Uplifting stories

If I could research any topic in the early childhood field, what would I research?  I have a few topics that are near and dear to my hear. One would be autism research. What causes autism, what are the best ways to raise awareness, and acceptance.  The second is my current topic, what are the best methods to teach children that have experience trauma, and how best to work with the family.  What I image the outcomes to be is a better understand of autism, and better teaching methods to work with at risk children to help them see that they don't have to live like this, they can choose to stop the cycle and have better lives.

Personal Research Journey

My chosen topic is how to teach children who have experience trauma, primarily trauma due to parents drug problems. I chose this topic because it is an issue that I deal with personal and professionally. Three of my children are adopted, their birth mom is in and out of prison for drug related charges. Before I adopted them, it was common for them to go a whole weekend without food, because their birth mother sold their food stamp card for drugs. The kids deal with high anxiety, toxic stress, and feeling abandoned. I see similar situations in my classroom as well. Over half of my class last year were living with relatives or in foster care due to parents being in prison for drug realted charges. Several of the children came to school late and hungry. I use to keep snacks to feed these children when they arrived. Besides feeding them, what else can I do to help them?