Author Archives: yvissing

About yvissing

Sociologist and child studies expert

Come to Our Children’s Human Rights Conference

It’s tough to be a kid in America.  School shootings, child poverty, abuse, hunger, homelessness, mental illness, suicide – it’s time to change the national narrative about how we think about and defend children’s rights.   “What can we do?”  Find out how to make children a national priority at our June 22-24, 2022 conference on Children’s Human Rights in the USA.  It is a virtual zoom conference with over 50 speakers.  You will find details and registration at  

https://tinyurl.com/chrc2022   Continuing Education Credits are available.  

In order to help you learn more about the importance of children’s human rights, I’ve created a Children’s Human Rights Resource, Networking, and Learning Library for you at https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/GLKDXX 

Remember the millions that marched for their lives and pleaded for gun safety.  Here is a film I made at the Boston 2018 march where people were pleading for sensible gun control –  

Check out my new Medium article on how to prevent another school shooting – https://yvissing.medium.com/what-can-we-do-to-prevent-another-school-shooting-68a9538232d9

Join me in the fight to protect our nation’s greatest treasure – our children. 

The inevitable rising psycho-social consequences of the pandemic

No one wants to get sick or die, and it is reasonable and understandable that there’s lots of attention on the physical consequences of the virus. The psychological and social consequences of the pandemic are huge and can have long-range consequences. Depression, anxiety, increase of unreported domestic violence and child abuse, social isolation, alienation and anger are just a few of the consequences. Read more about how it doesn’t take a crystal ball to figure out what is going to happen if we aren’t attentive to each other’s mental health needs….. https://medium.com/@yvissing/looking-into-the-crystal-ball-f54e3cd7cea6

COVID-19 and Homeless Children: Don’t they count too?

There’s lots of talk about populations who are at-risk of getting the coronavirus. One group that few of the officials seem to be talking about is children who are homeless. Where do they go to stay safe if they have no home and how can they study when the schools are closed and they don’t have access to the internet or equipment to do their studies? Read more about what’s happening – or NOT happening for them at https://medium.com/@dianehearus/do-they-count-homeless-children-and-covid-19-e56e96e5f56b

#MarchForOurLives

Gun violence is killing our children. Thousands of people gathered across the nation to plead for gun control. Here is my video from the Boston march, as shown in the Public Seminar link http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/04/seeing-is-believing/

Santa Claus is Coming

Santa Claus is Coming! shutterstock_214592401

After a decade researching him, the books are now ready.

The main book, In Defense of Santa, will be coming out soon, thanks to the fine publishers at NorLights Press!

Santa Claus needs to be transformed in order to be more relevant to today’s children and world.  Parents need support so they can let their children believe in him without feeling like they are lying.  Communities would benefit from a new view that enables everyone in town to feel they belong, especially during the December holiday seasons. This book provides both scholarly and pragmatic information that will help you to feel joyful about having Santa in your home, and in your heart.

There are FIVE other Santa books in the que, so be on the lookout for them!  I’ll post details on where and when you can get them as soon as I can.