During Pride Month, Talking About Kids is devoted to LGBTQ+ issues. This second installment is about supporting Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ youth. My guest is Jerico Cummings. Jerico is a 2SLGBTQ+ Training & Community Engagement Specialist for the Paths (Re)Membered Project at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. The mission of the Paths (Re)Membered Project is to protect the health and wellbeing of 2SLGBTQ+ Indigenous people. Jerico will discuss the Two Spirit tradition, what all o...

In honor of Pride Month, Talking About Kids is devoting its June episodes to LGBT+ issues. This first installment is about how understanding history can help LGBT+ youth, and my guest is the “Hip Historian,” Marshall Shore. Marshall is known throughout the southwestern United States and beyond for excavating videos, news stories, and other lost artifacts from the distant and not-so-distant past and using them to make history come alive in engaging events. Along the way, Marshall has helped ri...

George Walker is an artist, educator, and historian, who is best known for his books about public figures ranging from Leonard Cohen to Tom Thomson. George tells these stories without words, using only images printed from wood he engraves. These wordless novels, as they are known, are in the tradition of works by Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Otto Nückel, all famous artists who have inspired George and whom he has written about in his more academic books on creating relief prints and on appr...

As a writer, social media figure, and, now, children’s book author, Gina Prosch has focused on hope and joy. The second book in her Holly’s Choice series was just released. It is called, Hope! More Than Wishful Thinking. True to its title, it addresses hope, but, as you will hear, Gina’s conception of hope is not a Pollyanna one, but a practical and empowering one that, in my opinion, aligns with a growth mindset. More information about Gina and her books is at talkingaboutkids.com.

Mentors have come up before on Talking About Kids, but the work of my guest today, Noelle Hurd, challenges more traditional notions of how mentors are identified and recruited and their role in the life of a kid, especially a racially or ethnically marginalized one. Noelle is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where she also runs the Promoting Healthy Adolescent Development (PHAD) Lab. More information about Noelle is at talkingaboutkids.com.

Vot-ER is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that believes that a healthy and inclusive democracy makes for healthy communities. To that end, Vot-ER works to integrate civic engagement into healthcare. My guest this episode to discuss Vot-ER’s rationale, how it goes about promoting an inclusive democracy, and what you can to do to achieve similar goals in your community and for issues you care about is Vot-ER’s West Coast Deputy Field Director, Sandra Gutierrez. The episode was recorded li...

The website for the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University lists the factors that “predispose children to positive outcomes in the face of significant adversity.” Among them is “sources of faith.” My guest this episode to help me understand how faith traditions build resilience is David Myles. David is an award-winning speaker, radio host, and professor who attributes his own resilience in the face of adversity to his faith. David generously allowed me to ask him some difficult...

Child maltreatment is a major public health concern in the United States, but are the mandated reporting laws that were intended to reduce child maltreatment working? My guests this episode, Rachel Rosenberg and Sarah Catherine Williams, are two of the authors of a new report from ChildTrends. As you will hear, their research suggests that mandated reporters need better training to help make the system more effective and to reduce the stigmatization of families who are experiencing financial ...

There are many things I could say about the importance homelife. Chiefly among them is the fact that the behaviors and relationships that are modeled for children in the home are paramount to their healthy development. A close second is the fact that the work required to maintain a home and care for a family is undervalued in the marketplace. My guest today is Lori Sugarman-Li. Lori’s brand-new children’s book, Our Home: The Love, Work, and Heart of Family, takes on both of these issues, illu...

In previous episodes, Talking About Kids has addressed the need for trauma-informed care and the importance of involving youth in the design and oversight of programs for them. This episode combines the two. Recently, Yehudis Stokes, Marjorie Robb, and their colleagues published a paper on the perspectives of youth, caregivers, and other stakeholders on implementing trauma-informed care in an inpatient mental health program. Yehudis Stokes is a Registered Nurse at the Children’s Hospital of E...