Whether you’re a parent looking at your own children, or a community member thinking about all the kids growing up around you, ACEs science can seem pretty alarming at first glance. Stress and traumatic events can cause permanent changes in a child’s developing brain, but of course it’s impossible to create a childhood that’s absolutely stress-free. After a year of pandemic and lockdown, we don’t have to think hard to come up with a traumatic event that is truly beyond our control. We can’t prevent kids from having some exposure to stress.

So, if all kids everywhere experience stress at some point, how does anyone grow up to be a healthy adult? And what can we do to help kids right now, including our own?