family Right From the Start 0-3+ Center in Manhasset contains a library stocked with books for children of all ages and on a range of topics, while the waiting area has many different magazines. “We’ve created a space where parents and their children are free to enjoy their time together reading,” says Cohen.
The Guidance Center also runs a book-focused program at the Children’s Center of Nassau County Family Court, which offers a safe and enriching environment for children ages 6 weeks to 12 years while their parents are involved in court business.
“Here at the Children’s Center, staff and volunteers read frequently to children, which calms their fears and anxiety,” says Joan Antonik, Head Teacher at the Children’s Center. “It takes them to an imaginary place of fun through reading. Reading aloud to your children promotes language development and early literacy skills. It gives children an understanding of how stories challenge your imagination and creativity. When parents read to children, it allows for quality time and the enjoyment of stories.”
The Children’s Center makes sure each child goes home with a book to help encourage the reading habit!
Wherever you find your favorite reading spot, you and your children will gain many benefits:
- Reading reduces stress and increases relaxation. Getting absorbed in a good book engages the imagination and stimulates creativity, helping to leave behind the worries of the day.
- Reading helps develop empathy, and empathy is a strong indicator of social and emotional intelligence. As readers get involved in a storyline, they empathize with characters. They can also learn about other cultures, which stimulates the ability to see life from someone else’s point of view.
- Reading helps to improve concentration and memory. According to researchers at Emory University, becoming engrossed in a book enhances connectivity in the brain and improves brain function.
- Books help teach coping skills. Stories can help kids learn how to handle new experiences, especially difficult ones like losing a pet or being teased.
Most of all, reading is fun! So make reading a daily part of your interaction with your little ones, and then watch them blossom!
Note: If you have new or gently used children’s books that you’d like to donate to the Children’s Center, contact Joan Antonik at jantonik12@gmail.com
Sources:
https://readingpartners.org/blog/four-compelling-reasons-shut-off-screen-open-good-book/
https://www.kidcentraltn.com/article/benefits-of-reading-to-your-child
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201401/reading-fiction-improves-brain-connectivity-and-function
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 21, 2018 | In The Media
21 February, 2018, From Blank Slate Media
The 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre at Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., has elevated beyond cliché status the oft-stated sentiment about a loss of innocence in childhood.
For many, the events of that day evoked painful memories of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and scores more in recent decades.
Schools, movie theaters, concert venues and more have become American killing fields.
After “thoughts and prayers” are paraded around by politicians from all sides, what happens next?
Many gun rights advocates, refusing to allow for the fact that our forefathers were talking about the right to bear arms such as muskets and had no conception of guns that could shoot down dozens in an instant, stand in the position that it’s not about guns but rather mental illness.
As the executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which serves children and their families facing issues such as depression, anxiety and substance use disorders, I have seen the many faces of mental illness and addictions for more than 40 years.
It is incredibly rare for those who are labeled as mentally ill to be violent. In fact, they are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
Nevertheless, we do need to have a discussion about mental illness at times like these. That discussion, however, needs to be about how health insurance companies and the elected officials who count on their donations are failing miserably at having adequate numbers of providers on their lists who take insurance.
Over and over again, we hear that, before they found North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which never turns anyone away for inability to pay, they made numerous calls to the mental health providers on their insurer’s list and found that they no longer take insurance or are booked for months.
Aside from receiving emotional first-aid, the surviving students from Douglas High are demonstrating that they need to take action; action that represents triumph over the demoralization of helplessness and despair.
Noted trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk said that “talking about the trauma is rarely if ever enough.”
Survivors have a need to create symbols such as memorials or participate in action that “enable them to mourn the dead and establish the historical and cultural meaning of the traumatic events.”
The surviving students from Parkland are turning their heartbreak and rage into activism by demanding a new look into America’s gun laws, as Emily Witt wrote in the New Yorker (Feb. 17).
In her encounters with some of the surviving students she reported that “Their grief was raw, their rage palpable.”
“Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Douglas, had the most searing indictment:
“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and are prepared to call B.S.
“Companies, trying to make caricatures of the teenagers nowadays, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submissions when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call B.S.
“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the N.R.A., telling us nothing could ever be done to prevent this: we call B.S.
“They say that tougher gun laws do not prevent gun violence: we call B.S.”
From Columbine to Parkland, there have been so many shocking events in between. Too many have faded from consciousness.
As journalist Gary Smith, who wrote about a lesser known 2012 shooting at Chardon High School in Ohio, stated: “The clock is already ticking in the land of amnesia.”
How long before Parkland, too, is gone? If it is up to the young activists in Parkland, never.
Andrew Malekoff
Roslyn Heights
Executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 15, 2018 | In The Media, Project Access
15 February, 2018 . PBS’s MetroFocus Television Program News-On the Front Line
Guidance Center interviewed about the fight for timely and affordable access for mental health and addictions care
Watch The Video Here
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 14, 2018 | Blog
Whether you send cards, chocolates, flowers or none of the above, don’t think of Valentine’s Day as a commercial holiday or one that is only for lovers. Any occasion focused on the expression of feelings of love for the people who are important to you presents a perfect opportunity not only to strengthen emotional bonds but also to boost mental health.
Close, loving relationships have numerous positive effects on the mind and body. Though it’s not a cure-all, studies have shown that love helps decrease stress, depression and anxiety. It also helps improve self-esteem and, consequently, self-care such as healthy eating and exercise.
Research also indicates that high levels of social bonds may result in better prognosis in such conditions as cancer, heart attacks and other illnesses. And the reverse is also true: studies of mortality consistently show that people with the lowest level of involvement in social relationships are more likely to die sooner than those with greater involvement.
So, love—and the wonderful endorphins it produces— is truly a many splendored thing.
Following are some tips on how to spread the love this Valentine’s Day—and just about any day of the year!
- Write your partner, children or other loved one a note saying what you love most about them.
- Be a hugger! Not only will it make you feel closer to the “huggee,” but it will also boost your immune system.
- If you don’t already have one, consider getting a pet. There’s nothing better than coming home to a being who is full of love and affection for you and your family.
- Are you intrigued by meditation? There’s a particular kind, called loving-kindness, that is a wonderful way to heighten your connections not just with those you love but with the world at large.
- And remember, if you are alone this Valentine’s Day, don’t despair. Treat yourself to a favorite activity, whether it’s a bubble bath or some binge watching of your favorite TV show. Loving yourself, as well as loving others, is key to a happy, healthy life. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love, there is life.”
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/
https://www.psychiatryadvisor.com/mood-disorders/the-positive-effects-of-love-on-mental-health/article/401655/
https://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2016-02-03/the-health-benefits-of-hugging
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/07/cats-dogs.aspx
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 9, 2018 | Anton Media, In The Media
From Anton Media, Feb.7, 2018
Remembering without awareness is a phrase I really like. It suggests the retrieval of a memory that escapes conscious awareness.
Recently, I passed the 20-year mark without either parent, and many more years without grandparents. One grandmother, Annie, died before I was born. I was named after her. The other, Jenny, died when I was too young to remember her. My grandfathers, Harry and Joseph, died a few years later, still during my childhood years, but I have memories of both of them.
Each had disabilities and prostheses. Both of Grandpa Harry’s legs were amputated as the result of diabetes. Grandpa Joe lost his eye as the result of a carpentry accident. Their disabilities were never hidden from me. I went with my dad and Grandpa Harry when he had his prosthetic legs fitted. Grandpa Joe regularly took his eye out and showed it to me on request. I used to wonder if I would have artificial parts when I got older.
In my first year of graduate school in 1976, I was assigned to intern in a program called “Aged in Distress.” It was a crisis intervention program for older people. I made home visits to people with physical and mental disabilities, as well as one woman who was bedridden and terminally ill.
Although my primary interest in becoming a social worker was to work with children and teenagers, I was surprised at how much I liked working with older people. I was 25 at the time. Thinking back, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to me. Sometime after the internship, I realized that I was remembering without awareness the short time I had with my grandfathers.
Now I know that my early memories and recollections, whether I am consciously aware of them or not, influence how I feel about and relate to others in the present. As a child who experienced my grandfathers’ lives and deaths, I wasn’t conscious of the fact back then that one day I would be dealing with my parents’ aging, illnesses and deaths.
My father had cancer and my mother had heart and kidney problems. I traveled often from my home on Long Island to New Jersey to help care for them, some of that time at the same hospital in Newark where I was born in 1951.
One memorable evening—which also happens to have involved artificial body parts—was the time my mother fell and was taken to the hospital. She called me at 2 a.m. and said, “Andy, will you bring my Polident to the hospital?” Broken arm and bruised face, all she could think about was what she needed to keep her dentures in place so that she would look good.
I took the 90-minute drive from Long Beach to Newark at 2:30 am, retrieved her tooth powder from the medicine cabinet in her home, headed to Beth Israel hospital, spent a few hours with her and drove back to Long Island with enough time to make it to my office for work.
Although the trip was inconvenient, I was aware all along that one good turn deserves another. Both my mother and father took time caring for their parents when they aged while also caring for me and my brother. It is these kinds of life lessons that seep into your unconscious and define the person you become, with many generations to thank.
By Andrew Malekoff, Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families.
Published in the Anton Media Group papers, Feb. 7, 2018.
