Tonight’s local news featured a more in depth story about the accused killer of Kelsey Smith, a beautiful 18 year old recent high school graduate who was abducted in daylight hours from Target and killed shortly thereafter. I blogged about it here. The accused killer is Edwin... more

Part of my job as writer of this blog is to bring to your attention articles like the series I posted over the last few days. I have access to all kinds of articles like that. But you know, those are my least favorite blogs to write. Sometimes they seem boring to me, and yet there really is a great deal of pertinent information out there that could be shared.

Isn’t it interesting, though, that the comments... more

Part One Part Two Part Three

Concluding this series on how better services would be provided to our children if the juvenile justice systems and child welfare systems worked together, the final point is:

Attorneys... more

Part One Part Two

Continuing with the series addressing the difficulties in establishing collaboration between child welfare systems and juvenile justice systems, the second point addressed by the author of this article states:

Youth... more

In the previous post, I addressed the difficulty state and federal governments have in getting the juvenile justice systems and the child welfare systems to play well together and make what is in the best interest of the child their first (collective) priority. Continuing my discussion of the article written by a Children’s... more

I mentioned in this blog how many electronic newsletters I receive, and how much good information is contained in them.

One newsletter I didn’t mention in the first post is The Link, which states its mission or purpose as: Connecting Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare. It is a publication from the Child... more

I grew up way before “sexual harassment” was a word in schools or the workplace. Where wolf whistles and up-and-down looks were just part of having two X chromosomes. I was also fortunate to grow up in the kind of family I talked about in this post—the “right” kind of family where I had a good sense of who I was and believed that most folks were trustworthy and would deal straightforwardly with me. My parents were scrupulously honest... more

A reader just asked me why I articulate, and apparently feel, more negativity towards Amy than Tommy, given that Tommy didn’t embrace the family either. It is an excellent question and one I partially answered on the comment itself, but one I think I’d like to explore further.

The answer I gave after the reader’s comment essentially says I spent over 15 years struggling on a 24/7 basis to build a relationship with Amy, and less... more

Stephanie was in Illinois last week visiting high school friends. At the end of the week, she drove to Minnesota to visit college friends. Accompanying her was a younger gal (“Mary”) Stephanie mentored while in high school. In Steph’s words, she “has a real heart for” Mary. I understand what that means. I know Mary too, both from my time as a youth small group leader and from Steph’s time with her. And I clearly remember a long conversation I had with Mary’s mom …

Somehow Mary’s mom knew I worked with troubled kids. And... more

I had a great conversation the other day with a mom who has a nine-year-old boy adopted from Eastern Europe. This is a mom who works with other families who also adopted from EE. We talked about that pervasive thing—denial—that so many parents experience when it comes to recognizing and/or acknowledging the degree of trauma and attachment issues in their kids. This mom admitted that she and her husband thought her son had attached just fine, but now, at age nine, they are realizing he has many issues.

So how... more