How exposure to trauma affects child development
The development of children and adolescents who have been exposed to trauma compared to those who haven’t is different.
Children and adolescents without traumatic exposure can achieve survival and emotional and behavioral control, allowing them to flourish and succeed socially, emotionally, and cognitively.
However, children and adolescents exposed to trauma find it challenging to achieve at school due to their heightened state of arousal and real or perceived concerns about their safety and security.
The primary mission of schools is to support students in educational achievement. To reach this goal, children must feel safe, supported, and ready to learn. Children exposed to violence and trauma may not feel safe or ready to learn. Not only are individual children affected by traumatic experiences, but other students, the adults on campus, and the school community can be impacted by interacting or working with a child who has experienced trauma. Thus, as schools maintain their critical focus on education and achievement, they must also acknowledge that mental health and wellness are innately connected to students’ success in the classroom and to a thriving school environment.
Why All Schools Should be Trauma-Informed – Video
Child Trauma Toolkit for Educators
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Five principles of trauma-informed care
1. Family belonging, engagement and attachment
Models of trauma-informed practice show the importance of educators, family members/carers, and health professionals collaborating to support children and adolescents who have experienced trauma.
Collaboration between educators and family members/carers can increase consistency and routines across home and educational settings. This improves a child's sense of safety and security, and limits triggers associated with the fight-or-flight stress response.
Triggers
Common triggers for trauma-exposed children and adolescents include:
- a perceived loss of control
- anxiety around changes in routine
- fear of disappointing or upsetting others
- unexpected events, sounds, sights, and activities.
Family belonging, engagement, and attachment, as well as other approaches to trauma-informed care, can help reduce these triggers. It also helps to identify triggers specific to the individual child or adolescent. This can occur through observation in the learning setting, and through consultation and collaboration between educators, family members/carers, and health professionals.
2. School belonging, engagement, and attachment
Behavior-specific praise (using the child’s name, naming the correct behavior, and prompting the child to behave in that way in the future), as well as the principles of unconditional positive regard, consistency, and empathy between learners and educators, are used to improve a child’s sense of safety and security in the school setting, and to limit triggers associated with the fight-or-flight stress response.
All of the principles detailed here are also used to increase the learner’s sense of belonging, connectedness, and engagement in education services.
3. Emotion identification, regulation, and expression
The approach of emotional awareness and regulation targets the capacity of children and youth to identify and regulate their own emotions, and also their capacity to identify and notice the impact of their emotions and behavior on others.
Learners who have been exposed to trauma require more neutral and less punitive prompts to help them to identify their own emotions and the emotions of others and to identify and use specific strategies that will help them to regulate their emotions in learning settings.
4. Predictable routines, rhythm, and consistency
Creating routines, rhythm, and consistency in the educational setting is achieved through:
- using visual schedules and verbal reminders around these visual schedules
- instructing and prompting learners during transitions
- using reward charts and token systems
- allowing repetitive activities and self-regulation through movement.
Modeling, practice, and behavior-specific praise around routines are also important.
5. Development of strengths, identity, and choice
Children and young people who have been exposed to trauma are more likely to have impaired self-esteem and negative views about themselves and the safety of the world and those around them.
The principle of collaboration and choice provides these children and adolescents with the opportunity to have some control of their environment and to develop their identity and sense of achievement.
Collaboration involves developing well-defined and achievable short-term and longer-term goals which the child or adolescent can approach one by one and step by step. These goals are typically incremental and consider the delayed cognitive, social, and emotional development and psychological concerns of children and adolescents who have been exposed to trauma.
Source: https://www.monash.edu/education/teachspace/articles/five-approaches-for-creating-trauma-informed-classrooms
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