MCPS Waymaking - Trauma-Informed Practices

[Music] [Music] hi i'm dr christina connelly and welcome again to our mcps video series waymaking our goal is to help families make their way through many of the emotional challenges that we are faced with today i have with me today dr eric roston school psychologist parent and director of professional development and standards for the national association of school psychologists thank you for joining us today thank you for having me here it's a real pleasure oh very excited so my first question for you today is what do we need to know about stress and trauma well

it's a great question i think first we need to recognize that not all stress is created equal and a lot of times people think about stress and kind of three different buckets we have what's called positive stress positive stress are things that we can handle right this might be stress over the first day of a new job or stress about giving a presentation in front of your class these are things that can actually be important and um you know promotive as a part of our development second category is what's we call tolerable stress this is

more long lasting but generally time limited and it occurs in a context of supports for example loss of a loved one or living with a caregiver that's temporarily ill this is tolerable stress it's more significant than that positive stress we talked about but usually people can recover then the last category is what we call toxic stress a lot of times this is refers to things like ongoing neglect or abuse or ongoing chronic stress that occurs in the lack of any kind of pure emotional support or adult support and a lot of times this is what

might lead to trauma now you know the question was what do we need to know about stress and trauma and trauma is uh extremely significant um response to stress and trauma has kind of these these three pieces as far as a definition goes one it's either an event or ex or an experience so it's not just a single event sometimes it's this kind of ongoing chronic stress so in the current context right now this chronic stressor of being in an unpredictable environment of unknowing duration um even though it's kind of a singular event it's ongoing

and so it's the experience of it all so again it's not just a single event second it's something that an individual interprets or perceives as threatening or harmful to their well-being and this is really critical because two kids may experience the same thing and have very different outcomes based on a range of things including how they appraise the situation so again it's how people interpret and perceive their environment not just whether an adult says well this is objectively stressful and so we expect you to be traumatized then lastly it has a functional impairment so usually

you see things like an interference with their daily life or their ability to function right maybe they their appetite changes or their sleep habits change or their relationships are affected by it but i think most importantly when it comes to trauma one thing we all need to remember is that it's it refers to the subjective response to a set of conditions or experiences that one has rather than the experience itself so it's not our jobs as adults to tell children and youth what is traumatic to them it's our job to respond to it right and

thank you for that and thank you for explaining you know like different types of trauma and i know we we talk about this with our staff we have an online webinar that goes into um and talks about several of these things but for our families who you know they've been having a lot of conversations around traumatic experiences i'm during this time and um different impacts of both chronic traumas acute traumas that may occur um to families so thank you for explaining that a little bit more um so our families can understand some of the differences

so and understand that talking about trauma is broad um talking about some of the specific things that are there and so then next um i want to get into so we've been hearing a lot about conversations around trauma-informed practices or trauma-informed teaching um in schools so can you go into that in terms of like why is that topic um so important sure so uh trauma-informed practices uh to get into what it looks like at the school-wide level obviously requires a lot more time so my answer will be obviously more brief and more broad but drama-formed

practices generally describe practices that acknowledge the prevalence and potential impact of toxic stress and trauma on a student's life and uses that to improve our interactions and interventions with students and families and just how we interact with each other so it's not really a program it's a framework within which we operate within which we which drives our interactions with drives like the hypotheses we have and the assumptions we have around when we're talking about students and any concerns you might have no they're best achieved in the entire staff and including families as well have a

shared understanding that some of the challenges we have in school are a direct reflection of the environment students live in as well as their own appraisal of those contexts rather than always acts of purposeful disobedience a lot of times you know it's easy as an adult to think that kids are willfully disobedient or they're purposefully trying to make our lives more difficult rather than saying well this is an adaptive and maybe even predictable response to a set of conditions in their lives a lot of times these are conditions that we don't know about and that's

also why it's really important because disclosure rates uh for what students disclosing their stress or sources of trauma to adults in their lives is often low especially if they don't have strong relationships and so being able to have a broad approach where everyone is interacting with others recognize that it's potential that some of some of the responses and behaviors we're seeing are a direct result of stress in their lives so um you know the other thing too is trauma and stress can come from multiple sources right can come from family mental illness abuse and neglect

in the home witnessing violence in the community discrimination systematic racism there's a range of things both within the context and their personal lives that can uh that can have a severe impact on functioning so with the prevalence and significant impact of stress in students lives that trip those trauma informed practices on a broad universal level are more critical than ever right and so and as we get into you know and we're talking about families and talking about staff and when we're talking about especially you know because teachers may be wondering so how do i know

whether a student um has been impacted by trauma and we know that looking at some of the data from there's a study done by the child mind institute that looked at you know potentially like half of our students have experienced an adverse childhood event or an adverse childhood um traumatic event in their lives and so what are some of the symptoms that show that a student or even a staff member or family member um is potentially in need of help yeah well this is a tough question i mean first i've seen a lot of those

studies that talk about the prevalence of of adverse childhood experiences right 50 and that's been replicated but it's important to remember too that only a minority of students experiencing aces develop full-blown clinical trauma symptoms so a lot of times the way they appraise those and the amount of support they have available makes the range of of outcomes from those broader so we don't want to assume that just because there is an adversity in a student's life that they're going to have full-blown trauma but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be responding to that level of stress

so thinking first just about what happens to a student in a moment or anybody not just student right adults too in a moment of acute stress right our bodies undergo a lot of physiological changes for example blood flow moves away from our brain from the from the part of our brain that helps us like think and plan and use working memory blood goes to our large muscle groups and away from our small muscle groups so you know our heart rate increases uh our immune system gets activated lots of different things are happening and so what

this means is in an acute stress situation we become like fast strong and dumb right as some might say what happens though is when that stress reaction gets triggered multiple times it gets triggered more easily in the future meaning that there will be times eventually where to an outside observer someone may be responding extremely irrationally to non-threatening situations but when that stress response gets triggered over and over again it's easier to to ignite that but uh the broader question about what symptoms do we need to look at this is somewhat of a challenge the symptoms

are far-ranging and vary depending on a range of individual and environmental factors samhsa which is um you know government agency has put out a list of symptoms first for stress and trauma and it was like two three pages long in very small fonts and lots of different bullets on a range of categories of cognition neurological impact and behavior and social and emotional so it can look like a lot of things it can mirror uh disabilities like adhd and learning disabilities and emotional disabilities so it's really hard to pinpoint what those symptoms are going to be

and this is partly why a trauma-informed approach relies on this universal framework with how we interact with everybody whether it's our own children or the staff with each other how families interact with staff how staff interact with families with the hypothesis that trauma and stress may in some way be contributing to a student's challenges in ways that they cannot articulate but you know other things to think about too especially as a parent is you know are there significant changes in behavior that we notice and a lot of times that can be an important thing to

pay attention to but again it's possible you won't see any changes in behavior or if there's chronic stress um again there won't be a change but they've been under stress for years without us knowing it so i don't want to say there's a single list of symptoms to pay attention to right and so because when we work with um staff and with families many times you may have a kid who is exhibiting symptoms like you said before around you know like maybe they're inattentive or they're not following directions or you may think that they're being

disrespectful or non-compliant when and then all of a sudden we start getting referrals at school psychologists for you know like special education or they need a 504 plan or they need you know all these specialized supports um and then all of a sudden i'm like well you need to diagnose them as having adhd and it's like no maybe they don't have adhd maybe they might have like uh ptsd or post-traumatic stress disorder or some or some sort of adjustment disorder something else showing that these are children um who have experienced a traumatic event and they

are in need of help and so and they are in need of support and not just a label or something else showing that you know they're having some sort of significant issue or you know what can we do to provide these supports for all students within a classroom how can you know talking about um teachers um who can kind of like restructure their classroom in order to be looking at you know like hey what can we do for all kids and it's not just you know there's you know something wrong with this kid you know

and so what can we what are some ways that families and staff um can potentially support those who are impacted yeah there's a number of ways that we can all work with students whether whether they are exhibiting problems or not or whether we know a trauma history exists or not and i will say before i even get into some of those ideas um you know because i know there are a lot of a lot of parents in here evidence shows that parents are are not accurate judges of their own child stress and i'm a parent

myself this is a hard pill to swallow but i've seen this in the research time and time again but parents consistently tend to underestimate how stressed their children are and it's quite possible that we will never know whether we're a parent or an educator the degree of stress our children and youth experience and if there are any students watching this you may be thinking yeah there are things that might i'm not going to talk to my parents about or anyone on on staff i'm talking to my friends about it only perhaps and that's fairly common

so with this in mind along with a range of potential symptoms our best bet is to apply some good practices all the time for everyone so some simple strategies and these are very broad but things like empowering students and not disempowering them and so empowerment a lot of times comes in the form of giving choices and giving options and giving a sense of control which is more important now than ever right i mean a lot of students myself included feel a loss of control over our lives or parts of our lives and so are there

ways that we can establish control whether it's you know something simple for a young student like you know here are the things we need to build into our daily schedule but i will let you choose where in the schedule that falls or the different ways you can achieve this right if it's reading time you can either read to me you can read to someone else you can you can do zoom con read to someone else you can read from a kindle book or a regular book i don't really care the choice is yours so providing

some sense of empowerment second one is this idea of unconditional positive regard this kind of no strings attached um relationship contract that we have where even despite the fact that we may not approve of certain behaviors or things people do we always approve of them and want them to be a part of our lives so if we're a staff the student is not following all the etiquette for our zoo meetings that doesn't mean that we simply say well we don't want you here anymore right we want to work with them and make them feel like

we always want you here you are a part of this community you're part of this classroom there are rules in place but we got to figure out a way to make that happen we always want to check our assumptions as adults it's easy to make assumptions i make this mistake all the time myself we make assumptions about others about the reason for their behavior and this is a common thing to do and so it's okay to make assumptions that's natural and that's human and so try to think about some of the assumptions you're making and

ask questions and observe so you know i can say with one of my daughters i assumed when all this started back in march and april that she was okay um and i asked her once or twice passively you know how are you doing with all this and then one night i found her crying in her bedroom and she just said i'm so lonely and um and i had just assumed she was okay because she never actually said something to me and eventually she couldn't hold it in any longer uh we want to maintain high expectations

for everybody but those expectations shift in focus right so maybe our expectations move away from academic excellence and rigor and instead they're going to you know safety behaviors and relationship building and learning to navigate a new system and patience and flexibility and all these other things caring for others and checking in on others and maintaining relationships when we don't get to see each other every day we want to listen more and talk less especially as adults this is hard to do because we're used to this kind of reciprocal back and forth one thing as a

as a psychologist you know one thing we learn right away is you know sometimes it's not our job to give advice or tell about the time the same thing happened to us because it's not about us it's about them and sometimes just listen and reflect um on their experiences it's not about you a lot of times if kids want to know what you think or the time that happened to you they'll ask um so so those are just a few um ways and simple strategies uh that can really relieve stress these are broadly recognized trauma

form principles right and so thank you so much you know and i really do appreciate your example that you gave for your daughter you know in terms of some of the symptoms that we may see as students are going through an experience and staff members too and you know because and it's hard you may have your child or a family member all of a sudden like you said you know break out crying you may see fits of anger um that may come out and you'll be like oh my goodness like this you know this small

thing happened and all of a sudden it blows up into this building and you may see that um with students who are on the zoom calls um you may and i've experienced that um even with my own daughter um who all of a sudden now she can't make up her mind in terms of like am i going to work on this piece of homework am i going to work on that am i going to eat this for lunch am i going to eat this for dinner like i don't know i there's too many choices i

can't figure this out and she wasn't like that before the pandemic but these are some of the things that i'm seeing her experience now um just due to the trauma of um the loss of friends the loss of you know not being able to interact and go outside as much as i used to having to wear the mask like you know what forget this i don't want to wear a mask why are you making me wear this mask and you're like oh my god like this is something small but to them this becomes something so

big because of you know just going through this chronic stress that's happening and i am adults experience this as well and you see this with um family members or others so and you know we just want people to kind of take this kind of like moment and in our county like we talk about with staff you know kind of when we talk about these trauma-informed practices you know taking the mindfulness moments you know um and um what are some leadership opportunities i liked your when you talked about being able to choose you know different options

for kids um and being able because that ability to choose can help to cope and so as with some of the things you're talking about you know and i wanted to get into as we get into you know many of our guests who come onto wayne making do you have suggestions or feedback for families to help them again to stay resilient during this time yeah i mean first of all i just want to say i agree with everything you said you know dr connolly you know as much about this topic as i do so um

i appreciate all your insight as well um first i think you know where we have to sort of recalibrate our balance of structure and flexibility so one example that i've heard a lot is like what about screen time right and you know first we know not all screen time is created equal screen time is now a necessity for us to stay engaged and maintain our relationships so our previous rules around screen time need to be adjusted but you know screen time is one of the more readily accessible ways right now for students to regulate themselves

and to have time to recharge and that's particularly true for introverts personally i think it's possible for some that being on a camera for hours may be more exhausting for an introvert than being in a classroom because their face is always like forward-facing it's always like visible versus like being in a classroom and you're part of a crowd right so be you know allow yourself some flexibility and balance in some of the structures you had in place and you know structure is good but flexibility is good as well i think setting boundaries is something that

people talk about a lot and it's hard to do one thing i think would be particularly valuable is always valuable as structural boundaries rather than personal boundaries and i say that in the sense of if there is a way in your life with the other people you're interacting with to have an agreed upon set of boundaries so you're not personally responsible for upholding them so for example one is like if you have a team of people that you're that you email with a lot you might say as a group can we agree that no one's

going to be reading or responding to emails over the weekend because it's easier for us to have a structural agreement rather than me personally making that decision and being stressed about the fact that i've been missing some important information another one is kind of kind of remembering this mantra which um has helped me in a lot of ways in my own personal life especially as a parent saying it affects me but it's not about me a lot of times the things that happen to us that might make us angry as a parent or a staff

member a lot of times it feels like it's being directed at us but it's not it's affecting you and that's normal but to remember this is not about me right now even if someone is telling me to hate me or to f myself a lot of times it's still not about me i just happen to be the adult in the room or the person that's confronting or questioning them we want to continually focus on strategies to maintain relationships i'm still not sure what that looks like virtually i don't really have all the answers for that

what i do know is that loneliness is extremely detrimental to our mental health i read a recent study just yesterday that the duration of loneliness is more significant on outcomes than the intensity of it and so this is really long time to be alone and socially isolated i think avoid the perception of busyness this idea that it's cool to be super busy um i've always not liked that the idea oh i did this and that and i i don't sleep because i'm so busy i'm now at the point in my life where i'm like you

know what um i don't think it's cool that you can't manage your time and you don't know how to say no i think it's cool when you can tell me that you've stayed in your pajamas for five days and just binge something on netflix because you're making time for yourself that's cool avoid the perception of busyness and then just unburden yourself of unnecessary tasks i think it's easy for us to be home and be like well now that i'm home it's my time to do this project to clean the house more to do more laundry

to whatever just forget it um say maybe in september i'll revisit this idea but i'm burdening yourself of that rather than saying maybe tomorrow maybe tomorrow put it off another month it's cool it's not going anywhere uh know yourself and um just relax and be easy on yourself those are my tips no and i'm sitting here i'm listening to you and i'm just shaking my head in agreement because i mean how many families are just like oh my god i'm feeling so stressed because i can't get this done you like you know what take that

time for you it's all right you know um i my daughter's like yells at me like mommy it's six o'clock come upstairs you gotta eat dinner get off the computer you know and how many folks are just like oh my god i just i need permission to take time for myself because of the stress um because the chronic stress is just not good and this is one thing as um you know our kids are in school you're like you know we all need to have those boundaries we need to take that time whether you're an

essential employee and you're going to work every day and you're experiencing or working with families who maybe have impacted by covet or your family's been impacted by covet um personally um or whether you're at home teleworking you know it's like finding those boundaries are so important my daughter and i now have been binging hulu and watching um the superstore you know like we never watched that before but we're like this is hilarious and we're just taking that time right now because we actually did it oh my goodness like it's just so important so um you

know i just really want to thank you for taking the time with us today and sharing with us this information i know many of our families and students will truly appreciate the insights that you've provided and so we want to thank our viewers for joining us for waymaking to send us additional questions and topics to discuss on the show please visit the link on your screen and also please go to our youtube playlist to find additional shows in our series we talked about mindfulness i know one of them is our mindfulness moments and also please

join us next time on mcps waymaking [Music] you