01
Know Myself
Name emotions, read body signals, tell needs from wants, and separate “what happened to me” from “who I am” — no child ever asked to disclose trauma.
A Nevada pilot for ages 6–12
Life Success After Adversity
We help children ages 6–12 develop the skills and protective factors that can help them navigate adversity and thrive. Through trauma-aware psychoeducation and practice, children build resilience, confidence, and tools for making choices, solving problems, and seeking support.
6–12
A pivotal age to build lifelong inner tools.
Our mission
Resilient kids become resilient adults.
The central purpose of Nevada Loves Kids is to help children develop the skills and protective factors that can help them navigate adversity and thrive. Through age-appropriate psychoeducation and repeated practice, children learn resilience, emotional literacy, problem-solving, self-advocacy, healthy relationship skills, and future planning.
Research shows that protection exists around a child as well as within them: stable, supportive relationships; caring adults and mentors; positive friendships; problem-solving skills; safe environments; and access to education and health services all matter.
Nevada Loves Kids does not claim to provide every protective factor or replace family, mentors, schools, health care, or community services. Our role is to provide a safe learning environment, teach the skills children can practice, help them recognize healthy support, and show them how to ask a trusted adult for help. Children are never told that overcoming adversity is their responsibility alone.
The pilot program
Life doesn’t come with a handbook. We can give kids a toolkit.
Many adults were never taught how to manage stress, understand emotions, set healthy boundaries, or turn a goal into a plan. That gap can pass from one generation to the next.
Our small-group pilot interrupts that cycle early—with compassionate, trauma-aware lessons that are active, relatable, and designed for children growing up through adversity.
Nevada Loves Kids is a trauma-informed youth enrichment and social-emotional learning program for ages 6–12 that builds resilience, confidence, emotional intelligence, life skills, and skills for healthy relationships.
The urgency is real. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among children ages 10–14 in the United States, and rates in this age group have more than doubled over the last decade (CDC, 2023). Teaching kids to name their feelings, regulate their nervous systems, and ask for help is prevention — early, and upstream.
A focused, measurable first step — two cohorts
A small cohort, consistent sessions, family resources, and simple before-and-after measures help us learn what works before expanding.
Cohort 1a
Ages 6–8
Early foundations — naming feelings, calming the body, and practicing big skills through play, stories, and a goal of the week.
Cohort 1b
Ages 9–12
Deeper practice — questioning the story in your head, building habits, money basics, leadership, and purpose.
The Six Life Skills
Big life skills, made understandable.
Not six random subjects — a progression. Understand what’s inside me, steady it, question the story in my head, relate to others, choose my actions, then build my future. All of it inside a culture of connection, so every child leaves knowing they belong somewhere.
02
Calm My Body
Feelings are information, not commands. Breathing, grounding, pausing, movement — practiced in real scenarios until they’re available under stress.
03
Guide My Thoughts
Event → thought → feeling → action → result. Kids become “thought detectives” and learn to ask, “what else could be true?”
04
Connect With Others
Me → you → us. Perspective taking, listening, apologizing, repair, boundaries, and asking for help — acted out, not lectured.
05
Choose My Actions
STOP → THINK → OPTIONS → CONSEQUENCES → CHOOSE. Real dilemmas, real consequences, and the habit of making repairs after mistakes.
06
Build My Future
Goals, habits, money basics, purpose. Not “you can do anything” — “you can’t always choose what happens, but you can learn to choose what you do next.”
Every session runs CONNECT → LEARN → PRACTICE → REFLECT → APPLY. See the full curriculum, or explore the curriculum topics within each skill.
Nevada Loves Kids is an educational, trauma-aware program — not therapy and not trauma treatment. Children are never asked to disclose trauma, and any child who needs clinical care is referred to a qualified provider.
A note from our founder
Adversity influences us. It does not have to define us.
About the founder: Founder with graduate training in organizational psychology and a background in health science, focused on developing evidence-informed youth enrichment programs that promote resilience, confidence, life skills, and healthy development.
I founded Nevada Loves because adversity has been a recurring part of my life from a very young age. Health challenges, family hardship, cultural transitions, bullying, and other difficult experiences shaped how I viewed myself, other people, and the world around me.
Reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning helped me understand that suffering does not have to define us — we can still choose meaning and purpose. But it also showed me how much easier that would have been if I had learned it early, while my mind was still forming.
Ages 6–12 are like the operating-system years: the beliefs, habits, and self-talk installed then tend to run for life. If I had known even a fraction of these skills back then — how to regulate my nervous system, reframe my thoughts, set a goal, or find purpose — my path would have been very different. Instead I had to teach myself later, and I’m still unlearning and rebuilding through trial and error.
That’s why Nevada Loves Kids begins early — giving children practical inner tools before the patterns harden, so they don’t have to spend adulthood trying to install them on their own through trial and error.
Life Success After Adversity.
Help us give Nevada kids a stronger start.
We’re looking for community partners, educators, youth advocates, volunteers, and early supporters to help bring this pilot to life.