Young people who have experienced trauma are literally living in a world of pain which shows in their challenging behavior. Unfortunately professionals and caregivers often react in ways that perpetuate conflict and pain. Effective intervention requires a deeper understanding on the origins and management of this pain-based behavior. - James P. Anglin
Your most difficult students, the young people who are extremely difficult to motivate and to manage are children in pain. We now know what living in environments of "toxic levels" of stress does to the human brain. Adverse Childhood experiences & Adverse Community Environments impact the brain in predictable ways.
As educators we must learn to see "underneath" the surface behavior of children and youth in pain.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, calls the diagnosis for this group of very troubled young people: Developmental Trauma Disorder.
“ As we organized our finding, we discovered a consistent profile:
- A pervasive pattern of dys-regulation
- Problems with attention and concentration and
- Difficulties getting along with themselves and others.
- These children’s moods and feelings rapidly shift from one extreme to another-from temper tantrums and panic to detachment, flatness, and dissociation.
- When they get upset (which was much of the time), they could neither calm themselves down nor describe what they were feeling.
- Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, over-sensitivity to touch or sound.
Being so agitated or shut down keeps them from being able to focus their attention and concentration. To relieve their tension, they engage in chronic masturbation, rocking, or self-harming activities ( biting, cutting, burning, and hitting themselves, pulling their hair out, picking at their skin until it bled ) It also leads to difficulties with language processing and fine-motor coordination.
Spending all their energy on staying in control, they usually have trouble paying attention to things, like school work, that are not directly relevant to survival, and their hyper-arousal makes them easily distracted.
Having been frequently ignored or abandoned leaves them clinging and needy; even with the people who have abused them. Having been chronically beaten, molested, and otherwise mistreated, they can not help but define themselves as defective and worthless. They come by their self-loathing, sense of defectiveness and worthlessness honestly.
Was it any surprise that they didn’t trust anyone? (The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk )
These are your most troubled and troubling children and youth.
Their brains have been bathed in toxic stress and they enter our schools and our classrooms in a "persistent state of alarm!!"
Unaware we often end up treating these young people's "pain based behaviors" with Pain based school discipline procedures!!
Another way: the path to Trauma Informed Support for Children and Youth is known!
We now know enough to begin to intentionally address these issues in our schools!! We can no longer keep doing what we have been doing and somehow expecting a different result!
The Steps to creating Trauma Informed Supports- From Echo Parenting
Step 1: Is to create SAFETY!!
When children and youth begin to act out their emotions are contagious and we must learn to provide emotional first aide to students and not be come part of the problem. Learning the skill of the Conflict Cycle can be a great place to start.
The Skill of the Conflict Cycle can be a schools first step in moving toward trauma informed supports for children and youth and all staff... from teachers to secretarial support staff, custodians, cafeteria personnel ..... need to learn this skill!!
The conflict cycle is the beginning steps to be able to learn to shift our discipline procedures toward calming supports rather then escalating punishments!!
We must begin to learn to co-regulate the brains of children in pain!
Let me know what you think!
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