Great article by Barbara J. King. An excerpt:
The biggest lesson that I've taken from Self-Reg is that when a child insists that a teacher's voice is harsh, or a restaurant or classroom is unbearably bright or loud, we need to recognize (even though we might not experience things that way at all) that the child is very probably not lying, exaggerating or trying to be oppositional. Instead, the child's biological sensitivities may make her exquisitely reactive in a way that triggers a constant cycle of over-arousal-crash-over-arousal as she tries to cope. That's where Self-Reg comes in, with strategies for regulating the out-of-whack nervous system.
It made me wonder if someday we will look back on the way our culture once responded to kids who are traumatized and stressed and shake our heads in horror? In the future, will we realize how much of what we have asked is near impossible? Will we feel then, as we do now, when we hear that left-handed children had their left hand tied down so they'd use the right one which was considered the "right" way to write?
Knowing that the left-handed kids were never wrong or non-compliant - just left-handed? Will we know that about children who have been traumatized and live in toxic stress and who can't simply self-regulate no matter how much they or others wish they would?
Who might have no idea what that even means, educationally or experientially?
This is a great article!
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