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: http://www.triplep-parenting.net/alb-en/home/
• The PAX Good Behavior Game: http://goodbehaviorgame.org
• Abecedarian: http://abc.fpg.unc.edu
• The Nurse-Family Partnership: http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/proven-results/published
• PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies): http://www.prevention.psu.edu/projects/paths.html
• Want to dig deeper? The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, at the Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder, has a website where you can search for programs by specific criteria: http://www.blueprintsprograms.com/programSearch.php

Monique Lépine spent 17 years in silence after the killings at the Ecole Polytechnique. It was after the 2006 shooting at Dawson College in Montreal that she finally spoke out in hopes that by telling her story she could make a difference. She subsequently wrote the book Aftermath (Vivre in French), with journalist Harold Gagné. She speaks frequently now in schools, churches and prisons.  http://www.moniquelepine.com

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 Caroline out for her superb interview with Monique Lépine. We had a conflict – I was off shooting somewhere else – and Caroline went to Montreal and conducted a very difficult interview with grace and sensitivity. Caroline, we’re lucky to have you.

 – Maureen Palmer, director

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.

And watch this interview with Maureen on The Rush:

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 whose parents enrich their vocabularies – mostly in professional and well off homes. Because that gap, if  not bridged, will only grow wider. 

Here’s one fascinating program that is being used to coach parents and other caregivers  on how to increase the vocabulary of children who otherwise would be at a huge disadvantage by the time they got to school.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/us/trying-to-close-a-knowledge-gap-word-by-word.html?src=me&ref=general

Find out why being language proficient is key to managing self-control in Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents on CBC Doc Zone, Thursday at 9pm/9:30 NT.

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 some of these programs are now in their 30s and 40s and have had happier, healthier and more successful lives than the control group children who did not receive the intervention.

2/The programs had to work for children primarily under the age of 6.

We made that decision because the neuroscience and child development researchers profiled in the film all say interventions have their best chance of success before the age of 6. Of course success continues after that age and we also know there’s another great window of opportunity around the onset of adolescence. As we delved deeper, we came to understand a reduction in crime was just one of the many benefits of early intervention. There was much less of a burden on government health,social service, education and justice budgets. The greatest bang for the taxpayer’s buck is under the age of 6.

3/We had to have at least one program focus specifically on the needs of First Nations children.

To quote Rob Santos of Healthy Child Manitoba, “First Nations citizens are wildly over-represented in all of Canada’s misery statistics, especially addiction, poor physical and mental health, unemployment, crime and incarceration.” Manitoba faces a unique challenge in its huge First Nations baby boom. It’s thought 25 percent of all children in Manitoba are First Nations. Manitoba cannot afford that many kids to go off the rails. That’s why we chose to film in the unique Abecedarian program.

4/We wanted to present a cross-section of cost/benefit programs, so viewers could see investing in these kinds of programs doesn’t have to be expensive.

But there may be cases where, as taxpayers, we are prepared to pay a significant cost up front for a more expensive program like the Abecedarian because the benefits still outweigh the costs: for every dollar spent, society saves $2.50.

Our academic advisor on the film, Dr. Robert McMahon of the Institute for the Reduction of Youth Violence based at Simon Fraser University, also pointed us to something called the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development at the University of Colorado. http://www.blueprintsprograms.com/allPrograms.php. Researchers there have assessed the effectiveness of dozens of programs. Four of the five programs we filmed were on that site.

Also at this point I want to publicly thank Bob McMahon for so much – from helping us make the choice of programs to profile, to translating some fairly academic concepts to make them accessible to a broader audience, to negotiating access, to patiently fact-checking. We hope we’ve haven’t turned you off film crews forever!

There are some amazing programs we filmed, but just didn’t have time to put in the cut – including the Nurse Family Partnership, PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies). We’ve cut little stories about them and to view – click here.

See three interventions in action: Triple P, The Abecedarian program and the Pax Good Behaviour Game in Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents this Thursday March 27th, 9pm on CBC’s Doc Zone.

 – Maureen Palmer, director

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 kindergarten, children from welfare families hadheard 32 million fewer words compared to those in professional families. The more proficient children are in language devleopment, the better they do in life. www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc291a.pdf

3/ Forget Baby Einstein, kids can’t learn langauge from screens. We know that children only begin to learn to express themselves to face to face interactions that are timed directly to their own behaviour

4. A three-year-old’s brain is twice as active an adult’s.

5. Reading to babies before they are born, helps them understand language. In fact, a three-day-old baby can discern patterns of language. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/newborns-recognize-language_n_2397986.html

6. The more soothing an infant has, the better able they are to cope with stress as an adult.

7. The more self control a young child has, the more successful successful she or he will be in life. http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/06/the-secrets-of-self-control-the-marshmallow-test-40-years-later/

8. The reason we talk out loud when we’re putting together a piece of furniture from Ikea. Talking out-loud helps us focus. Learning to talk out loud is a big milestone in early childhood development.

9. Did you know that every one dollar spent on early childhood intervention, saves as many as $17?

10. The PAX Good Behaviour Game, a simple class-room based intervention currently played in Manitoba returns an astounding $84.51 for every $1 invested.

Make sure you tune in to Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents on Thursday March 27 (9pm/9:30 NT) for more!

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 right through the first two years of life. The nurses teach parenting skills. But most importantly, they build relationships that provide critical emotional support, often when there’s very little from anyone else.

Three decades of evidence-based studies show remarkable results:  http://www.nursefamilypartnership.org/proven-results/published

We met up with a few nurses and their clients in a park in Everett Washington:

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies, or PATHS, is a program co-founded by Dr. Mark Greenberg. It aims to teach children the basics of social and emotional learning. We filmed this particular PATHS program in a Head Start school in Tacoma, Washington. Every child in this classroom lives below the poverty line.

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 as many kids as we were 10 years ago,” said Dr. Hazen Gandy, division chief of community-based psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

The hospital says recent statistics show an unprecedented spike in ER visits for kids in mental health crises. In 2012-13, it reported that 2,900 children and teens under 18 sought help — up 64 per cent since 2009-10 and the highest number of pediatric emergency mental health visits in Ontario.

“This is an issue across the country.”

In this context, I think it’s even more urgent we adopt nation-wide early childhood interventions like the PAX Good Behaviour Game.

In Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents, you’ll see the PAX Good Behaviour Game played in Winnipeg classrooms. The game was a pilot program in Manitoba schools last year.

It’s a very simple concept – reward kids for being good!– and the benefits are dramatic, especially when it comes to the worst of childhood mental health outcomes – thinking about suicide.

For more on the PAX Good Behaviour Game, be sure to tune in to Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents next Thursday, March 27th at 9pm on CBC’s Doc Zone.

 – Maureen Palmer, director, Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents

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, moving that interview all over the place.

On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine murdered 14 young women at the Ecole Polytechnique before turning the gun on himself. All along I resisted beginning the film with the horror of the Montreal Massacre, because early intervention is about so much more than preventing crime.

Helping children cope with anger, whether it’s borne of frustration over learning difficulties, a lack of nurture, a behavioural problem or a mental disorder creates happier, healthier adults. Not only do we prevent crime, we save billions in health, education, social service and justice costs. I also did not in any way want to infer that the families who trusted us to film their progress through the Triple P Parenting intervention were raising future criminals.

One morning in August, I walked in and Jeanne, her jaw set said, “Monique Lépine has to go first. Here’s why.” And she pressed play. She had recut the first 10 minutes of the film and moved the Lepine interview to the front. I sat silently and watched.

Jeanne was right. What Monique Lépine reveals about her son’s early years underscores the urgency of early intervention especially in severely dysfunctional families. By beginning this way, the viewer quickly gets the point: there’s a lot at stake here.

In the quarter century since Lépine’s rampage, there has been a sea change in our understanding of early childhood development. We’ve come to understand the concept of Adverse Childhood Experiences. Simply put, the more trauma and toxic stress a child suffers early in life, the greater the level of dysfunction later. Marc Lépine’s early life was one long series of adverse experiences, some of which his mother shares here and reveals further in our documentary. She begins by explaining how abusive and violent Lépine’s father was:

Click here to watch: 

We recognize that no one will ever know why Marc Lépine did what he did. And the inclusion of his childhood history here, through his mother, is not an attempt to excuse the horror of what happened on December 6, 1989. Rather, it is to illustrate that a childhood of Adverse Childhood Experiences can have impact that reaches far further than the individual.

Our film quickly leaves Lépine and moves on to the struggles of several parents very committed to working with their young children to resolve behaviour issues. By leading with Lépine, we believe viewers will be completely engrossed and will want to see the rest of the film, to see these ground-breaking interventions in action. I cannot thank our three families enough for allowing us to film their Triple P progress. To see their remarkable transformation, tune in to Angry Kids & Stressed Out Parents Thursday March 27th, 9pm on CBC TV’s Doc Zone.

 – Maureen Palmer, director