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Home My WebLink About08-21-23 Public Comment - E. Niles - Fowler and ParksFrom:Emily - CART Captioner Niles To:Agenda Subject:[EXTERNAL]Fowler and Parks Date:Friday, August 18, 2023 10:27:59 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Hello, We live on the east side of the proposed Fowler street. We constantly bike over to Hanley and Valley West park. My 5-year-old has almost gotten hit twice this summer as we crossed intersections while we clearly had the walk signal. One time down by Oak as we were crossing the roundabouts, walking our bikes across the street, and once as we were walking across Huffine from Rosaur's back home near Babcock. I am very upset about these incidents. We had the walk sign in both instances. I was also walking downtown yesterday myself and a car almost hit me as I had the walk sign going across Main Street. This is getting ridiculous. People do not care for pedestrians. The guy even said to me, "move along." You as the City need to do more to protect my son at the least. What we have clearly is not working with the amount of traffic. We need more bike and walking places to keep our children healthy, not more roads. That area would be nice for another park. I recently went back to visit Bellingham, WA, and they had so many parks everywhere. Same with Vancouver, B.C. It was sad to come back to Bozeman and see how much we have neglected our children with the lack of different parks here. They are our future and it's important to keep their mental well- being in check for all of our well-being. Getting outside helps stressed-out parents. What is your definition and metric of safety? Here is my definition of Safety now as a mother: Babies need connection from their caretakers in order to survive, but more importantly between age 0 to 5, even up to 7 at times, if a child is having an emotional reaction and is not met with a warm and caring reaction by their caretaker and is made to feel unsafe in some way, there is potential for neurons to form a knot around the emotion to save for a later date when they are in a safe space with another human to do so. The emotions have to be witnessed by another human, otherwise the baby will die, or a neural knot will be created. Women in labor are using the "primitive" or back of the brain during labor, which is useful as being in the prefrontal cortex can inhibit the labor process. When a person is in the back of the brain, language processing is not used; therefore, we would not want to say much to them during that moment. Women have been known to lash out in this stage of labor. The same is true of children. We must be calm and reassuring while they are in the primitive brain until they have completed the emotion and the neurons have moved more fully into the prefrontal cortex, where we can then talk and engage with them. If a knot is formed due to something happening to the child while not in the full brain, the neurons are then not able to move in that part of the brain and this is where we start to see "behaviors" that inhibit a human that would otherwise not have had to deal with that particular part of the brain inhibited. These early years are crucial to how a human will view the world. A caregiver who is able to deal with a child's emotions in a nonreactive way or swiftly repair the connection if it is broken is vital to raising well-functioning humans who can utilize their full brain. If a caregiver is stressed and does not care for the child in a warm way during conflict, knots may form, and the children will not know how to handle conflict in future years. I now utilize connection to children age 0-7 as the basis and ultimate standard of safety. We must take all steps to help provide an environment that doesn't inhibit children while having emotions. The less stress put on caregivers, the safer we all are as children are cared for and can think to their highest potential as they take over what is left over from their predecessors. (Side note: There are also ways for people older than age of 7 to release emotional knots; we need more education and safe spaces to do so. If we want to have the best solutions to conflict, we must do the work to help release neural knots.) If the gold standard of safety is children feeling connected to release feelings, let's apply it to this situation and going forward. If we truly want to "move Montana forward" as per the MDT's mission statement, then we have to take care of the children that will do just that. I know there are larger things at play, such as a GDP economy that puts profit over people and was supposed to be a war-time measure and has now lasted far beyond its usefulness. There are much smarter metrics that can be utilized, such as Genuine Progress Indicator. Until we are all ready to take big steps to really deal with all of this, we have to at least help the caregivers who travel typically locally and are under immense pressure in our society. We need to put the focus on having safe spaces for children to thrive. This is where we start if we ultimately want safety, and each of us has a role in keeping things the same, such as more roads and housing for a certain sect, displacing community, or we can work on creating something more viable...the City and other orgs can make their own metric of safety. Please, let us just pause before moving forward and really think about what safety truly means. How does this land for you who are playing a part in deciding the future of the children who live in this area? Warmly, Emily Niles Joy in the Mess Parenting 406.595.8337 Emily K. Niles, RMR, CRR Cell Phone: (406) 595-8337 2011 NCRA 2nd Place Overall Speed Competition http://www.ncra.org/About/content.cfm?ItemNumber=8618