Reclaiming the Love of Learning

Reclaiming the Love for Learning   Children are vulnerable. In an optimal environment, they are not expected to experience this vulnerability until later in life when their minds and nervous systems are equipped to handle elevated levels of fear, stress, and overwhelm. Yet, the key phrase here is "optimal environment." Unfortunately, we live in the "real" world, so children will often find themselves in situations that are far from the optimal and the result can be childhood trauma.

Childhood trauma happens at both the emotional and psychological level and it can have a negative impact on the child's developmental process. During a traumatic event (abuse, neglect, adoption, accidents, birth trauma, etc.), the lifelong impact is even greater if the child believes he powerless, helpless, and hopeless. When a child experiences one or all of these feelings, he begins to believe the world is dangerous. Repeated experiences of these feelings will create a lasting imprint from which he operates and behaves. A framework based in fear and survival becomes the child's viewpoint of the world around him. These early life experiences then influence the child's ability to "behave," or more correctly expressed, the child's ability to stay "regulated." Trauma impacts a child's ability to stay calm, balanced, and oriented. Instead, children with traumatic histories often find themselves in a "dysregulated" state, which manifests into a child who does not behave, cannot focus, and/or lacks motivation. It is not a matter of choice or a matter of "good" child verses "bad" child; it is simply an imprint from the child's past history. It's the child's new normal. When working with children like this in the classroom, the most effective way to work with them is to work at the level of regulation, relationship, and emotional safety instead of at the level of behavior. These children's issues are not behavioral; they are regulatory. Working at the level of regulation, relationship, and emotional safety addresses more deeply critical forces within these children that go far beyond the exchanges of language, choices, stars, and sticker charts. Traditional disciplinary techniques focus on altering the left hemisphere through language, logic, and cognitive thinking. These approaches are ineffective because the regulatory system is altered more effectively through a different part of the brain known as the limbic system. The limbic system operates at the emotional level, not at the logical level. Therefore, we must work to regulate these children at the level of the limbic system, which happens most easily through the context of human connection. When the teacher says to a non-traumatized child, "Andy, can you please settle down and quietly have a seat?" Andy has the internal regulatory ability to respond appropriately to his teacher because trauma has not interrupted his developmental maturation of developing self-regulation tools and feeling like he is safe in the world. However, when Billy (the traumatized child) is asked the same question, his response is much different. He takes the long way around the classroom to his seat, he continues to not only talk but projects his voice across the room as if he is still out in the playground, and once seated continues to squirm and wiggle. Traditionally, we have interpreted Billy as a disruptive child, pasted the label ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) onto him, and reprimanded him for his "naughty" behavior. What we have failed to see is that Billy cannot settle down on his own. His internal system has not experienced the appropriate patterning to know how to be well behaved like his classmate Andy and Billy does not know he is safe in this world, even if he is now in a safe environment. The brain-body system is a pattern-matching machine. A child with little internal self-control will pattern himself according to his past external experiences. If his past experiences have been chaotic, disruptive, and overwhelming (trauma), he will continue acting this way until new patterns are established. Thus, a child coming into a calm and safe classroom is still likely to be acting as if he is in his previous chaotic and unsafe environment. A child can be taken out of trauma but not so easily can the trauma be taken out of the child. Past patterns of chaos are now the current framework for navigating his world; he knows no different. The most effective way to change these patterns comes through safe, nurturing, attuned, and strong human connection. For the student in the classroom, it comes through the teacher-student relationship. The reality is, for our traumatized children to learn and achieve academically, science is showing that they must be engaged at the relational level prior to any academic learning. Press on,

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Dare to Love, and Help for Billy.

Celebrate and Stop the Crazy Loop

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 Q: I have a 15-year-old son who has established a pattern of running away. I've been advised to call the police when this occurs. What do you suggest?

 A:  Running away is indicative of a child who has entered a fear state. When we, and all animals in the animals become threatened, we go into a primitive response called the "Fight or Flight" response. It is an inborn genetic response, which helps to protect us; it is a survival response.

With this understanding, it perplexes me to think that calling the police on a child in this survival response pattern would ever be recommended. Why would you call out the police to address a child who is simply acting from his body's primitive, automatic, inborn response? Your child is acting from an unconscious level. It isn't a conscious response. It is an unconscious reaction. Addressing it from an authoritarian and fear based approach will only keep your child in this pattern; hence, you described it as an "established pattern."

We have somehow come to believe that we can force change by provoking fear and threat. This is completely unnatural. Have you ever seen nature force a seedling to grow? This is a choice that has to come from an internal place from within that person.

To give such advice about sending the police is an example of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result (this of course, is the definition of insanity). Statistics reveal that more than one in 100 adults in the United States have been in jail or prison. This is an all time high. When are we going to realize that this isn't working?

Our own fear keeps us in a constricted place, locked in from seeing other alternatives. Fear keeps us in a loop of trying harder, "upping the ante," and driving more consequences in order to get our children to behave and to be compliant.

Here is the traditional parenting crazy loop: 

-       For young children, we start by picking them up and putting them in the time-out chair.

-       When they get too old to sit in time out, we began removing privileges in order to get them to comply.

-       When this becomes ineffective with a "whatever" response from them, we increase the stakes and ground them for a week.

-       Finally, as teenagers, they realized they had the ability to just leave and run away.

-       Then we call in the big guns and call the police.

None of the craziness above is effective in the long-term, and only limited in the short-term.

This problem is, love has not been a part of the solution…that is why the cycle has continued. If you want to end the cyclical turmoil in a family, put love into action. Unfortunately, many of us have no blueprint for what this looks like, so it challenges us at a deep level to consider that it would actually work.

The next time your son runs away (and I also suggest looking closely at the circumstances that led up to this event and determine how much fear from both you and him contributed to the situation), I want you to plan a celebration for his return. Instead of calling the police, call the caterer! Seriously, bake a cake or some cookies. Make a banner that says, "Welcome home, son. We missed you."

When a child returns, what we typically do is dump our fear onto the child. Instead of saying, "I was scared for you," we say, "How dare you leave this house and not tell us where you were going!" We need to realize that it took a tremendous amount of courage for the child to walk back into that door, knowing the parent was going to lecture him about everything he had done wrong.

Put love into action when he walks in the next time. "Son, I'm so glad you're home. We missed you." It takes putting your fear aside and getting down to your core feelings. You did miss him. You are glad he is home. Let him know how special he is in your life. If you've lost these loving feelings towards your child due to the intense dysregulation going on, revisit pictures of when he was younger and when times were calmer and more pleasant. Get yourself back into a loving place with him.

Later in the day, take the time to be with your child and listen to him. Talk about what it is that drives him to leave. Really listen to him. Give him space to voice himself. Stay out of being defensive. Know that when he feels heard, he will be able to hear you. When you give him the gift of being understood, you then can take the opportunity to express your fear. "I just get so scared when you leave. When I don't know where you are, I can't do anything to help you at that point.  I also can’t do my ultimate job for you as a parent, and that is to keep you safe."

Be courageous enough to try something different. You have the capacity to interrupt the negative loop and to change this established pattern with your child. It takes trusting that love never fails.

More parenting solutions can be found at:
http://www.beyondconsequences.com/archive.html