Center For Healing Childhood Trauma

My child glanced back at me and then reached over, grabbed your hand, and kissed it. You smiled down at her, and I could read your mind: “What a sweet and loving child.”

I also knew exactly how wrong this whole situation was because my child was looking up at you and reaching for your fingers to survive.

“My child does not trust or rely on relationships around her.” 

Starting a school year in a new town has given me the job of teaching those who work with my children exactly what early childhood trauma can do to the developing brain, something essential to understanding trauma informed care. In children, prolonged periods of stress or trauma cause internal reactions that change the body and brain. They are literally wired to survive, and even when the trauma and stress are gone, they continue to respond and react as if the trauma is still present. The younger the brain, the more susceptible to trauma.

Trauma in the lives of young children is not always understood, and so caretakers cannot always provide trauma informed care. Within the classroom, children respond in ways that can mimic other problems, including ADHD/ADD and other behavior disorders. You might see:

• Trouble forming relationships with teachers or peers

• Poor self-regulation

• Negative thinking

• Hypervigilance

• Executive function issues

These problems stem from a brain that has learned to survive in life-or-death situations. And what must be understood is that a child whose brain is constantly scanning the environment for danger is not learning or trusting. The hard part of trauma informed care in schools is understanding that danger lies in any new or novel concept that is introduced. This is why transitions and changes in routine are so hard for my children. Their brain is sounding the alarm that the worst thing that ever happened is about to happen again.

When the brain is threatened, it gets really bad at making choices that don’t include survival. If a bear were to run into your classroom, my kid could probably survive. The problem occurs when you introduce a transition or a new concept, and my kid is still looking for the bear. In these moments, you will see a child with poor self-regulation and behavioral problems.

The natural inclination as a teacher will be to correct and/or punish this behavior. We tend to use rewards and consequences within the classroom setting. Unfortunately, my brain does not care if you give me a sticker or put me in timeout because a bear in the classroom trumps everything. Predictability is how I know I will be safe. I don’t have a regulatory system that can handle the stress that comes from unpredictability. When I can’t predict what is going to happen, I will unconsciously start looking for the bear.

My kids from hard places have a diagnosis called complex trauma. My children need this label to be understood and recognized because it is how they survive. If you are a teacher or you work in any capacity with children, then you are working with children with this same diagnosis. You have to understand trauma informed care.

My children have rules about relationships that are built on terror, neglect, and abandonment. Their memories are small reminders of how dangerous this world can be. Even if they cannot remember or verbally process what happened, their bodies have stored it. The world is not a safe place where needs are met, and adults cannot be trusted.

“My child has stopped trusting and believing in others.”

Infants and children are wired to need adults in order to survive. Children who have experienced trauma have been hurt by the very people who were meant to keep them safe. This can lead to negative thinking, a negative mental narrative, and shame.

Traumatized kids also tend to develop what Dr. Howard calls “hostile attribution bias:”: the idea that everyone is out to get them.

As a teacher, you feel like your tone and words are neutral, but they actually hear them as negative. The greater the overreaction to your neutral, the deeper they live within fear and shame.

Children from hard places need trauma informed care. They need to be met at their developmental level. They need tiny successes and to hear that mistakes are stepping stones to learning. You might have an 8th grader who has the cognitive skills of a first grader and the attention span of a preschooler. Adjust your expectations and meet them at their lowest level. You would not expect a preschooler to sit still for an hour and complete a lengthy assignment. Allow for movement, and give the child work that is at his or her cognitive and emotional level.

A child’s greatest need is relationship. They need to know that you care in spite of their scary behaviors and feelings. But the hardest part is that to provide trauma informed care, you need to be a behavior detective and ask the “why” behind the behavior. Behind every scary behavior is an unmet need, and this will answer the “why”.

• The student who angrily pushed all the papers off their desk and yelled, “I hate you, f**k off,” did not do that because he is a bad kid. A behavior detective learns that he has been in foster care for 18 months and is in his fourth foster home.

• The child whom you just met who reached up and kissed your hand did not do that because she is so loving.  A behavior detective understands that she did this because her brain was wired to survive in an orphanage by being charming and cute.

In these behavior moments, the brain searches for a bear during what it deems an unsafe situation. You can show your student safety through predictability, routine, and tiny successes, not through rewards and consequences. You should never punish a child for a behavior born of survival. You are literally punishing an adaptation to extreme stress.

“Caring adults act as resources that keep track of a child’s moods, their beliefs, and their qualities,” according to the Australian Childhood Foundation. “Safe and reliable relationships are the backup discs for children and young people when their own memory storage units have failed.”

At the end of your classroom day, you will send my child home. My hope is that with each passing day, they will learn to thrive at school, not just survive. I hope that they will find safety and security in your classroom.

Here’s how you can provide trauma informed care in schools and help keep the bear out of your room:

• Teach to the emotional age, not the chronological age. Meet the student where they are at that moment.

• Consider all extreme behavior within the context of survival to better understand, “Why does he keep doing that?”

• Maintain repetition and routine. With every positive experience, the impact on the brain grows.

• Understand that traumatized children expect the worst and focus on the negative.

• Know that childhood neglect is the most damaging trauma. Never threaten their basic needs, or all they will think about will be survival.

• Know that when the child was abused, the brain became focused on survival, not learning. Pay extra attention to the development the child missed due to this abuse.

• Understand that traumatized children often score lower than their true ability on IQ tests. Retest when their environment is helping them heal, and watch the scores go up.

• Promote play with traumatized children.  Play is very healing to the brain and emotions.

• Don’t give up hope! The human brain is capable of healing in ways we do not yet understand.  It may be a long road to healing, and the child may not get there while still in your classroom, but every situation makes a difference. (excerpts from Traumatic Experience and the Brain, A Handbook for Understanding and Treating Those Traumatized as Children.) 

If you’d like to learn more about trauma informed care, explore Lost Sparrows, our charity, which offers resources for foster and adoptive parents.

Our Center for Healing Childhood Trauma provides online video lessons about early childhood trauma and adversity. You can choose which topics you’d like to cover and which speakers you’d like to hear.

Learn more about our resources for adoptive parents, such as our monthly support group and our annual Lost Sparrows Trauma Conference.

Written by Stacey Gagnon (2019)