A:
Building Resilience:
Emotions - need to have the ability to bounce back to a state of emotional control.
To return requires us first to go somewhere emotionally.
Now, today, we stop children from going to those emotional places.
We don't let our kids feel, if they don't go somewhere emotionally, they cant build the resilience to bounce back.
"Going somewhere" activates the fight/flight response.
We are not born with the ability to calm down, we need to learn this. (From parents firstly, then friends, teachers, others).
In the body, we have at the 'top' the sympathetic fight/flight response, and at the bottom, we have the parasympathetic response which is freeze.
We need to support children to find the calm in the middle.
There is tolerable stressors and intolerable stressors. Play often builds resilience through tolerable stressors - hide and seek, swinging, sliding, climbing trees, conflict with peers, etc. But when the stress is all the time and is intolerable, then the child cannot find calm.
Important to see each child as them only - it is biologically disrespectful to say at 2 they should do this, at 5 this, 7 etc, as even as an adult they could respond as a small child to stressors.
Children can be environmentally or genetically sensitized to emotional behaviour, can often be hypersensitized.
The Power of the Teacher:
Relationships are key-value the relationship.
Starting off Calm (the day).
Some children may wake up with a lion in the room (fight/flight).
See me when I first come into the class.
Belonging - class rituals are important, come together, a sense of belonging
What's happening? No surprises
Sense of control - can I survive in this space.
B:
Building Resilience:
Emotions - need to have the ability to bounce back to a state of emotional control.
To return requires us first to go somewhere emotionally.
Now, today, we stop children from going to those emotional places.
We don't let our kids feel, if they don't go somewhere emotionally, they cant build the resilience to bounce back.
"Going somewhere" activates the fight/flight response.
We are not born with the ability to calm down, we need to learn this. (From parents firstly, then friends, teachers, others).
In the body, we have at the 'top' the sympathetic fight/flight response, and at the bottom, we have the parasympathetic response which is freeze.
We need to support children to find the calm in the middle.
There is tolerable stressors and intolerable stressors. Play often builds resilience through tolerable stressors - hide and seek, swinging, sliding, climbing trees, conflict with peers, etc. But when the stress is all the time and is intolerable, then the child cannot find calm.
Important to see each child as them only - it is biologically disrespectful to say at 2 they should do this, at 5 this, 7 etc, as even as an adult they could respond as a small child to stressors.
Children can be environmentally or genetically sensitized to emotional behaviour, can often be hypersensitized.
The Power of the Teacher:
Relationships are key-value the relationship.
Starting off Calm (the day).
Some children may wake up with a lion in the room (fight/flight).
See me when I first come into the class.
Belonging - class rituals are important, come together, a sense of belonging
What's happening? No surprises
Sense of control - can I survive in this space.
B:
Impact of
Early Trauma:
Children have
experienced something that has reorganized their brains.
Environments
that teach children to be scared of the world.
Children
react in a way that their brains are telling them to – not to be too harsh.
The Frist
1000 days – birth to 3, so important.
Not patch
but go back to the foundation to solidify it.
Children
that have experienced trauma want to reenact what children normally do in the first
3 years - swinging, rocking, singing, repetitive rhythmic routine behaviors.
Biologically
respectful of behavior.
3 Parts of
the Brain: bottom up.
Managing – planning, time management, empathy, autonomy
Emotional – constant chaos – fighting, anger, basic needs
not being met. Touch is an essential
developmental need in the brain. If not
met then has to keep developing survival brain.
Survival – developed over the first 2 years. Am I safe?
Attachment theory. Dance of
attunement. Erikson. Hypervigilantly aroused. Over-sensitized.
Facial
expressions important to be aware of.
Trauma is influential
to what happens in the brain.
Born with
86B brain cells.
Reorganisation
of cell development can occur
In utero
affection of cells. – eg alcohol.
Cortisol –
protected in pregnancy, unless too much.
Cells
connect by experience.
Everyone
has the potential to talk many languages
What if a child has never learned the language of respect, to take a turn, to value others,
be empathetic etc.
Myelination
happens because we repeat, and experience - sensitive periods we repeat less.
Template development
Word – dog (repeated)
Picture
Feel
Taste
Sound
We don’t check
templates, unless someone says have you checked your template.
Can have destructive
templates. Can change but we have to practice
new ones over and over.
Need to be
reflective practitioners to check our templates when working with children.
When you
first met the children how often did the activate survival brain and how often
did they stay there?
Learn through
observing– socio-emotional learning is really important from watching others.
Increase
capacity to stay calm. Then can move
on.
C.
The Neuroscience of Self Care
Check-in
with yourself over the day to reset from red brain to green brain.
Sandpapered
brains.
Recognise
we have to have red brain-friendly spaces.
How quickly
we can get sandpapered.
Creativity
requires a green brain.
Activating
the Stress Response:
Neuroception
– am I safe? – detect a stressor. Assess
the stressor. Activate flight/fight –
survival response, cortisol increased, heart rate up.
Executive
functioning breaks down.
Cortisol
takes a long time to get in your body and takes a long time to get out.
Chn can’t calm
down immediately, takes a while to go down.
Fight/Flight
Response:
Hypervigilant
– keeping self alive, sign and hearing sharpen, dry mouth, breathing changes,
stomach purges, bowel, and bladder can empty, temperature changes, blood
increases in large muscles.
Low-level
immunity if in the red brain too much.
Ongoing stress response.
Reset from
one or two sandpapers rather than waiting until they build up.
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect:
Identify
what calms you.
Do that
until you create a physiological calm state in your body.
Condition
this moment – however it works for you, now touch your head, now put your hands
together…. And practice it over and over
Breathing
Deep
breathing. Pull the system into calm,
now I can think.
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