“One doesn’t “just get over” some things”
This is a great article on the issues with schools and school staff NOT being trauma informed, trauma sensitive and trauma responsive.
Trauma stays in the body. No one knows who has a trauma history. Unfortunately what we have learned from the ACES study, which is
“is one of the largest investigations of childhood abuse and neglect and household challenges and later-life health and well-being.
The original ACE Study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente from 1995 to 1997 with two waves of data collection. Over 17,000 Health Maintenance Organization members from Southern California receiving physical exams completed confidential surveys regarding their childhood experiences and current health status and behaviors.” Source CDC.gov
“The findings are important medically, socially, and economically: They provide remarkable insight into how we become what we are as individuals and as a nation. The ACE Study reveals a powerful relation between our emotional experiences as children and our adult emotional health, physical health, and major causes of mortality in the United States. Moreover, the time factors in the study make it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle-class Americans. One doesn’t “just get over” some things.”-Journal ListPerm Jv.6(1); Winter 2002PMC6220625
Dr. Ablon is Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Founder and Director of Think:Kids at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an author.
School Discipline is Trauma-Insensitive and Trauma-Uninformed- by Dr. Ablon
Why change is needed to meet the needs of students exposed to trauma
“.....schools often still rely heavily on punitive school disciplinary strategies
Students who exhibit challenging behavior are often the students with trauma histories because being exposed to chronic stress or trauma delays brain development, causing lags in skill development which in turn result in challenging behaviors. No wonder traditional school discipline doesn’t work with traumatized students: motivational strategies don’t teach students the neurocognitive skills they lack.
.....traditional school discipline revolves around rewarding students when they do what we want and revoking privileges when they don’t: a toxic dynamic that many traumatized kids are already all too familiar with in their past relationships with adults. In other words, traditional school disciplinary strategies are about as trauma-uninformed and trauma-insensitive as it gets!”- Dr. Stuart Ablon.
How we discipline kids matters. Are we trying to “teach” kids or do we just want to see them feel bad and experience something negative? This makes no sense if we don’t start treating kids, all kids because we do not know who has trauma history and we cannot risk causing further trauma to kids who need support and our connection above everything. Yes, even our more challenging kids. Remember, kids do well if they can. What lies underneath the behavior we see is what we must figure out. The child is communicating in the only way they know how in that moment. That’s it. If we shift our mindset to seeing kids who have challenging behaviors as kids who need our support, need to feel safe, need our connection, and do not have the skill set to communicate in a more appropriate way in that moment, we SEE a different kid and we share our compassion and co regulation which they FEEL!
The ACES study has shown us how common adverse experiences are in kids. Trauma lives in the body. When a child has traumatic experiences even if they don’t have memory of it, their bodies hang onto it.
We can help all kids if we just see them as needing our help. That’s it! Punitive punishments do not help kids. Punitive measures, isolation, seclusion, and many other common forms of punishments are meant to be negative and harsh and kids do not learn anything from them. We know better. It is time to do better for our kids.
