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!
Nov 5, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Inspiration, School, Uncategorized
This summer (yes, I know it seems a long time ago now) a friend introduced me to the world of ‘Bejeweled’.
I am not a big fan of computer games, but I was stuck on a long haul flight to the U.S., and with another 9 hours to go, was happy to explore something new.
So that was it, a few rounds on a plane…. a few more on the way home…. downloaded the app and I can reassure you that after the initial-incredibly-addictive-phase, it is now definitely firmly in its place as a well controlled go-to when I choose to play every now and again.
What struck me the most as I was getting better at playing, moving around the different shaped gems and going up through the stages of games, were the words. It is a game PACKED with positive re-inforcement.
So far my games have been interrupted while my screen has been plastered with one of the following
- GOOD
- NICE
- COOL
- SPLENDID
- EXCELLENT
- AWESOME
- MAGNIFICENT
- OUTSTANDING
I like feedback – especially positive feedback! One simple word can convey so much.
And I am a grown up – I know it is just a computer game, but it has had me really reflecting on the frequency of positive words that I hear sprinkled into conversations with children by their parents and school staff.
It is not rocket science to know that children like hearing positive things, knowing they have done well, that you like them, that you notice the effort they are putting into something, that you are cheering for them.
If a computer game can pop out such a variety of positive encouragements…. I have to ask…
- What is our frequency of positivity?
- How often do we use these positive words in our interactions with children?
- How wide is our vocabulary of encouragement or praise?
- Is our bar a bit too high?
- Do we expect miracles before we squeeze out an occasional ‘good job’ or ‘well done’?
I wonder what might happen to the children around us if we started to use more and more of these in our conversations with them – might they want to ‘play the game’ more and more?
Might they get a triple bonus –(1) the pride of their own action AND (2) being noticed by someone AND (3) hearing encouragement for something they have done?
CHALLENGE:
Have you ever played POSITIVES BINGO with your children or class?
Work out a grid of positive words like the ones above, and give the children a copy each.
Whenever they hear you (the adult) use one of those words in a day (or long journey, shopping trip, lesson etc), they get to cross it off. So often we get the children to change their behaviour and we may or may not notice…this way round their role-model adults show them how it is done. I’d love to hear how it goes if you dare … 😉
PS If you have also played Bejeweled and have had other positive encouragements I haven’t encountered yet, do let me know!
Oct 20, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, School, Trauma, Uncategorized
You know those games where you get to see 1 small area of a picture and you have to guess who the celebrity is, or where the place is, or what the catchphrase is…?
Well I would like to make a proposal… And it is this:
– that we would stop playing games with our children.
Eh? What do I mean?
Let me explain.
What do you see?
Very often I am asked to help a school or parent, because there is a child who is causing great concern. That school or parent can fill me in on exactly all the details about that child that are concerning them. Mostly these details are about behaviour.
To quote a certain game-show host, they “say what they see”. 
And then they look at me in a particular way…or as one parent said to me recently – “so what can happen (what can you do) to fix this?”
I knew he wanted the best for his child, and himself. He wanted the outbursts to stop, and the child to be compliant and respectful… I just couldn’t and wouldn’t bring myself to play that game.
If you have ever asked me for ideas to support a particular child I have never seen, and don’t know about… You will know I won’t do it 😉 (it happens mostly at the end of training events, usually preceded by the words ‘can I just ask you….’)
Why won’t I take that conversation further? Why wouldn’t I immediately give that teacher or parent a list of things to do to change his child’s behaviour? It is simple. I wasn’t ready to give him an answer – If I don’t have enough of the picture, I won’t play catchphrase with children’s lives. They are more important and deserve more respect than that.
Get the bigger picture
What I will do, if the parent or school are willing to work with me (and it is so precious when I do get this chance!), is help the key people involved explore the real issues … And we will together pan out our focus from just looking at a child and expand our view to see the bigger picture…all the different, contributing pieces. And here is the challenge… because in doing this we might need to include in our view the people around the child at school and home, stress levels and causes, dynamics between others in the family, past experiences, food, sleep and mental health of key carers… etc etc etc.
Why is this necessary? Because any particular behaviour of a child can be rooted in a million different reasons, and it is not my place to pick any one of them out of a hat and give suggestions that will impact that child’s life based on guess work. The wrong advice could be as emotionally dangerous as prescribing antibiotics to someone who is allergic to them.
Sometimes a child will appear to have ADHD when their body is pumped with stress hormones because they are constantly worried about what is going to happen to mum while they are not there to keep check on her.
Sometimes a child may appear to have autism because he struggles with change and chooses to focus on just 1 main thing to play with…because his world has been full of chaos (boundaries changing, adults not following through on what they say, routine all over the place, emotional turmoil in key carer) and that is his one way to try and keep things predictable in life.
Would it be fair to diagnose a child with ADHD when really it is parent’s financial stresses that lead to arguments and vibes that are causing him to feel like he is living in a war zone at home, and so he can’t concentrate or sit still at school?
“It’s good but it’s not right.”
I have known children be misdiagnosed with various conditions and given medications to subdue their behaviour. It happens too often. It breaks my heart when a child is being given unnecessary drugs that do change them, the way covering up a screaming smoke alarm will muffle the hideous sound but won’t find or deal with the fire.
If you are prepared to make judgments about a child from looking only at one piece of their picture you are playing roulette with someone’s life… it is always easier to look at and judge a child rather than have to look at ourselves, and consider whether we are the real focal point that they are just responding to. Trying to label and change a child is easier than trying to understand them and if necessary change ourselves or our circumstances.
Guesses at what to do to change the child might ‘work’ for a time but they may also fit the other famous catchphrase of that game-show host “it’s good but it’s not right”.
THANK YOU !!
I want to say a public thank you to each and every parent and teacher, school staff member and even grandparent I have worked with over the years who have had the courage and honesty to let themselves be seen as part of the child’s real picture, and made their own changes so a child didn’t get misunderstood and was able to change naturally and authentically.
You may have changed the trajectory of their lives.
If you want to understand more about children’s behaviour then check out some more of the free resources on here and for the missing piece that most adults miss, get this book.
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Jul 7, 2015 | Children, Emotional Wellbeing, Health, Play Therapy, School, Sleep, Trauma
I don’t watch much TV, but yesterday I caught 2 interviews that moved me.
The first was a politician in local government who had taken up the cause over the last 2 years, of numerous people who had been sexually abused as children.
The second was a firefighter – one of the first responders to the London Underground on July 7th, 2005.
Q : What could these 2 men living at opposite ends of the country, have in common?
A : Both of them were in a state of post traumatic stress as a result of the work they do.
So often we think of ‘trauma’ as being connected with things that happen in personal lives. Maybe abuse…or being a direct victim in a horrific life-threatening experience.
We understand that the military are exposed to traumatic situations in their ‘day job’ when they head to the front line. Sadly, many people still think PTSD is only really associated with war veterans.
However, there are so many professionals doing jobs that require them to put themselves in the line of life-threatening danger… Or require them to deal with horrific scenes…. Or get their heads around the details of the worst of society.
The TV interviewer made some comments about people not really thinking of a politician developing PTSD and co-morbid depression through his work. And maybe there are many other jobs that people don’t think could lead into the muddy pit of PTSD…
For example, would people outside of education think that those working closely with families and children in main-stream schools could be at risk of secondary trauma?
Infact, do those INSIDE those very same, local, down-the-end-of-my-road, mainstream primaries have any concept of how this is increasingly becoming an occupational hazard?
As anyone who has heard me speak about this will know…Secondary Trauma, or Vicarious Trauma is real and powerful.
Flashbacks, poor sleep, altered moods, increased aggression, depression, tension, trouble concentrating, relationship break downs, addiction, not being able to switch off and be fully present away from work, needing to talk over and over about things, or not speaking at all, are just a few possible symptoms.
Child & family support workers, mentors, inclusion teams, TAs, LSAs, teachers, heads, deputies, child protection officers, therapists… anyone who gets close to children and families and their stories, are all at risk.
The impact of trauma is huge – some are calling it an epidemic in our time.
Around the world, military are increasingly being prepared: being educated, being helped to build their resilience and being equipped with tools to reduce the impact of trauma on their bodies and minds BEFORE they go to the field.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London.
It’s a wild and ‘out-there’ kind of thought I know, but wouldn’t it be amazing, as part of the positive legacy of that and all the other events that have taken or altered so many lives here in UK, for all workers in jobs where they are at risk of secondary trauma, to get the education they need to be fully aware and the equipping with tools that really work, to help them be ready and to minimize their risk of developing PTSD from their day-job?
‘You can say I’m a dreamer…. ‘
…but it feels like the right thing to do.
The honoring thing for employers to offer,
….and the wisest economic decision too.
I’m proud to be working with schools choosing to journey in this very direction. It’s a start!
I won’t play…
