As so many disturbing and traumatic events involving children have been covered by the media recently - it caused me to reflect on my own journey of becoming trauma-informed. Now that I know what I know, I cannot view such stories in a trauma-uninformed way. I've found myself in discussions with others who may, or may not be, trauma-informed. It turns out this one factor predictably correlates with the type of conversation that ensues around any topic covered by the media where children experience trauma.
In reality, there was a point in time that I was not trauma-informed - and something changed in my personal world that dramatically transformed my professional world. I suppose looking back I am grateful for a personal set-back that lead to such profound professional growth - but my preference now would be that the learning experience I acquired through personal circumstances could be experienced as normative training for all educators through more conventional means such as pre-service training and ongoing professional development opportunities.
Sadist of me, you wonder? Far from it. Allow me to explain.
I wanted to share a resource that I have found very helpful when trying to explain a number of concepts pertaining to "trauma-informed care" to parents, educators, and school administrators. I learned about this resource as my wife/I had pursued an adoption process that eventually did not occur. As you can imagine this was an intensely personal, and painful, process. To simply say it did not occur or "the adoption fell through" does not do it justice - not even close. That said, the pain, tears and agony of "losing an adoption" process bore such fruit in my, and my wife's, professional mindset around children "from hard places" that we can now point back to it as a watershed moment for us as professional educators and as parents to our biological children.
Along our "adoption journey" we learned a great deal about attachment, child resiliency, parenting styles, stress, neuro-development, and the impacts of adverse childhood experiences. While both my wife and I had served as special education teachers professionally and have/do teach at the collegiate level, we found that some of the richest learning experiences we have ever had were through engaging the research/literature around these non-traditional PreK-12 topics.
Our pre-service teacher preparation training was excellent - but did not articulate much of what could not have been articulated at that time yet we need to know today to be effective professionals. What I now recognize as being supported by research was merely a research interest of some at that point in time. Though I now can now hold out a single, concise article that encapsulates much of my own learning over the past 4-5 years, this type of resource was not in existence (or accessible to me) 20 years ago as I matriculated through pre-service education training. In part, that is why I am forwarding it to others here. I seem to glean something from each time I re-read it, and have known others who express that same sentiment.
Between the years of 2006-2014 (8 years) I served as a central office administrator in a great community in rural Washington State where - in recent years - a growing number of local families were completing local and international adoption processes. In a many cases, families completed the adoption process (ie, bringing their child home) only to learn that the school system was not nearly as ready for their child as their newly adoptive parent was.
Since I had just traveled down that road as far as I could as a non-adoptive parent, I felt I was in a unique position to assist families to make sense of schools, and schools to make sense of adoptive parents. Of course, the goal was always to help the child to make sense of their own needs and design learning conditions conducive to learning at all times. Often, as children matriculated into our school system there were adjustments, challenges, and in some cases significant concerns over what level of supports children needed in order to experience success. It was my role as Director of Special Programs to help "broker shared understanding" between well-intentioned and loving adoptive parents and well-intentioned and caring professionals. This, my friends, is far easier said than done.
As someone who was familiar with the work being conducted by Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross at Texas Christian University's (TCU) Institute for Child Development, I was often able to recall key concepts articulated in their writings. A number of resources can be accessed on the TCU website, some of which I've found parents greatly appreciate: http://www.child.tcu.edu/research.asp
One short article in particular (attached), Caught Between the Amygdala and a Hard Place, supported my own learning process so profoundly that I started sharing informally the concepts contained within it as situations arose. I would offer it (ie, email it or refer to it) to both adoptive parents and colleagues alike when I noticed tensions mounting while contending with layers of complexity reflected in the situation. In a number of cases where situations improved, both parents and colleagues could point back to a point in time where they had an "aha!" moment - and could attribute their new found perspective was based on "that article you gave me."
While there are a number of implications within this article - and it is a very easy read - there are few sections that jumped off of the page for me. One such section can be found at the bottom of page 4 as Dr's Purvis and Cross explain that their research findings address the damage inflicted through trauma and neglect. A scenario is described where an adopted child - whom the parent knows is safe - is exhibiting what any rational person might describe as irrational or "crazy" behaviors given how safe the child really is.
That said, a simple but profound summary of what may be occurring in the child is illustrative (pg. 2):
Episodes like this can be easily generated in children who have come from hard places with backgrounds of abuse, neglect or trauma. Many of them experience chronic activation of the fear-alarm system with its Fight, Flight or Freeze responses and are driven by primitive brain structures like the amygdala. These responses, intended for activation only during crisis situations, can become chronic – and in that state, the amygdala is a cruel taskmaster. The amygdala is responsible for activation of the sympathetic nervous system (Flight, Fight, Freeze!) and the release of adrenaline and other stress hormones. It is also involved in learning and memory about emotionally charged experiences – causing many childhood traumas to become seared in the memory of these at-risk children. Although they have been removed physically from the hard places, they live in a world of unseen and shadowy danger – and are always on guard! They are caught between the amygdala and a hard place.
(my emphasis added)
While there are a number of important points in that short passage, its power is in its simplicity. In my work as a Director of Special Programs I was often approached by either the adoptive parent(s) or my colleagues with the question, "Do you think this child has a disability?" Under even the best of conditions that can be a very complex determination and involved process, and this is only magnified when neither the adoptive parent nor the school professionals have much information from which to draw from.
In classic special education terms we could see the "forms" of the behavior (e.g., outward kicking, shoving, biting, yelling, aggression) but we often struggled with what the "function" was. With little to go on in most cases, we concluded that regardless of the "forms" of the behaviors that the "function" of the behaviors were attempts on the part of the child to achieve "safety" based on perceived psychological, emotional internal experiences and not based on any external physical threat to the child. This is where the article again proved useful (pg 7):
We encourage parents to watch for signs that their child is caught between the amygdala and a hard place. Physiological symptoms of Fight, Flight or Freeze include pupil dilation, stiffening of the muscles, and shallow breathing. In these situations, disarming the amygdala can diffuse the behavioral explosion. Diverting the child, redirecting them, or using other techniques mentioned below, such as helping your child “use their words” (not their behavior) to tell you what they feel and need, or stopping for a time-out together (a nutritious snack or brisk walk) at the first sign of behavioral deterioration will help redirect your child toward more acceptable behaviors.
(emphasis mine)
The article summarized in a few sentences the fact that for many children their brains are in survival mode to such degrees and for such prolonged periods of time before they ever have words to express their needs - that it is vital that we view their behavior as their way of telling us they have needs. Behavior is the brain's most primitive language - and it is only as children learn symbolic language, social conventions, and new and more fruitful strategies - are they able to adapt to new situations and still get their needs met efficiently.
Perhaps the greatest breakthroughs occurred as adoptive parents and school personnel formed a unified team around a child - a circle of advocates - that the most productive conversations occurred. What once seemed illusive and the source of only confusion and frustration had born the fruit of passion, collaboration, and communication between parents and professionals. But how exactly did that transformation take place? At what point did empathy and compassion overtake confusion and chaos?
(pg 3)
Our research, as well as the research of others, has identified numerous risk factors that cause these children to appear emotionally unstable. The two driving goals of our past ten years have been, first, the development of research-based interventions that address root causes of this maladaptive behavior and second, to empower parents to become healers in the lives of these children from the hard places. We can never be quite certain how many risk factors our children have faced before they came to the safety of our homes, but the list potential risks is long. Exposure to toxic substance in utero (e.g., drugs and alcohol), the absence of prenatal care, prenatal malnutrition, prematurity, low birth weight, birth complications, abuse, neglect and trauma are only a few of the risks our children may have experienced. These risk factors singly or in combination present a formidable foe against a small, vulnerable child.
Seen through this "root cause" lens, I could visibly see the empathy levels of both adoptive and professional care givers increase dramatically. In short, we were now open to the idea that the behaviors of the child were not the result of active perpetration by a child who was our equal combatant - but rather, were symptomatic of a child stalked by a "formidable foe" who lurked within and could strike seemingly in the absence of any ostensible trigger. Simply put, the child need a circle of care givers not adults engaging in a complex "blame game" which confounded communication and compounded levels of stress for all.
The result of this paradigm shift was true empathy for what must have happened to that child. Instead of looking for convenient and traditional labels we started contending with the complexities the child was facing. Instead of adults on one side of their life facing the child, we were now standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with that child as an ally and legion of learners with a singular focus of designed what would work better for that child. We had moved from being covert and overt adversaries to being allies determined to understand and meet that child's social, psychological, emotional and academic needs.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, my own personally greatest "aha!" moment was when I more clearly understood how a child who was "only" experiencing neglect might be just as vulnerable as any child having experienced trauma. Consider the following:
This birthright of a child is to be held tenderly while parents count tiny fingers, tickle toes and play games like peek-a-boo. Safe infants learn to communicate their needs long before they have words to do so. They develop a sense of self-efficacy when they communicate needs by crying and a parent responds quickly. These losses occur not only for children who were harmed by profound abuse and trauma, but also for children who were “only” neglected.
The message of abuse is “I don’t like you.” The message of neglect is “You don’t exist.” In both cases shame is buried at the core of what should be a child’s sense of their preciousness.
(my emphasis added)
The impact of these words were like a password that helped me crack the proverbial "secret code" in my work with so many children who had shut down, tuned out, turned away from "school" in any number of covert ways, and simply vanished. Long before they "dropped out" they had experienced a world over a period of years that conveyed to them - "you don't matter - you don't exist." Dropping out - suicide - drug addition - excessive truancy - these were all the outward symptoms of an inward reality. In the absence of a trauma that could be pointed to - I was now completely open to the idea that their otherwise irrational behavior may well have been a very rational -though tragic - effort to ameliorate their experience of profound neglect that had gone unnoticed.
It also opened me up to the idea that "neglect" didn't just show up looking unkept, "dirty" or in stereotypical ways - but quite the opposite. I was now open to the possibility that many students who were otherwise affluent, buttoned down, well-heeled and capable simply disappeared covertly through their school experience over a period of years as a result of various forms of neglect. They were well-heeled, but not well-held or subsequently well-healed.
Perhaps this was patently obvious to others - but it was truly news to me.
Often in my work there would be breakthroughs where parents and their adopted child would connect in deep ways that would serve as cause for celebration for parents and professionals alike. In virtually all cases this formation of healthy attachment between children and their adoptive parents was directly correlated with the adoptive parents' relentless pursuit of attachment in spite of evidence to the contrary. This is touched on briefly in the article - but was pure parenting gold when it could be observed by school staff:
(from pg 7)
Recognizing that most aberrant behavior is driven by fear helps parents become advocates for their child. It is now, you and your child working together against their history of harm, rather than you and your child working against each other!
(emphasis added)
Perhaps it is now very clear why I felt the need to share this brief article with parents and colleagues as they each tried to make sense of what looked like "crazy" behaviors from an adopted child. It might also now be obvious why I shared it with school personnel willing to better understand what looked like "crazy" behavior on the part of adoptive parents! Perhaps it is a resource that you might find useful either for personal clarity, or in those times when you simply need to share something with a friend, parent, colleague, or government official who is wrestling with the complexity of a situation.
This article, like so many others shared within the movement, is worth reading, re-reading, (and re-re-reading) as well as forwarding. It has been like a salve for me on many occasions and I hope that it offers to you and others what it has provided for me.
Steve Dahl
