Archive for mental health

School Shootings: A Tool that can Help Stop this Horrible Trend

Ugh, yet another school shooting. Our hearts are all breaking once again. When will it ever end? What are the solutions? How can we help? We could debate this subject for days, but staying out of politics, I would like to offer a tool that is at least part of the solution. The Imagine Project is a simple 7-step writing process that can be incorporated into any classroom, group, or done individually with kids K-12. It’s supports social emotional balance and mental health. If also changes the climate and culture of a classroom, school, and even society—by bringing kindness, compassion, healing, and hope to the kids. Which in turn, may keep kids from making the horrendous choice of shooting someone else to ease their own pain.

The day of the latest school shooting, my videographer, Christie Taylor and I were just finishing up hours of interviewing teachers and kids about the impact The Imagine Project had on their school. Walnut Hills Elementary had just finished doing the project with their entire school a few weeks earlier. Every interviewee—teachers and students alike—had endless affirming statements and stories about how the Imagine Project had positively impacted their lives and their classrooms. Kids from 2nd through 5thgrade spoke about how they loved being able to talk about something that was difficult for them—an issue they might not have mentioned otherwise, but what negatively affecting them. Some talked about friend issues, divorce, moving, pet—or even worse, parent losses. These experiences or issues often caused emotions such as sadness, anger, fear, even confusion and anxiety. Over and over they expressed how good it was to write and speak about their feelings. And when their classmates heard their Imagine stories (they often read them out loud), they felt heard, found new friends, learned compassion, and they stopped feeling much of the intense emotions related to the issues—they could move on and create a new Imagine story in their lives.

Teachers couldn’t stop talking about how powerful it was for their kids to have a tool that helps students express emotion, share experiences, see their resilience, and just plain feel better about life! When kids shared their stories, they made new friends, smiled more, felt lighter about heavy issues, and best of all saw possibility in their lives. When asked if The Imagine Project might lessen bullying—without hesitation the teachers answered yes. Why? Because The Imagine Project creates connections between students, understanding of another student’s story, and compassion for another student they may have not even known anything about prior to hearing their Imagine story.

Research shows kids are more stressed than ever. Trauma is also very prevalent among our youth. When kids are stressed and traumatized—and don’t have the proper help—they can find unhealthy ways to cope: Addictions, self-harm, dropping out of school–and even harming someone else.

We must give kids tools to cope with, mitigate, and heal from their stress and trauma. Give them positive, healthy tools and strategies so they don’t make horrific choices like seriously hurting someone else. The Imagine Project is the perfect tool for this. Our research shows it increases a child’s ability to manage stress, makes them open to outside support, and they take more academic risks so they do better in school! Please check out the free journals and download them today. Bring them home to your kids, ask your teachers about them, share it with other teachers, counselors, and admin. The kids will love it and you will love it!

For more information you can refer to my book, The Imagine Project: Empowering Kids to Rise Above Drama, Trauma, and Stress. It’s not necessary to do the project, but it may be helpful.

Thank you and take care,



New research Showing Positive Outcomes after using The Imagine Project!

Little girl writing her Imagine story.

When teachers, counselors, admin, etc. use new curriculum/ideas in their school and classrooms, they like to know what they are using is backed by credible research. We have good news! Phase One of our research on The Imagine Project has come back significantly positive! If you aren’t familiar with The Imagine Project writing process, click here to see the free journals.

Until now The Imagine Project writing activity has been based on the plethora of research that’s been done on expressive writing over the last 25 years. In most of the studies, participants were asked to take 15 to 30 minutes to write about an emotionally challenging, stressful, even traumatic incident in their lives. Typically, they are asked to do this once a day for three to five days. Even though the time spent writing can be emotional and make the writer feel vulnerable, the long-term benefits are positive. Study measurements were done months, even years, after the writing exercises and positive results still existed.

Expressive writing research shows it can:

  • improve grade point average,
  • improve working memory,
  • improve writing skills,
  • decrease school dropout rates,
  • enhance immune function (fewer illnesses and fewer trips to the doctor),
  • decrease blood pressure,
  • promote wound healing after surgery,
  • decrease anxiety and depression,
  • help people feel better about life, and
  • lessen post-traumatic intrusion and avoidance symptoms.

We wanted to see more specifically how The Imagine Project affects a student who uses it. So we hired a well sought after research company called QREM (Quantitative Research Evaluation and Measurement) in Littleton, CO. QREM then designed extensively researched questionnaires for elementary, middle, and high school students looking at themes that included academic risk taking, outlook toward their future, positive school attitudes, stress management, support, and writing.

The research process took about 5 months to complete. We recruited various schools in Colorado and Washington. Students took a pretest ora posttest to minimize the test-retest effect. So students who took the pretest did not take the posttest and those who took the posttest had not taken the pretest. All did the Imagine Project writing activity steps 1-7 once in their classrooms. We tested 4th, 5th, 8th, and high school (from Alternative High Schools only because those were the students who were available at the time).

Our results were even stronger than we anticipated:

The Imagine Project has a substantial impact on middle school students.Middle school participants made more significant gains on the established constructs than any other age group. Specifically, middle school students made gains in their ability to manage their stress and their perception of support from others (increases of 11.5% and 6.3%, respectively).

Boys were especially receptive towards the Imagine Project.Boys of all age groups made substantial gains in many of the constructs –seeing improved attitudes towards school by 11.6%, their ability to manage stress by 9.8%, and their perceptions of support by 8.0%.

Girls improved with stress management.Middle and high school girls participating in the Imagine Project improved their overall stress management by 9.4%

Elementary School Findings showed gains in skills and comfort with writing. This information is backed by many teachers reporting their student’s love of writing increased after using The Imagine Project writing project. QREM researchers believe we did not see more changes in stress management with elementary school students because they are more difficult to measure due to being easily influenced by life events on a daily basis—and developmentally it can be challenging to measure these types of issues. But, teachers tell us all the time, the Imagine Project makes a huge impact in a student’s self-awareness, ability to cope with stress, improved kindness, and it brings classrooms together in support of each other.

We are very pleased with the results of our Phase One research project. We are now in Phase Two, looking more in-depth at constructs such as compassion, self-awareness, stress management, and love of writing. We understand how critical mental health and education research is to implementation of programs in a classroom/school, and we want to know the best format for applying the Imagine Project writing process. With kids as stressed as they our in our world, they (and you) need tools for support. Go to to download our free journals!

I hope you find this helpful and spread the word about The Imagine Project!

Thank you,



Why Play is Important to a Child’s Mental Health

Laughter, running, jumping, being silly, twirling, smiling, creating—all are part of play and having fun! Instinctively, as parents and teachers, we know the importance of play for our kids (and ourselves)—it gives them/us a welcome break from stress and promotes mental health. Yet, we often put play last after homework, sports, jobs, and the constant daily routines of life. The American Academy of Pediatrics promotes play as essential to a child’s development because research shows that it improves learning, cognitive awareness, physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. Fortunately, play is making a comeback because we are remembering how critical it is to healthy brain and body development. Play gives kids tremendous learning opportunities, including how to work with others, manage feelings, think, plan, make decisions, and read other people’s emotions. Play also promotes physical fitness, creativity, self-expression, self-regulation, and healthy boundaries—basically physical and emotional wellness and mental health!

Global Play Labs

There are organizations all over the world embracing the forgotten benefits of play. In Bangladesh, they have created play labs for kids in poorer communities who aren’t exposed to the benefits of preschool and early learning. The World Bank is watching and adding billions of dollars to these resources to help bring a play curriculum to underprivileged kids all over the world. Research has shown that investing in a child early will promote brain development and improve their abilities later in life.

Global School Play Day

There is even a Global School Play Day on February 5th each year where kids take an entire day off school and just play! Teachers do not guide the play, the students do—only rules for safety and that’s it—just play! Imagine how important these days are for stress relief, interpersonal interaction, and just understanding life.

Therapeutic Play

Play can also be very therapeutic for children struggling with difficult life experiences. Doing something completely different, getting away from a difficult situation, or giving a child the opportunity to process the scenario that’s been difficult by acting it out in play will support a child’s mental health. A friend who had a hospitalized premature infant said her girls often played “hospital,” because having their sister hospitalized was so difficult for them. If your kids are stressed or acting out their trauma in play, don’t try to fix it or guide it in a certain direction, let them play it out (as long as they are safe)— eventually they will master or resolve the issues they are working on. If you have concerns about them or what you see, talk to your pediatrician or consult a therapist.

Teaching your child (or yourself) to play

Many of us didn’t grow up understanding how to play so it can be hard to teach and encourage your child to play. But the cool thing is that children naturally know how to play, and you can follow their lead and have fun doing it! The first step is to find out what your child likes to do. This may change over time, so be flexible. Some kids might like cool science experiments, some only want to do something physical and outdoors, others may have music interests, want to cook with you, draw or create—the list is endless, but try to avoid video games—more can be learned without a screen! Instead provide the raw materials your child needs to pursue their interests, explore their imaginations, experience the world around them, or express their creativity.

Ideas for Play

Here are some suggestions for games to play with students/kids. They will help with physical and emotional wellness.

• Chase bubbles.
• Have a picnic (indoors or out).
• Play hide-n-seek.
• Card or board games.
• Puzzles
• Decorate cookies together.
• Guess the mystery food.
• Have a pillow fight.
• Cut snowflakes out of paper.
• “I see something in Grandma’s grocery store and
it starts with the letter ___.”
• “I spy with my little eye, something that is (name
a color). Guess what it is!”
• Play music, dance, and freeze—see how silly
everyone looks!

If you or your child is struggling with stress or an event in their life that has been difficult, play can be a perfect outlet. Sometimes they may need to talk or write about their feelings before they can let go and play. Using The Imagine Journals will help them process what is making them feel down, sad, mad, etc. Try doing The Imagine Project with your classroom or in your family to help support their mental health and bring them back to a place they can run, jump, and laugh again. For more information on stress and trauma in kids you can read The Imagine Project: Empowering Kids to rise above Drama, Trauma, and Stress (Yampa Valley Publishing, 2018) You can download the free journals at
Thank you and happy playing!