Teaching Kids To Bounce Back at 'Last-Chance High' [KPLU.org]

This is important work...but I think we can do better. What we must do is stop treating the symptoms and instead tackle the abusers. If there were people out in the world infecting people with cancer---like we saw with smokers---they would be legally shut down. Why can't we do the same with abusive adults? Where are the laws that hold caregivers financially and criminally responsible for harming children? Long overdue. Let's put emotional abuse and negligence in the criminal code like the UK has done. We need to change the cause of suffering and stop only treating the symptoms. 

I believe that we can build caring, supportive, empowering classrooms and school communities that respond to student behavior with compassion, sensitivity and patience and a high regard for building student safety, self regulation skills and respect, without asking the ACES questions of every student.  These questions can be extremely intrusive and sometimes re-traumatizing to the student.  In addition to the effect on the student,  many school cultures do not have high standards of confidentiality and faculty don't always have the training to know how to handle the information.   Many of the trauma-informed skills and practices will also be very helpful to students who have mental health challenges common to children and teens, like ADHD, Anxiety and Depression.   Building faculty skills and a compassionate and caring school community doesn't require us to know the child's very personal trauma story. The focus can be more on how the child / teen is feeling in the present, and what is challenging or feeling unsafe for them right now.   I find that when the student feels enough trust and safety and respect from a caring adult / faculty member, the student will often share what they are ready to share of their trauma history on their own time and at their own pace.  From a therapeutic standpoint, I believe this is a much more trauma informed practice.