Monthly Archives: March 2014

Would you like to know more about the people and the programs featured in Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents? You can watch all the ‘extra’ videos on the playlist we created on our YouTube channel Visit the websites for the interventions we featured (and a couple we couldn’t squeeze in because of time): Triple P Parenting:

Someone needs a big huge pat on the back tonight. Her name is Caroline Butler. She is the wizard behind Bountiful Films’ outreach to promote our films. Her work on Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents was outstanding. I’ve never felt so many Canadians connected with a Bountiful Films documentary. I also want to single

Maureen Palmer was a guest on CBC Radio’s The Current. She spoke about the documentary, and two other interviewees from Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents took part, too. (Rob Santos of Healthy Child Manitoba, and parent Karen de Montigny)  Listen to the full interview here. Here’s a review of the documentary in the Winnipeg Free Press.

If you read our post from Saturday you’ll remember that there is a link between socioeconomic status and the number of words a child will know growing up.  Inequality gap, meet word gap. With life success so closely linked to language ability, scientists are looking at ways to close the ‘word’ gap between poor kids and kids

There are hundreds, if not thousands of early-learning programs in Canada. So how did we decide which programs to profile? This was a very tough decision, as there are several which deserve national attention. We used the criteria below. 1/The programs had to be evidence-based and have decades of data supporting them. The original participants in

1/Kids form hierarchies, even in kindergarten. Within the first few months of school, kids group themselves according to the same socio-economic strata as their parents. 2/Researchers found that children in professional families heard 11 million words in a year, compared to 6 million in working class families, and 3 million in families on welfare. By

There are two programs that we filmed but just couldn’t squeeze into the documentary – worthy interventions with strong evidence-based results. But we still want to share them with you!  They are the Nurse Family Partnership and Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. The Nurse Family Partnership pairs mothers  (often young, single and poor) with community-based nurses from pregnancy

The evidence continues to mount that Canada’s kids face a growing threat to their mental health, as you can see in this CBC report. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-hospitals-stretched-as-self-harming-teens-seek-help-1.2574316 Mental health services are strained as a growing number of teens show up at emergency rooms across Canada with self-inflicted injuries and suicidal thoughts, say pediatric psychiatrists. “We’re seeing twice

Can stress be inherited?  We know that babies in utero can experience the stresses of their mothers – but a growing body of research suggests they can inherit their grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s stress too. Which may in part explain why so many First Nations children struggle. We do explore this idea briefly in Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents but

Why begin Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents with the words of Monique Lépine, the mother of Marc Lépine, the perpetrator of the Montreal Massacre? This was a difficult decision, and it was the core struggle confronted in editing the documentary. My editor Jeanne Slater showed tremendous patience as we cut and re-cut the film,