Dr. Bruce Perry joined Think:Kids to share his work at the Neurosequential Network and how brief relational interactions can have a powerful effect in changing our brains and behavior. Dr. Perry illustrates how the Collaborative Problem Solving approach is well suited to the dosing needed to support behavior change.

 

Why change is needed to meet the needs of students exposed to trauma.

Dr. J. Stuart Ablon

I was asked to write a blog post about a recent trend in education for K-12 Talk that I find either exciting or concerning. So, I decided to write about a topic that is both exciting and concerning: the impact of trauma on learning and behavior. I’ve re-created that blog post below.

The School Discipline Fix

 

First the exciting part.

These days, many educators are being trained to understand the impact of chronic stress and trauma on students’ development, behavior, and learning. Schools everywhere are devoting significant professional development time to this topic and prioritizing being “trauma-informed” or “trauma-sensitive.” Thankfully, as a result, educators have far more empathy for how chronic stress and trauma can derail learning and be a primary cause of disruptive behavior in the classroom.

Now the concerning part.

These same schools often still rely heavily on punitive school disciplinary strategies. I recall visiting a school recently where the leadership proudly described their trauma-informed training and then proceeded to show me examples of the behavior contracts they use with their students. These traditional disciplinary strategies (including sticker-charts, time-outs, demerits, detention, suspension, and expulsion) aren’t very successful for the students to whom they are most often applied. Research has clearly shown that such disciplinary actions actually increase the likelihood of further disciplinary measures and are related to higher drop-out rates, as well as lower academic achievement and even eventual juvenile justice involvement (APA, 2008). And to whom are they most often applied? Sadly, to the most at-risk, misunderstood, and marginalized students, including those with histories of trauma and exposure to chronic stress. Students who exhibit challenging behavior are often the students with trauma histories because being exposed to chronic stress or trauma delays brain development, causing lags in skill development which in turn result in challenging behaviors. As a direct result of their trauma, many of these students struggle with skills like flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem-solving. They don’t lack the will to behave well; they lack the skills to behave well. No wonder traditional school discipline doesn’t work with traumatized students: motivational strategies don’t teach students the neurocognitive skills they lack.

Even more concerning.

Not only do punitive interventions not work with traumatized students, they can do developmental damage and make matters worse. Nowhere in the trauma-informed practice literature have I seen anyone advocate for the use of power and control to manipulate a traumatized student’s behavior. Using behavior charts and rewards and consequences is doing just that. It is leveraging a power differential to increase compliance. Put more simply, traditional school discipline revolves around rewarding students when they do what we want and revoking privileges when they don’t: a toxic dynamic that many traumatized kids are already all too familiar with in their past relationships with adults. In other words, traditional school disciplinary strategies are about as trauma-uninformed and trauma-insensitive as it gets!

There are additional side-effects of this vicious cycle of chronic stress and punitive discipline (Ablon & Pollastri, 2018). When punitive discipline is ineffective, it adds more stress, which further delays skill development, which results in escalating behavior, which is then often met by raising the stakes with even more punitive discipline. Systems of escalating consequences are sometimes called “progressive discipline.” But this is a misnomer: when it comes to curbing challenging behavior, those systems are anything but progressive. In fact, I like to refer to them as “progressive dysregulation,” since both students and educators become increasingly dysregulated, with dire consequences for everyone, including the teachers. Dealing with challenging behavior in the classroom is one of the biggest sources of stress for educators; it drives talented, young teachers out of the profession just when we need them most.

Thankfully there is still good news.

We have the power to interrupt this cycle of chronic stress and trauma. We don’t have to respond to challenging behavior with punitive discipline. Proven alternatives exist. Instead of adding stress that further delays skills and escalates behavior, we can buffer stress, build skills, and reduce challenging behavior in a truly trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive way (Perry & Ablon, 2019). Effective alternatives, such as Collaborative Problem Solving and restorative practices, are relational forms of discipline that do not revolve around the use of power and control.

Schools represent a remarkable opportunity to help our most vulnerable, traumatized kids. Students spend the majority of their waking hours—the majority of their youth—surrounded by trained professionals who are experts in helping kids build skills. So, let’s harness that opportunity and turn trauma-informed principles into concrete, actionable strategies that transform school discipline.

 


References

Ablon, J.S., & Pollastri, A.R, The School Discipline Fix. (2018). Norton: New York, NY

American Psychological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force. (2008). Are zero tolerance policies effective in the schools? An evidentiary review and recommendations. The American Psychologist, 63(9), 852.

Perry BD, Ablon JS. (2019) CPS as a Neurodevelopmentally Sensitive and Trauma-Informed Approach. In: Pollastri A., Ablon J., Hone M. (eds) Collaborative Problem Solving. Current Clinical Psychiatry. Springer, Cham

Congratulations to our colleagues, Drs. Holmes, Stokes, and Gathright, for their publication of a case series describing their use of Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) on an inpatient unit with children who have experienced complex trauma. We have been focusing a lot lately on the applications of CPS to treating traumatized children thanks to our collaboration with Dr. Bruce Perry and the Child Trauma Academy. In many ways, CPS operationalizes what trauma-informed care is intended to be:

The authors of this recent paper also emphasize that CPS provides a common philosophy, language and process with clear, replicable guidelines that can be used by non-mental health professionals as well (teachers, foster parents etc.) – a rarity amongst clinical approaches for working with traumatized children. The benefit of course is that when children like the ones they described working with leave the hospital there can be seamless transitions and continuity of care.

 

The Impact of Trauma on Brain Development and What to Do About it

There is renewed interest in the effects of chronic, overwhelming stress and trauma on children’s development. Trauma-informed care is emphasized more than ever. Yet, parents, educators, clinicians, mental health workers and law enforcement alike still struggle to understand the impacts of trauma on brain development in a concrete and tangible way. Perhaps even more so, adults trying to help these children and adolescents long for user friendly and accessible strategies that operationalize what brain science tells us will be helpful to facilitate development arrested as a result of complex developmental trauma.

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is a practical, evidence-based process that all adults can follow in any setting to ensure trauma-informed intervention. CPS has been used effectively across systems to provide concrete strategies that operationalize fundamental principles of neurodevelopment.

Specifically, CPS first helps adults understand how children exposed to chronic overwhelming stress and trauma do not lack the will to behave well, they lack the skills to behave well. CPS helps adults understand how toxic stress and trauma arrests brain development by identifying the specific skills they children lack in areas like flexibility, frustration tolerance and problem solving. Then CPS provides clear guideposts for adults to use in order to engage children in problem solving discussions which build helping relationships with the children while fostering a relational process that develops flexibility, problem solving, and emotion regulation skills. All the while, CPS avoids the use of power an control which is re-traumatizing and instead aims to help reduce the power differential which traumatized children find so dysregulating.

The latest neuroscience research has shown that facilitating brain change is not about erasing old associations in the brain resulting from trauma, but about creating new associations in the brain – in other words, new neural pathways. Exposing children repeatedly to small, digestible doses of novel experiences with a different, more positive emotional quality to them creates these pathways. The challenge is that the brain processes information from the bottom up. So with traumatized children, one must help regulate them at the level of the brainstem before you can engage their limbic system to relate to them and finally then teach them the kind of higher order problem-solving skills that are located at the level of the prefrontal cortex or top of the brain. The CPS process respects this awareness of the sequence of engagement at the level of the brain by recruiting the brainstem first, then the mid-brain and finally the cortex. It begins by teaching adults how to help children stay regulated through the use of empathic listening and curiosity. Once a child is regulated, CPS then helps the adult relate to the child by sharing their adult concerns. Finally, the child is then asked to reason with the adult to collaborate and brainstorm solutions. The entire process is built to help adults expose children to these small, digestible doses of “good stress” needed to foster brain change.

Conventional wisdom leads many adults to believe that spanking is an effective way to discipline children. At Think:Kids, we believe that a critical part of rethinking challenging kids is to rethink the ways in which we discipline children. We believe that any kind of physical violence directed at a child is ineffective, inhumane and harmful, and we stand by the American Academy of Pediatrics most recent policy statement warning against the harmful effects of corporal punishment in the home. NYTimes.com: Spanking Is Ineffective and Harmful to Children.

We know that there are healthier and more humane ways to help discipline children than to resort to corporal punishment. A previous study by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that children whose parents used physical discipline are more likely to end up with depression, anxiety, substance abuse or other mental health disorders. It’s also been shown that children whose parents hit them for discipline are more likely to develop aggressive behaviors, may have more trouble controlling their temper, and as a result, may be more likely to hit other children.

Corporal punishment as a disciplinary strategy not only doesn’t teach kids the skills they need to succeed, it also simply does not work. The effects of corporal punishment are transient – in one research study, within 10 minutes of being punished, 73% of children had “resumed the same behaviors for which they had been punished.

We often say to parents and professionals that it only takes one caring adult to make a meaningful difference in the life of a child. But, what are we demonstrating when we show our children that it’s okay to hit others? What skills are we building when we lose self-control, and resort to physical aggression in the wake of challenging behavior? When building relationships with children, it’s important that we think about the messages we send to them whenever we discipline them.

What we teach is to build caring relationships, develop skills, and reduce challenging behaviors without the use of corporal punishment, or over-reliance on other ineffective approaches like suspensions, physical restraints, detention, and solitary confinement for disciplining children. Just like we believe that “kids do well if they can,” we also believe that adults do well if they can. We know we adults are trying our best with the skills and tools we have to deal effectively with challenging behavior. If we knew better methods to use when facing challenging behaviors, we would use them. And thankfully we have one that is a proven, and healthier option over resorting to physical punishment.

We have helped thousands of adults rethink challenging behaviors and have helped many families, schools, and programs transform their disciplinary practices through our Collaborative Program Solving model. And, when it comes to spanking, we will continue to challenge the status quo and continue to work towards changing conventional wisdom about disciplining children.

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