Chris Jacoby writes "I so envy those people who have their act together. Their life experience has given them the gift of wanting wholesome things and behaving in ways that get them what they want. I haven't yet gotten over the baggage that gets in the way of my doing that."

We are right to pay special attention to the children who are going thru homelessness and other stresses. They are forming their relationship with the world and there are lots of reasons why this might be a major childhood trauma, and the stresses that their parents are feeling might create more trauma for the children.

1. How do we keep ourselves and those helping us alert to what we know about children, especially children at risk. Is there research that might help ? Are there anecdotal stories or testimony that might help ?
2. How do we mobilize community resources that can help these children. Of course, we'll have a director or case worker whose job it will be to do this.
3. What training or sensitivity should be included in what is given to our volunteers. That training must start before opening and continue for new volunteers. The director needs to be involved, getting training from the Family Promise national trainer and playing a lead role in the training of volunteers.

Children who've developed good brain functions by age 3 have advantages that accumulate through life. They not only possess skills that can be measured on tests, they have self-discipline (which is twice as important as I.Q. in predicting academic achievement, according to a study by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman). How can we inculcate good brain functions across a wider swath of the 3-year-old population ? Getting this right is tricky. Head Start produces only modest benefits, as a study from the Department of Health and Human Services has reminded us again. Small, intensive preschool programs yield tremendous results, but realistically, they cannot be done on a giant scale.

The problem is this: How can we provide millions of kids with the stable, loving structures they may not be getting sufficiently at home ?

If there's one thing that leaps out of all the brain literature, it is that, as Daniel J. Siegel puts it, "emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain." Kids learn from people they love. If we want young people to develop the social and self-regulating skills they need to thrive, we need to establish stable long-term relationships between love-hungry children and love-providing adults. (text from editorial by Of Love and Money David Brooks, New York Times, May 25, 2006).