Chapter 8: Beyond Behavior

The “adverse childhood experiences” (ACE) study concludes the more trauma a child experiences, the more likely they would be to develop problems with their health, relationships, and behavior.

Check Your ACE Score

Children with a score of four or more are “32.6” times to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and behavior issues. Dr. Burke Harris has studied the effects of high ACE scores on children.
When an MRI was performed on the brains of children who had been victims of extreme stress, it was discovered that these children had a hippocampus that was diminished in size and an enlarged amygdala.  The hippocampus is important to the development of memory and regulation, while the amygdala is in charge of fear responses.

Regular exposure to stress interferes with health brain development.  

Children with behavior problems due to childhood trauma are often put on behavior plans that involve rewards and punishments.  These plans fail because they don’t help the child regulate their responses to stress.  Instead, they retraumatize the child because most of them fail to earn rewards and are most often punished because of their inability to regulate their behavior.  These punishments can lead a child into more stress, only increasing their red pathway behavior. 

These types of discipline are not recommended for children of trauma:

• Physical punishment
• Isolation
• Shaming, blaming, ignoring
• Point systems for behavior
• Yelling, screaming, degrading

Children of trauma many times have bizarre or extreme behavior issues.  This makes it difficult to create relational safety, although this is the only way to retrain the brain’s overreactive stress response.  Supportive environments are filled with predictable routines and opportunities for choice. They are also filled more positive experiences, than negative. They begin with bottom up support to strengthen social emotional development.  

According to Dr. Bailey, the most important influence to help a child build resilience is at least one stable, committed relationship with an adult.

This podcast describes how to connect with a child who is relationship resistant.

The younger the child is when exposed to extreme stress, the more vulnerable they are for having an impaired stress response system.  The youngest children have no way to escape or fight off these threatening situations.