Teaching the Dysregulated Child

To teach the dysregulated child you must first understand the dysregulated child. In order to do that, let’s talk about some of the basic vocabulary and concepts. Keep in mind this is meant to be a general overview and by no means a replacement for actual training.

What trauma is and what it is not:

First let us start with what trauma is NOT. While one event can be traumatic, trauma is not limited to just ONE horrific event in a person’s life. It can actually be a series of seemingly benign, unpredictable events that create a sense of being unsafe.

In an article called “The Long Shadow” Jeanne Supin asked Dr. Bruce Perry how he defines trauma and he responded, “I define trauma as an experience, or pattern of experiences, that impairs the proper functioning of the person’s stress-response system, making it more reactive or sensitive.”

In my opinion, trauma is an experience that causes our brain or stress response system to organize in such a way that it makes it more difficult to operate in normal, healthy relationships. That could be relationships with others, relationships with care givers, or even the relationship with Self.

Some trauma is easily recognized by society as trauma, such as witnessing a murder or being raped. Other traumatic experiences are often overlooked, such as verbal and/or emotional abuse by a caregiver, or neglect of a caregiver. Too often children are expected to “suck it up buttercup,” rather than giving that child the comforting, nurturing, and support that is needed to build resilience. How many times did someone say to you “suck it up”? How many of those times did it make you feel loved and supported?

What are ACEs?

ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. The ACE study was originally conducted by Vincent J Felitti MD, FACPA, and Robert F Anda MD, MSB. Here is a short video from Dr. Vincent Felitti. Curios what your ACE score might be? Click here to view the questionnaire.

The more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) a child experiences, the more likely he or she will experience academic challenges, behavioral challenges, and even health challenges. For example for every ACE score in a woman, her chance of being hospitalized for an autoimmune disease goes up by 20%, an ACE score of 4 is 460% more likely to face depression, and an ACE score of 7 increases the risk of youth attempted suicide 51 fold.

While it is important to understand how many ACEs a student might have, it is not necessary to know which ones they have. It is also important to note that one type of ACE is not necessarily worse than another. Our lives are a complex mixture of experiences, and just like we can have adverse experiences that can create issues in our stress response system and how our brain organizes itself, we can also have resilience building experiences that help us to mediate, or offset, the effects of the adverse experiences. In fact, those opportunities to build resilience are the keys to creating change for the better and promoting healing after trauma.

This is why it is so important for us to identify and work with these children. We may not be able to magically wipe away the trauma that occurred, but we can help the child to recover, heal, and strengthen their capacity for resiliency.

Next up: Brain States of Arousal!

I love, love, love using these graphics to help people understand the regulation state of a child and how that might show up in a classroom.

The prime state for learning is ALERT. When in the alert state of arousal we want to “flock” or gather in groups, work with peers, and operate on a more concrete level of learning (hands on materials). Once a child has moved into the ALARM state you may see more emotional reactions, you may see dissociation (or what might appear like daydreaming), and so forth. In the FEAR or TERROR state you will see more of the flight/fight responses. Again, these are very general overviews. I really love the work of Dr. Perry and highly recommend his book, The Boy Raised as a Dog. It is a tough read, but worth it.

Time isn’t always on our side, despite what the Rolling Stones may tell us with their song.

This graphic shows how the brain processes time depending on which state of arousal it is in at the time. For example, a student in a calm state of arousal is able to plan for the future and to discern the potential outcomes for his choices. In other words, he can think to himself, “If I punch my brother, my mom will ground me. So, I better not punch him because I want to go skating with my friends two weeks from now.” Now if that same boy were in an alert state of arousal, he might think, “If I punch my brother, my mom will ground me and I wanted to get ice cream tonight.” If the boy is in alarm, he isn’t really thinking beyond a few hours. Thoughts of potentially missing out on trip to the ice cream store after dinner or skating in two weeks are beyond the capacity of his brain to process. If he is in the fear state, his processing time has now shrunk to minutes or seconds. Once a child reaches the terror state, there is NO sense of time.

These concepts are critical to understand if you are trying to work with a child. It totally changes any sort of reward system you might try to think up (we can talk more about that later). After a child has escalated into alert/alarm/fear/terror there really is not much learning happening, if any at all. The deeper into fear the child goes, the less the capacity for any learning or “use of words”. You might as well give up trying to reason with a child who is in fear mode, it isn’t that they don’t want to listen to you, they CAN’T LISTEN TO YOU.

Picture this:

When a parent volunteer, who happens to be a man, walks into the room one of your young female students suddenly becomes very quiet and returns to her seat. As the parent walks closer to her, and leans over her to ask her what she is working on, she jumps up and runs out of the room. Now let’s be honest. If this happened in your room and you had zero training in trauma informed practices, how would you have reacted?

Most likely you would have either called for another adult to search for her, or you would have left the room to go find her. You probably would be feeling pretty irritated that you had to go chase after her again (because this isn’t the first time). You might even feel frustrated that you just lost the continuity and flow of your lesson with the rest of your class. I mean, it is hard enough to keep their attention for more than about 3 minutes, never mind trying to teach with these sort of interruptions!

These are all very natural responses. When you find her hiding in the bathroom, you stand there with your hands on your hips, stern look on your face, and demand that she explain herself to you. She just looks at you, says nothing. You ask her again to explain herself. Again, she says nothing. You then start threatening to take her to the office if she won’t answer you….I think you are getting the picture here.

Now, if we look at the same scenario but with a trauma informed lens, it might look something like this.

You know this young lady very well. You know that she comes from a highly abusive family, where the father has frequently beaten her mother. You know that she is very fearful of all men. Now when the parent volunteer comes in and you see her shrinking in her seat as he walks towards her, you know exactly what is happening. She is moving out of her calm or alert state and into alarm, or possibly fear.

When she bolts out of the room, you do some Heart-Focused Breathing™ to reset your emotions, and then go searching for her. Your goal is not to find her so you can give her the what-for, it is to find her and assure her she is safe.

You know that when you do find her, she is not capable of using her words to answer you and threatening to take her to the office will only escalate her fear even further. So, you just smile while maintaining your coherence, use a sing-song voice to offer her reassurance that she is safe, and offer take her for a walk until she is able to calm down. Only after she has reached the alert/calm state can you even begin to address what happened.

This is what these two graphics are all about. In any given moment of any given time we have two options available to us. We can either escalate a child, or help that child to regulate. How often have you inadvertently escalated a child in the past simply because you did not understand how trauma works in the brain?

What does it mean to be “dysregulated” or to“co-regulate”? Ok, this is a pretty easy one! Dysregulated is anyone who has moved into alarm, fear, or terror states of arousal. To co-regulate simply means a well regulated person helps a dysregulated person to move back into an alert or calm state of arousal.

Trauma informed resources and information

This page will be dedicated to providing quick access to videos, books, articles, and other resources you need to be informed.

If you have something of value to share, I am happy to take a look and post it here if it is a good fit.

teaching the dysregulated child blog

I know that most teachers do not have time to sift through the sea of information on the internet, YouTube, and books based on research. In my blog I do my best to share the best information in bite sized pieces that you can read and put into practice.

presentations and trainings

Looking for someone to give a talk to your group about trauma, adversity, or dysregulation in children?