Reflections-Adversity, Trauma & Kids

Recently I was honored to spend the day with a group of administrators in North Carolina as we worked together for a day of learning about the interior world of the most troubled and troubling students in their schools.  I always feel extremely privileged to get to share and learn with others in our efforts to support young people who have experienced so much adversity in their lives.

Trauma Informed Care certainly has become a front and center topic in many areas of child care, metal heath as well as our schools. The spreading of the Adverse Childhood Experience’s or ACE’s study which was originally done by Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda between the years of 1995 and 1997 is finally coming into public awareness!! That’s over 23 years ago!!

I have heard it said that it takes about 20 years for new ideas to penetrate our school systems.  Yikes. We really do not have that kind of time. The kids are in front of us NOW!!

Most people you talk with about childhood adversity and trauma have a compassionate reaction. 

However, when adults working with these young people experience their "pain based behaviors" often we respond in less then helpful ways,

The ACE’s include 10 kinds of childhood trauma:

1. emotional abuse

2. physical abuse

3. sexual abuse

4. emotional neglect

5. physical neglect

6. absence of a parent though divorce, death or abandonment

7. a mother or stepmother who was treated violently

8. a household member who abused alcohol or drugs

9. a household member who was diagnosed with a mental illness

10. a household member who went to prison

These adversities impact the behavior of the children and youth we serve every day in our schools.

These are your most difficult kids. These are the young people who end up in our discipline systems with no change in their behavior.

Actually our interventions in most schools make things worse rather then better!

As I reflect on my day in North Carolina here are some of my reflections…….

1. Its People Not Programs:

Programs don’t create the mental and emotional wounds our students have; people do. Programs don’t heal the children and youth we are working with; people do! Relationships cause the harm; relationships are the cure.

2. Children and Youth- regardless of their surface behavior, need to be treated with deep respect and dignity. 

In 1990, Dr. Larry Brendtro, Dr. Martin Brokenleg, and Dr. Steve Van Bockern, Augustana College faculty, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, published Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future. The authors suggested that children who are often referred to as "alienated", "troubled" or "difficult" are at risk because they live in an environment that is hazardous - one that breeds discouragement. By contrast, an environment that promotes courage is one that fosters changes to meet the needs of the young person and society and subsequently reclaims youth at risk.

Our work is to create environments of deep respect and value of all the students we work with. Our most troubled and troubling students need to experience a re-claiming environment of Belonging, Mastery, Independence and Generosity with caring and supportive adults.

In an article titled The Science of Raising Courageous Kids,   Martin  Brokenleg  and Steve Van Bockern describe how different cultures see children.

The Lakota Sioux word for child is translated as “sacred being.”

Similar concepts have been identified in other tribal cultures worldwide.

The Maori term for children is translated as “gift of the gods.”

Herbert Vilakazi (1993), a Zulu professor of sociology, describes his culture’s respect for children:

A child is an embodiment and expression of beauty itself. Africans in Southern Africa say, “Ukuzala unkuzuelula amathambo.”

The mere sight of a child touches the very essence of our humanity. A child draws from within us the inclination and instinct for kindness, gentleness, generosity and love. Accordingly, there is nothing more revolting to our humanity than cruelty to children. These truths we knew at one time and, somehow, subsequently forgot.” (Vilakazi, 1993, p. 37)

3. Children and Youth need Love

Love is not the answer, but it’s an answer. Love is not enough, but it’s a lot.

Teachers and administrators can show love in many ways. We can learn to absorb an angry child’s hostility and fury with kindness and tenderness. We can learn to co-regulate our most out of control students and begin to problem solve with them in a positive fashion. Regulate-Relate & Reason rather then Nag-Threaten & Punish.

We can show our love by coming in to each day with a sense of renewal and hope after our challenging and tough days. We can show our love by simply being there for these young people day after day and seeing the strength they have to continue even as their surface behaviors continue to challenge us. We can be conscious to not make everything our students need something to be earned on a point sheet and that consistent deep caring matters. I keep in my mind a favorite from Mother Teresa :

 “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

4.  You do not need to be a therapist to be therapeutic. 

A synonym of the word therapeutic is healing.  Really anyone can be therapeutic with a child or young person.   

We can make relationships that are healing with all the people our students may come in contact with; teachers, custodians, administrator’s, bus drivers, coaches, cafeteria workers, guidance counselors and teachers’ aides. The potential list in endless.

 My mentor Dr. Nicholas Long has written about the therapeutic power of simple sustained kindness. Kindness is an important therapeutic intervention and is a critical to our efforts to reclaim troubled and troubling students. 

Dr. Long goes on to define staff kindness in this manner:

“Kindness is a behavior driven by the feeling of compassion. Compassion is an emotion that cannot be seen or touched, but can only be felt in our inner life. The feeling of compassion develops when we take seriously a troubled student’s stressful reality, including his or her emotional state and external circumstances. This ability to experience willfully and vicariously a student’s emotional turmoil is a definition of compassion. However, if we also act on this feeling of compassion in a helpful and caring way, this behavior becomes an act of kindness. An act of kindness is defined as any staff behavior that brings inner relief and comfort to a troubled student in a current state of distress.”

Michael Arlen has said: “One of the greatest acts of love is to pay attention”.

What great therapist do is listen. What great teachers and workers with troubled kids do is listen.  As Steven Covey states: Seek first to understand, then be understood. Listening provides the space for relationships of trust and respect to grow.

5. Be fast with things, slow with people. Trust is a critical ingredient when working with people and it cannot be built quickly. As Nicholas Hobbs wrote years ago:

1. Trust between the child and adult is essential, the foundation on which all other principles rest, the glue that holds teaching and learning together; the beginning point for re-education.
2. Time is an ally, working on the side of growth in a period of development when life has a tremendous forward thrust.

6. Anger and hostility is always a secondary emotion with troubled children and youth.

When students have angry out bursts it is not about us!  Underneath your most troubled and troubling student s anger is grief and sadness. These young people have experienced feelings of helplessness, rejections, humiliation, loss, abandonment and worthlessness, leading to a deep sense of shame or guilt. This is what experiencing adverse childhood experiences is, it is a FELT experience.

6. You can’t fix kids who are hurt by hurting them.

Punishment by definition is designed to cause pain! Punishment always looks backwards and always is done to another. Punishment simply does not work with kids who have already experienced significant pain. In fact, the surface behaviors you are trying to punish away are actually “pain based behaviors” defined as behaviors of children and youth already in pain.

7. Your most troubled children and youth are in a persistent state of alarm.

The troubled young people your serve and work with are hyper-vigilant. They needed to develop this to survive. Survival for victims is dependent on becoming finely tuned to the one who causes pain.Every troubled young person I have worked with had a uncanny way of quickly determining if adults around them are to safe. They can see underneath our surface behavior quickly and can spot a fake or phony adult from miles away.   They know real from fake at their gut level. Be real if you want to have a chance to impact their lives for they will certainly impact yours!

8. There is no cookbook for working with troubled children and youth

People are always asking for the exact way to be successful with these kids. All troubled kids have their very own and unique story. There is no manual for this work. There is a path.  That path can be learned.

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate; it’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture, or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated or a child humanized or dehumanized.” --Ginott

As always..do let me know what you think!