Our Roots Remain: The Collective Trauma of the Los Angeles Wildfires
The Eaton Canyon and Palisades fires left visible scars on the landscape and invisible scars on the people who called it home. But what fire cannot reach are the roots — of memory, of community, of shared belonging built over decades, not seasons. As scarred as this landscape may be, those roots remain.
Supporting Your Child Through Uncertain Times
Your children are watching how you navigate uncertainty — not whether you struggle, but how you move through it. Bren M. Chasse, LMFT, guides parents on the ways in which children learn resilience from watching how you carry hard things and provides six practical ways to support your child through uncertain times.
Alternatives to Spanking: Building Connection, Not Compliance
Spanking teaches compliance, not connection. Bren M. Chasse, LMFT unpacks why physical discipline undermines the lesson you're teaching, and four alternatives that build connection.
School Avoidance & Refusal: Causes, Signs, & How to Help
School avoidance and school refusal are more common than many parents realize, often signaling underlying anxiety rather than defiance. Bren M. Chasse, LMFT breaks down the causes, the signs to watch for at home, and practical, compassionate strategies to help your child feel safe returning to the classroom.
Navigating the Digital Playground: A Dual-Lens Approach to Children's Technology Use
Most screen time guidance comes from one discipline or the other – neither addressing the gap between them. This article is different. Bren M. Chasse, LMFT, who specializes in working with children and families, has collaborated with Munya Kanaventi, a chief information security executive, to build age-by-age guidelines grounded in both what developing brains can handle and what dangers wait on the other side of the screen. From a cybersecurity standpoint, children are high-value, low-defense targets — which makes striking this balance harder than it looks: granting the independence a child's development requires, while protecting them from risks only time and experience can teach them to see.
The Art of Effective Co-Parenting
Co-parenting asks you to build a working partnership with someone you may no longer trust, like, or respect — while managing your own grief and supporting your children through theirs. It's hard, and pretending otherwise helps no one. Bren M. Chasse, provides five practical tips for coparenting and functioning as a reliable team, from a therapist who works with high-conflict family dynamics.
Fed Is Best: Reframing the Breast Is Best Narrative for Family Wellbeing
Expectant mothers hear it from doctors, from family, from strangers: breast is best. But the pressure to breastfeed exclusively carries a cost that rarely gets counted — anxiety, stress, and postpartum distress in mothers who cannot or make the choice not to for personal reasons. The perceived pressure to breastfeed is linked to higher anxiety, stress, and birth trauma symptoms postpartum, while long-term differences between breastfed and formula-fed children are far smaller than the "gold standard" rhetoric suggests. Bren M. Chasse, LMFT reframes infant feeding, prioritizing maternal health and family wellbeing.