As they grow, children are shaped by the environments in which they live and the people with whom they interact – learning who they are and how they should act. But not all of what they absorb is necessarily positive.
“If we are in a healthy environment, both physically and emotionally, we continue to look for environments that are physically and emotionally safe,” said Jamie Bonczyk, program officer for the “80×3: Resilient from the Start” initiative at Greater Twin Cities United Way. “The brain is pattern seeking. If we live in chaos or have a classroom of chaos, our brain will continue to look for that and our bodies will continue to bring those behaviors forward.”
Chaotic and unhealthy environments can lead children to experience adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. These experiences, which can be traumatic, include abuse (physical, emotional and/or sexual), neglect, witnessing domestic abuse or parental separation and having a parent who is incarcerated and/or who has substance use issues. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 64% of adults in the U.S. have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience before the age of 18, while “nearly 1 in 6” adults reported at least four adverse childhood experiences.
In addition to being common, adverse childhood events have a lingering impact on people’s physical and mental health. The CDC estimates around 1.9 million cases of heart disease and 21 million cases of depression could have been avoided if adverse childhood experiences had been prevented.
The 80×3 initiative – named in reference to the fact that 80% of brain development occurs by age three – is, Bonczyk said, a “systems change initiative” that addresses adverse childhood experiences by providing children with benevolent childhood experiences – where they feel safe and cared for – along with trauma-informed/trauma-sensitive care. The initiative’s website contains materials for parents and caregivers, as well as those working in early childhood education and advocates in various sectors.
“Some people (are) like, ‘Oh, doesn’t everybody have (benevolent childhood experiences)?’ No, everybody does not,” said Bonczyk. “And some of it is because those adults that are caring for our children, they didn’t have (them).”
In a video produced by the Trauma-Informed Care Implementation Research Center, a website run by the Center for Health Care Strategies, the experience of discrimination is listed as an adverse childhood experience. Leo Howard III, program manager at 80×3, explained that children from marginalized communities can benefit from trauma-informed care to cope with adverse experiences, especially because their communities “aren’t typically afforded the opportunity to make wellness a priority.”
“Life is teaching them that when you walk down the street, you can’t smile at somebody because that’s an opportunity for you to be taken advantage of,” said Howard. “You’re not able to just be free and be a child. You have to put these fronts up, these facades up. You have to protect yourself. And a way of protecting yourself is not developing coping strategies, not naming your emotions, turning all of that off, because anything that can be identified as a sign of weakness or that can make you think about things too much can be a jeopardy to your safety. You have this vicious cycle that continues to grow and continues to put marginalized communities in a space where not only do they not think therapy’s for them, but they think it’s going to get their kids taken out of their house. They think it’s going to get their program shut down. What we’ve been able to do is flip that.”
How these negative ideas about therapy get “flipped”, according to Howard, is by “creating a shared language” around trauma-informed care.
“A lot of the things that these organizations were already doing (were) centered in trauma-informed care,” Howard said. “But there just wasn’t a shared language to get to that space (of healing).”
In practice, said Bonczyk, a trauma-informed approach to care prevents the suspension and expulsion of children from early childhood education centers.
“What happens to children with big behaviors is that they’re actually asked to leave,” said Bonczyk. “So trauma-informed care might look like ensuring that this is the best fit for the child and making sure that the staff have the supports to keep the child stably enrolled (and) that there’s continuity and care with the adults.”
In essence, trauma-informed care is about being responsive, rather than reactive.
“Reactive is when we just ask the child to be responsible for their own behavior and then actively disenroll them because we say we don’t have the supports (for them), without sometimes even trying,” said Bonczyk. “Trauma-informed (care) would say ‘If this is not (the) least restrictive environment for a child, we are going to work with the family to find another support.”
Howard provided an example of how one organization working with 80×3 responded proactively to a child’s behavior.
“For the first week, every single day (the boy) would throw tantrums and refuse to do anything else and just kept mentioning how hungry he was,” said Howard. “The director told me, ‘Leo … the thing that he’s communicating (to) me is that he’s hungry and he’d like to eat something. And how big of an ask would it be for me to change breakfast from 9:15 (a.m.) to 8:45 (a.m.)?’”
Though this change was small, it ended up having a large impact.
“Once she made that change, (his) behavior immediately changed,” said Howard. “It was just her taking that time to sit down and say, ‘Any change in behavior is a form of communication. So this young person is communicating with me that they have a need and I have no idea what’s going on outside of these walls.’”
To respond to children proactively rather than reactively, educators must be able to access healing for themselves, especially since they are providing care that they may never have been given themselves. Creative Kuponya, an organization that provides and seeks to decolonize mental health, provides accessible trauma-informed mental health care to personnel at organizations working with 80×3.
Sara Stamschror-Lott, LMFT, who co-founded Creative Kuponya with her husband Jamil Stamschror-Lott, LICSW, explained that Creative Kuponya provides access to therapists virtually, in their office and within the organizations themselves. Creative Kuponya’s therapists also run community healing sessions for organizations working with 80×3, where people learn and practice coping mechanisms as a community.
“I’m a firm believer that every human has some trauma, whether it’s ‘little t trauma’ or ‘big T trauma,’” said Sara Stamschror-Lott. “We’ve all had things happen to us, so we’re all carrying some of that. But I think when you are working with littles in early childhood education and they are coming in with trauma, after a while, if you’re interfacing with those littles at all times, there’s no way you’re not absorbing it.”
Learning to effectively deal with their own trauma as adults, Stamschror-Lott added, means that they will be able to model good coping mechanisms to the children with whom they work.
“If you’re around (children) on a regular basis (as) an early childhood educator and those children are seeing you take big, deep breaths, they’re gonna start mimicking that behavior as well,” said Stamschror-Lott. “Children will naturally observe and learn (to manage their) nervous systems, by just watching us.”
The work to provide trauma-informed care to children in Minnesota, said Bonczyk, isn’t just about doing something nice. It’s a way to shape today’s children into tomorrow’s healthy adults – ready and eager to engage with the world.
“You might see a child who’s had a really healthy positive early childhood experience. They might take a risk and take a class in junior high or high school that helps shape their career path,” said Bonczyk. “From a human development perspective, it’s incredibly important to be offering healthy, safe, predictable environments. If we want to have children who are adults that prioritize their own wellbeing, that prioritize rest and resilience, then we have to start that very early on in life and the people most likely to influence them are the people that spend every day with.”
Deanna Pistono
Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.
