Jan 18, 2016 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Food, Health, Real Life Stories, School, testimonial, Trauma, Uncategorized
Those who are familiar with the CHEW ethos, will know that we like to work holistically wherever possible.
It is so important as health; physical, mental and emotional well-being IS all connected. We understand how stress impacts a body and wherever we can, we help others understand that too. Children who have experienced a high level of stress early in life often have lasting impact from lack of nutrients at key developmental times. Whatever has happened to us in life, there are some things that our body needs that can only come through our mouth, and it is so special when parents understand this, make changes and children’s lives get better.
In their words:-
“We have two adopted siblings both of whom display attachment issues and struggle at school with concentration, emotional and social behaviour.
After discussions with Claire we recently considered and then ordered particular dietary supplements with a view to helping the children in two ways.
Firstly, we recognised that whilst they have a very good and varied diet their anxiety levels may be a barrier to them absorbing all the nutrients they need and therefore supplements may be required. Secondly, to see if their concentration could be improved.
We have been a little skeptical in the past about supplements, but are happy that Claire and her colleagues have done enough research to feel confident in this particular company. We would not invest in cheaper alternatives.
Our children have been taking this nutritional support for about 5 months.
At home we have noticed that the children have been more willing and able to sit and do small chunks of homework. Our daughter especially willing to do it on her own, extremely unusual! Their concentration and ability to think seems to be improving.
At school, following parents evening and update meetings we have been told how well they are both doing in the classroom. They are less “noticeable” in class and are able to complete tasks with much less assistance. This is a real step forward.
There could be any number of coincidences for these changes but we do feel that the supplements have played a vital part.
The children like taking them and will remind us if we have forgotten to put them out.”
Adoptive Parents, SOLIHULL
Dec 6, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Health, Real Life Stories, School, Trauma
… The words from a 12 year old beginning a conversation she wanted to have with me about her sense that she is ‘not normal’.
Her reasons? “I can see things” and “I hear voices”.
It turned out that the ‘things’ she sees and hears are all memories of moments in her life: some of them from when she was 3-4. As she described to me in explicit detail one of the things she ‘sees’, it was a word for word (yet with even greater detail) description of an event that I had been informed of by a social worker and one of her parents before I started working with her a while ago.
It turns out that she also sees the face of someone who hurt her a lot when she was younger.
She also ‘sees’ police.
It also turns out that each of the things she ‘sees’ has with it at least 1 very strong emotion. Confusion, shame, overwhelm, guilt and always terror.
We had a conversation about PTSD. She brought it up, and told me she has it. She had seen a program about people who have it and realise that a lot of what she struggled with was the same. She had just missed a few crucial points about what PTSD is, and so those we cleared up:-
- PTSD is not like ADHD or Autism, in that they are both life-long conditions that people learn to live with. PTSD does not need to be life-long, and there are many, many people who have already recovered from it.
- One of the elements of PTSD is how your memories get messed with; you can feel like you have lost a bit of control over what happens in your mind. Flashbacks, intrusive memories and nightmares are different ways the brain tries to keep processing and making sense of what happened (even years after the experience) and are common experiences for people whilst still on their recovery journey.
- Situations, sounds, smells etc that remind us of the experience that may have happened years before, can still make us feel like we did back then, but if we don’t understand they are linked then we can seem really weird and wonder why it is we might freak out at something other people don’t.
This all made complete sense to this child. She understood herself a lot more and no longer felt like a ‘freak’.
There are many children who are struggling with ‘seeing’ things or having what sound like strange experiences ‘hearing voices’ etc.
I’ve heard of 4 more in schools just this week.
If we as the adults around them (parents or other professionals) ignore or belittle their testimony, dismiss it or tell them to ‘tell the truth’ just because it sounds a bit weird to us, or we think that ‘what happened was a long time ago now‘ then we block the child back into their trauma and do nothing to help them heal.
Our fear at what we perceive as ‘not normal’ shuts them down. We confirm to them that:-
they are weird,
they are on their own,
they are not understood and
there is no hope for change.
Hearing and seeing things for a child who has been through one or more of the different types of trauma at any point in their life, and may have PTSD, is totally ‘normal’.
If we don’t know this we can’t help them, and some might say, that in our own ignorance of PTSD we may hurt them again.
Nov 25, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Real Life Stories, School, Trauma, Uncategorized
“And there is another one too…. he bangs his head on the desk.”
This was one of the things said to me at the end of the Introduction to Trauma training I delivered for schools in Cannock and Rugely last week.
So let me ask you – if this was a child you knew – what would you do?
I asked this staff member what happens when he does that? She replied quickly and with powerful energy, “we tell him to stop it!”
That is when my heart broke a bit more for that child.
I don’t know his name, or how old he is even, it doesn’t matter really – banging your head on a table is not normal behaviour for a child of any age. I do know that he is not doing it for fun.
His behaviour instantly told me he is hurting, and moving his body like that is the only way he can currently express that.
As his behaviour communicates his pain, he is met with punishing tone of voice and being told to stop it – ie ‘expressing your pain is not OK or allowed’.
Why do the staff respond like that? I didn’t ask the lady – but often when things like this happen, when a child behaves in a way that is ‘not normal’ at school or home, adult responses can be rooted in one of these unconscious statements:-
- The child’s behaviour is wrong and not what we want to see for our children and so I must make it stop.
- This behaviour is weird, I find it quite threatening because I don’t understand it…I must make it stop.
- He must be hurting himself…I must make him stop.
When adults need to ‘make it stop’ it is often because they are operating out of fear (because they don’t understand what is happening). They insist, they control, they dominate. The behaviour stops. The adult feels better. The adult has ‘won’. They were fighting…the adult vs the strange behaviour….and the thing that was threatening them has now gone. Good.
The child…? Is left with their pain. The reason for why they needed to bang their head on the table has not gone away. They have learnt though. The lesson in that moment is clear- this is not a place to be expressive or vulnerable or show your true feelings. They are not understood. They are certainly not helped.
So what did I say?
- Please do not say that to him.
- Please take away the work he is doing (the staff member then said to me, yes – it is always when he has particular work to do).
- Please understand that that work is frustrating him and to him is like a threat he cannot escape from.
- When the ‘work’ is physically away from him, book shut and put out of sight, then you can help him calm down, by showing him something else you have in front of you (depending on his age this could be a finger puppet, a photo of your dog, a picture you need to colour in…).
- And make sure through it all – you stay calm in your body and your voice.
Obviously that is just step 1 – but it is a crucial change in approach that will help him.
In the future this child will be more able to access his work when he is clearer that the adults around him are there to help, and that they understand him. He will no longer be on his own with his ‘threat and no escape.’
I am grateful that person spoke to me last week. I’m glad we had that very brief conversation, because for that child from that day on, things might be a bit better…at least in terms of the way she understood him, and could respond in those moments.
And it has given me a chance to share the situation, just in case it resonates with anyone else who is considering how they respond to a child when there is behaviour they don’t understand.
One thing I know, if we don’t understand why children do what they do and we react to make their behaviour just stop, it is more likely to be feeding our own need, not helping that child at all, and sometimes doing them harm.
If you want more insight into what is going on for children at times like this, and things you can do to help them, GROUNDED would be a great next step on your reading journey.
Nov 24, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Food, Health, Real Life Stories, School, Uncategorized
It is funny what you remember.
I was in a reception classroom this week just as it was heading to lunchtime. The children all lined up at the door, and waited… and with the hubbub of their chatter, and the change in energy in the room as they became more and more hungry and wondering where their dinner lady was….I remembered.
I remembered times like that when I was a teacher, and I would help my class get through those painful minutes by distracting them with class games, Simon Says…, and jokes.
Beyond that though, I remembered my own feelings of waiting for lunch at school.
If you were hungry at home you could say so, maybe have something to keep you going and/or go do something to distract yourself. At school when you are just waiting neither of those are options.
I remembered how the biggest change for me going from primary to secondary, was not the size of school, or the moving around to different rooms for different lessons, or the amount of homework…. It was having to wait until 12.50 for the bell to go for lunch, when for the last 3 years it had been at 12.00! Those 50 mins were THE HARDEST MINUTES OF THE DAY.
I was quiet at school, not one of the children who were constantly being noticed, but just because nobody else noticed my hunger I DID! I was so desperate to get food into me by 12.50, that I would go straight outside with my packed lunch and sit on the benches and EAT. Most of my class (and the rest of the school in all honesty) would go to the dining hall, queue up for a seat and eat in there. Not me.
E v e r y s i n g l e day of my first year, come rain, or shine I was out there….even in the snow.
I’m serious.
Nothing was going to stop me getting food in my body ASAP.
What I now know about bodies and fuel, brain function, hormones and blood sugar levels helps me understand this memory picture. I didn’t care that what I was doing was different to everyone else or a bit off-the-wall. All I cared about was re-fueling.
I recognised that same need to re-fuel in that classroom as those children waited. Some just stood and fiddled with lunch boxes, some got quiet and withdrew into themselves, some fidgety and less able to stand still, some could no longer find their ‘indoor voices’ and needed to raise the subconscious alarm with their ‘other’ voices.
I wondered how long before their designated lunch time those tummies had been quietly rumbling; how long had they been distracted from their 5-year-old jobs; how long had they found it harder to ‘play nicely with kind hands’, because they were becoming driven by a different internal biochemical landscape?
It’s funny what you remember.
Food is so important, affecting attention, behaviour and social skills.
How we fuel our children has immediate impact…and potentially long lasting memories!
May 2, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Health, Inspiration, Real Life Stories, School, testimonial, Uncategorized
That feeling of getting through a day in school with all the usual demands?
That feeling of getting through a day in school with all the usual demands AND feeling like you are coming down with (or already have) something?
You might be interested to read this – sent in from one of the SLT teachers who had asked for CHEW recommendations to support her health.
I’ve been taking the products you recommended to me back in December for 4 months.
And I’m happy to report I’ve got through a twelve week term with only one sore throat 🙂
(Decquacaine and Chloraseptic usually got me through the day when my tonsils started reacting but I haven’t needed any. My one episode of a sore throat lasted a day and went after gargling with salt water. Brilliant!)
.
It’s very unusual for me not to have sore throats, ear aches and streaming colds through the term – and we have had a particularly awful term of school bugs!
.
- Slapped cheek,
- hand, foot and mouth,
- shingles,
- whooping cough,
- scarlet fever,
- flu,
- tonsillitis and
- chicken pox to name but a few. [Ed – a few??!!]
- With a really nasty D & V bug going through school as well as
- the usual viral and
- bacterial infections
….the immune systems of our staff and children have taken a battering.
So I’m pleased and relieved to be able to say that I haven’t been ill this term 🙂
Since I’ve been dutifully taking my nutritional products I’ve managed to avoid any time off work, and haven’t had to ‘push-through’ at work either.
.
Our school has recently academised and gone through a very stressful time of change for the staff which should also have taken it’s toll on me… But I appear to be the only member of staff who hasn’t had a day off since then. Hmmm… Go figure!
.
So I just wanted to thank you for your recommendations and let you know I will continue to take these nutritionals and enjoy the consequences!
.
Jan 22, 2015 | Emotional Wellbeing, Health, Real Life Stories, School, Trauma
Last week, following another Understanding Trauma course I ran, I had several conversations with attendees who confessed to me that at some point in the sessions they had stopped listening to me and started counting. That was fine by me – what they were really saying was they could relate to what I was talking about; there were things they had experienced in their own life that fell into the category of ‘trauma’ and they were owning it…some of them for the first time.
The thing is that none of these ladies let slip anything during the evening: they were focused on being professional, listening, learning, talking or counting! These confessions happened afterwards and 1:1. So as well as them going home with a fresh realisation of having experienced trauma in their own lives – and the impact it might still be having, they also went way with the impression that the only other person who knew trauma from inside experience, in that room was me.
And this is a pattern.
People often come up to me after an event I am running, or training in their school (even if it’s not specifically about trauma – go figure!) and say “can I have a word?”
What I want to let you all know is this : it is not just the children who have been through trauma and are still living in bodies and minds that have not yet processed those experiences. Even though it might feel and seem like it, YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE.
The percentage of staff in all sorts of schools, and at all levels of leadership, who are still living with the impact of trauma in their own lives is (in my experience) significant.
This is good news and bad…
- If we can remember what it is like – we can have more empathy for the children and parents we are working with.
- If we can own what has happened to us, and process it, what may have dominated our past can loose its power in our present and becomes used, at our choosing, for good in our future.
- When we take time, commit to and invest in our own healing (which doesn’t have to mean talking about it), life not only becomes more fulfilling for us, we each become a beacon of hope to others (big and small) who are still living in the shadow of trauma.
However,
- If we don’t acknowledge what has happened to us then trauma will affect our bodies, and over time can lead to all sorts of physical problems.
- Trauma that happened to us as a child will keep us locked in unhealthy relationship patterns, unable to discern the truth of who we are and what is right and fair and good in how we should treat and be treated as adults.
- Trauma impacts brain function. Trying to hold it together working in a school, especially with management responsibilities becomes harder than hard, and yet we daren’t let anyone else know we are struggling to keep afloat.
Trauma can change you. Yes.
Trauma does not have to be a life sentence.
I celebrate, honour and respect every one of the school staff who have spoken to me about this in the last few months; well done for finding your voice and reaching out to own your story: the first step is always the hardest.
I celebrate and honour and respect each of the staff I have worked with individually as they journey into their healing and wholeness; it takes courage to step out of your isolation, ask for help and embark on your journey from surviving to thriving – an adventure that requires courage and tenacity: you are stronger than you think.
And I honour and respect everyone of you who may find encouragement and hope through these words, to know there are people out there who get it, get you: you are not alone.
