It started with a profound connection to the words of one wise Dutchman addressing a room full of therapists. The ah-ha moment when Bessel van der Kolk linked childhood trauma to attachment. Exciting, because at Echo Parenting & Education we train parents and professionals how to create the kind of safe, stable relationships that allow a child to flourish. Instinctively, we had always known that the lack of such attachment was traumatic to a child - after all, if your survival depends on an attuned, attentive caregiver, anything that interrupts that feeling of connection will signal imminent danger and send the body into full trauma response.
We have also realized that abuse and neglect doesn't always manifest in physical ways. Spanking is a violation of a child's right to physical safety and cannot be viewed as anything but violence; more pernicious because it is perpetrated on someone smaller and weaker than you. However, Bessel's work at the Trauma Center in Boston has revealed that emotional abuse and neglect is equally if not MORE damaging to children. Seems like our founder, Ruth Beaglehole, always had it right. Echo Parenting & Education was founded on the premise that anything that hurts the body, mind or emotions of a child is violence.
We believe that Nonviolent Child Raising is key to not only preventing childhood trauma but also building resilience to trauma in later life. In addition, our work with domestic violence survivors confirms what science has already proven - that a safe, stable relationship with a nurturing caregiver is what a child needs to heal from trauma.
Imagine, then, our frustration when we listen to Bessel talk about Developmental Trauma or attend the many conferences, seminars and summits on Adverse Childhood Experiences with Dr. Felitti and hear the experts' answer to the question that is invariably raised: "What can we do to prevent childhood/developmental trauma?"
Parenting.
Parenting.
Parenting,
comes the answer. Only what kind of parenting? The kind that has your kid punished for infractions and straight-jacketed in rules? Hmm. If you've understood anything about trauma, probably not. The kind that offers control through behavior charts on the fridge and escalating 'consequences' or rewards? If you've paid attention, then that sounds like a mere variation on the first. What about the 'evidence-based' programs, which would have my vote, seeing as I am an empiricist, but somehow manage to include strategies such as 'planned ignoring' which is the antithesis of connecting with the pain or the basic human need a child is trying to express.
Clearly, the experts need some help in finishing the sentence when it comes to what this 'parenting' should look like. And that's what we intend to do at the 2015 Changing the Paradigm Conference March 5-6 at The California Endowment. We have assembled our heroes, the titans of the childhood trauma world - Bessel van der Kolk, Vincent Felitti, Dan Siegel to name a few - because the information they impart changes everything we as a society thought we knew about raising and caring for children.
Then Echo will take this knowledge a step further, articulating what compassionate and empathetic connection with a child looks like - at home, in the classroom, in family services - offering theoretical underpinnings and practical tools. We want you to be a part of this. We want you to take this knowledge and finish the sentence for all the families out there who don't know how to create the connection we all long for. Let's throw away all the punitive and manipulative strategies that harm both those who give and those who receive 'discipline', and start to love our children well.
(The flyer for the conference is attached to this post.)
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