2012年3月4日 星期日

Delivering on a Promise Or Just Politics As Usual?


If we are to deliver on our promise of 'no child left behind' then we need to rethink what we are doing. In order to deliver on this promise we need to integrate knowledge from neuroscience, attachment, cultural conditioning and family systems into the fabric of our educational system. We need to understand ourselves from this context first and then apply it to how to successfully educate our children no matter what educational issues they have. We need to apply this knowledge from a context of intervention and prevention depending on the need. When we have this understanding we will recognize that the challenging behaviors in children are a wail for love and a cry for help. We will understand that their behaviors are communication from a dysregulated brain and nervous system that will interfere in their ability to learn no matter how much they want to do so.

Neuroscience research has shown that when the brainbody is overwhelmed by stress or trauma the person stays in an ongoing low level state of survival manifesting as hypo or hyper arousal behaviors. Hypoaroused children are the quiet, shut down, depressed and defiantly reactive children. Hyperaroused children are the loud, reactive and aggressive children. Both interfere in their ability to take in, remember and recall learning. Their behaviors are seen as coming from some pathology or genetic chemical imbalance but their trauma histories or environmental influences are not considered. Their reactions are not viewed as survival reactions gone awry. Often they get medicated but then have problems with the medication so are given more medications for what is perceived as 'side affects'. This begins a downward spiraling process of medication mismanagement that more often than not does not help their learning or emotional and social development.

We need to understand that behind these hypo and hyper aroused behaviors is a child frozen in fear and when triggered comes out fighting or fleeing from the adults they don't believe will help them. This is a natural response to threat from a body stuck in survival not a diseased child or a child that is broken. We have too many children stuck in survival mode that over time due to chronic unrelenting stress will manifest physical and chemical changes in their brainbody system that will affect their mental and physical health. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 85% of illness is due to ongoing chronic stress. It is estimated that stress can change about 1400 chemical processes in the body and alter 30 neurotransmitters and hormones. Yet we continue to not look at a child's trauma history or discount the impact it is having on behavior and medicate for ADD, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Bipolar. We do not understand that a regulatory problem is driving the behavior. We only look if someone else in the family had these disorders. Stress and traumatic behaviors are intergenerational. They are passed on by caregivers emotionally reactive behaviors creating an environment that wires their children for dysregulation. Neuroscience research clearly shows us a different way.

Our society has been spiraling out of regulatory control for years and hopefully we are at the apex where we can wake up, find our pause button, and begin to take a different type of re-sponse-ability to make some changes. Children who have these regulatory problems are children who need understanding regulated adults. The adults need to provide a sphere of safety to rewire their brains and nervous systems to a more regulated place. We know that the brain has neuroplasticity which means the brain can change life long.

Adults need to understand that their brainbody creates an energy that creates the environment for good or ill for children. Children can feel whether the teacher likes another child and not them. We can put a smile on our faces but our neurophysiology is what is felt. Sensitive children feel this as a rejection and do not feel safe. They will be less compliant and more on edge with this teacher. Their already over reactive, on edge amygdale's will be easily triggered. When they have a regulated teacher it will still take positive experience and repetition over time to feel safe enough for their brainbody to stay regulated. There will be episodes of dyregulated behaviors which for some are perceived as a conscious attempt to gain power and control, attention or testing. Call it what you will these behaviors come from an unconscious not consciously chosen place within the child. Triggers can be anything that comes through the sensory pathways. Neither the child nor the teacher may know at first what the triggers are, but over time they will begin to be revealed. In my experience one of the main triggers is transitions. In my experience with dysregulated children a transition can be going to the bathroom, lunch, and recess or making a request for a change in behavior. These appear to be the stressful times where reactive behaviors transpire. With this knowledge a sensitive teacher can help by containing the child through physical presence, having them walk beside them or giving them a few minutes notice about what is going to happen. This simple and not time consuming behavior on the part of a regulated adult can be helpful in regulating an easily triggered child and possibly avoid a meltdown.

We need to understand that we need to treat the brainbody to help the mind learn and develop. All children in the United States (and the world) need to be able to have access to physical, occupational, speech and psychological therapist to help them heal, learn to self-regulate and develop their arrested emotional, social and cognitive processes. In order to understand the value of this adults' need to understand their own brainbody process and regulate themselves. Though a rigorous and difficult undertaking it is doable and worth the effort. We need to make education a place where we can integrate the whole child not just their intellect.

If we want violence to decrease, if we want children to grow up to become contributing members of a more regulated society we need to 'get it' and 'get it' now, not later, now. It is not an over emotional statement that if we do not devote our time, money and talents into making a safer world for our children then as we age the world becomes more unsafe for us. The children left behind may become the adults who care for our most vulnerable (children and the elderly). We will one day be the elderly. We may be fragile and ill. We may be dependent on others to help meet our needs. How will they know compassion, patience, regulation and empathy if they don't experience it? Too many of our children are not getting their emotion needs met. We know that experience changes the brain. We know that we are social creatures. We learn how to love, have empathy compassion and self-care by how we experience that or we learn how to fear, hate, stay in survival. We have everything we need to turn around our children, but we have to be open to a new paradigm that challenges what we have known about human beings for centuries. Unless we change our thinking, we will continue to do what has gotten us where we are today. The research shows clearly there is a better way and we can all be part of the solution, beginning within our selves. We need to have the courage and strength to face the limits of what we have believed and move past those limits to be and do in ways that will ensure 'no child will be left behind, again.'




Deborah Chelette-Wilson, having survived abuse as a child and young adult, has fought for years to come out of the fog of confusion, fear, insecurity, shame, self-doubt and self-blame created when those experiences went unexpressed, unprocessed and unintegrated in spit of traditional years of therapy. Struggling to find the answers to heal herself she became a Licensed Professional Counselor in 1998. Though helpful her traiditional education did not answer the questions she was searching for so she engaged in her own research in spirituality, psychology, neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma research, family systems theory, human development and epigentics. Out of her personal struggles and healings, her professional experiences and research she is now ready and willing to share her story of healing and thriving. Come join me in learning and practicing this new way of life. For more information: http://www.integratingtrauma.com





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