by Lynea Gillen | Oct 6, 2017 | Anxiety, Media, Trauma
These past several weeks have brought plenty of difficult, heartbreaking news. The Las Vegas shooting. Devastation from hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. Intimations of new warfare. Undoubtedly, memories and perhaps even strong emotion arose in you as...
by Lynea Gillen | May 27, 2017 | Media, Mental Health
By Lynea Gillen Across the US and Canada, schools have been warning parents about the new Netflix series 13 Reasons Why and its handling of teen suicide. If you’ve been following the controversy, you’re familiar with the concerns – that it glorifies suicide, that it...
by Lynea Gillen | Nov 13, 2016 | Media, Mental Health
Several years ago, the children in the 6th grade classroom I was visiting as a school counselor started to talk about the dangers in the world and how many “bad” people there were “out there.” I asked them to tell me more. They told me about stories from the news,...
by Jim Gillen | Nov 4, 2016 | Families, Featured Family, Media
“Grandpa, this is much more fun than playing on the tablet!” My 6-year old granddaughter’s observation seemed so obvious and true. We had spent the afternoon together, building a ladder for her new treehouse. We used a tape measure and her budding...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | May 1, 2016 | Families, Media
“Five…four…three…” …swipe, tap, tap, swipe, swipe, tap… “…two…one!” The countdown – that old parental standby to garner compliance – was no longer working with our granddaughter Anna, smitten with our iPad and the wonders it can produce. We had set a strict time limit...
by Jim Gillen | Oct 4, 2015 | Media, Social-Emotional Learning
In a recent New York Times article, Professor Sherry Turkle offered a stark example of how lack of empathy can play out in a school setting: A few years ago, a private middle school asked me to consult with its faculty: Students were not developing friendships the way...
