The ETSU Ballad Health Strong BRAIN Institute presents: Creating Trauma-Informed Middle and High Schools- Part 1

I read a children’s health academic state a fact, however unoriginal: “You have to pass a test to drive a car or to become a … citizen, but there’s no exam required to become a parent. And yet child abuse can stem from a lack of awareness about child development.” There’s so much to know and understand about child development (science) in order to properly/functionally rear a child to his/her full potential in life.

By not teaching child-development science to high school students, is it not as though we, societally, are implying that anyone can comfortably enough go forth with unconditionally bearing children with whatever minute amount, if any at all, of such vital knowledge they happen to have acquired over time? It’s like we will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to fully understand and appropriately nurture our children’s naturally developing minds and needs.

I can’t help wondering how many instances there have been wherein immense long-term suffering by children of dysfunctional rearing might have been prevented had the parent(s) received, as high school students, some crucial child development science education by way of mandatory curriculum. After all, dysfunctional and/or abusive parents, for example, may not have had the chance to be anything else due to their lack of such education and their own dysfunctional/abusive rearing as children.