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An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction

 

          An Evidence-Based Indictment of Inaction

                       …Children’s lives hang in the balance

 

Powerful and surprisingly prevalent horrors are blocking access to education and ravaging children’s lives.  Sadly, they remain “the elephant in the classroom”: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

ACEs include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse [including bullying], physical and emotional neglect, a missing parent (due to separation, divorce, incarceration, or death), witnessing household substance abuse, violence, or mental illness. Witnessing environmental violence and more.

Developmental (or ‘Childhood’) trauma after ACEs is unidentified or misunderstood and often worsened within school systems, including the School District of Philadelphia (SDP).  Experts call it a “crisis”.

Trauma during development is especially heinous.

Some adults normalize the pain and fear of the injured child, thinking “they’ll get over it.”  Actually, it’s the opposite.  Young children have fewer coping mechanisms and their immature brains are still developing.  The impacts of trauma are greater on the still-developing brain.

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Trauma impacts children, learning and schools, via its laser-like effects on the physical structure of the brain.

Developmental trauma damages cognition.  The specific changes to brain architecture impair children’s memory systems, their ability to think, to organize multiple priorities (“executive function”), and hence to learn, particularly literacy skills.

 

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Hello Daun

   To develope a "TRAUMA INFORMED NETWORK"  can have many access points. Parenting may be one area a parent can now become trauma informed. The 12 step groups can be another are for "One to become trauma informed" Through The MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS , Through MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS....through Public Schools teacher associations. First responder and their unions etc etc. etc.

 

Rick Herranz

 Thursday 06/22/17

 

 

Rene Howitt posted:

If we are going to work harder to identify and treat ACEs in elementary and middle school then we also need to be following up with parenting and child development education reaching all high school students.

Thank you for sharing Rene! You make a very salient point. ACE impacts must be viewed and supported from a whole family perspective. As you probably know, there is much evidence that ACEs can be (or become) generational.

I'm doing professional development presentations in our schools systems now. All school staff should be trauma-informed and aware the effect ACEs has on our children. However, even in a perfect world where we could identify, treat each child individually and bring them to healthiness...we still haven't taught them how to be better parents. If we are going to work harder to identify and treat ACEs in elementary and middle school then we also need to be following up with parenting and child development education reaching all high school students.

Robert Olcott posted:

 "52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD". Similar numbers have more recently been reported in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Atlanta. 

Thank you for sharing your insight, Robert!   I would be most interested in more specifics or a link to the data you cite.

Daun

 

Rick Herranz Sr. posted:

"Then some of us begin to AWAKEN ..... "

Hello Rick,

Thank you so much for your encouraging thoughts!

 I would prefer to think of the children (and the adults they become) as "injured".  They are not "bad" or "sick".  In most cases what happened to them was an injury, or series of injuries caused by another (often adult).  

I most appreciate the revelation you've had about the impacts of ACEs --  the lifelong impacts -- and your resulting passion.  Yourpassion is invaluable in helping to grow awareness , across the roughly 70% of adults who have not had any training or revelation. If we can generate awareness and passion among them,  we are well on our way towards a more helpful and more healthy society.

Daun

 

Last edited by Daun Kauffman

In 2000, an Epidemiologist at [then Dartmouth, now] Geisel Medical School "Grand Rounds" presented: "52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD". Similar numbers have more recently been reported in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Atlanta. Might the Epidemic have 'spread' from Detroit, and/or the trans-generational  nature of trauma been passed on through assorted ACEs? ? ?

Hello Daun

  Great post. I am sure this CRISIS is hard on you as a teacher. Wow.... The Family is in dire trouble.....Humanity is getting more dysfunctional and more abusive by the day. It appears that ABUSIVE FAMILY SYSTEMS don't want to talk about that 800 LB ELEPHANT in the living room. The entire family is sick. Its a tragedy when your sick and don't know that your sick. Until something or someone enters the system. Then the Cycle of insanity continues for generations. Then some of us begin to AWAKEN and find a group like this.....

 

Rick Herranz

 

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