Growing up in a home beaten, raped or starved by the most important authority in your life, means that for you, authority is cruel and to be hated and feared. Real life stories about this here.
Foster parents, teachers and law enforcement often endure undeserved violent responses from traumatized children. Unpredictable often dangerous behaviors are driven by repeated pain and terror (often years of it) visited upon a child that has been unable to escape a toxic home. Don’t stand between that child his/her escape route. A lesson shared with me from a child psychologist years ago.
A high ACEs child’s reaction to a harmless command, word or action can elicit an immediate violent response. We learned this from the violent and suicidal actions of veterans these past 30 years.
This is seamless behavior to the child (or the soldier)– it just happens.
One of my CASA guardian ad Litem CASE boys (Andy) beat up his 7th grade teacher so badly she quit teaching and sued the State for her serious injuries. He was a small boy – very damaged and very violent.
She said or did something that triggered his reptilian response to horrid things done to him repeatedly over many years by his father. Left alone for days in a one-bedroom apartment, Andy was tied to a bed, sexually abused, beaten and starved from four to eight years old. He was on multiple psychotropic medications when he entered my caseload in Child Protective Services and the public school system.
Most likely, the teacher stood between this 12-year-old and the door (escape route) and used a word or phrase that precipitated a terrible thing that had happened to him many times. It’s hard being a teacher with the growing numbers of high ACES children in the classroom. Andy made teaching difficult for many teachers over many years. So did many of the other 49 children in my caseload.
One or two abused children in class can make teaching almost impossible.
Today, too many teachers are spending the majority of their time
dealing with the threat of a child’s self-harm and violence to classmates.
This Star Tribune article references a new MN State policy requiring teachers to “just deal with it”. If not backed up with way more training and resources, this kind of policy will bring more violence and chaos to classrooms.
There needs to be more effective resources and a better understanding
of the mental health crisis
driving the terrible things happening in our classrooms and on the streets today.
Legislators passing the buck when dealing with *core issues is filling prisons (almost 90% recidivism at 9 years), breaking our schools and making our communities unsafe.
The problems teachers (and other service providers) face on a daily basis are far more serious and dangerous than ever before.
Today, between 1/3 and ½ of teachers can expect to be harassed, threatened, or attacked.
Over 40% of teachers want to quit teaching.
Without more effective training and resources, expect teachers, police officers, foster families, social and health care workers to be harder to recruit and leave their fields even more quickly in the years to come.
Students need to be “ready to learn” when they start school. Children coming from abusive homes seldom have the skills to sit in the classroom or collaborate well with their peers. Extreme anxiety levels and overwhelming mental health and behavior problems can make teaching impossible and the classroom dangerous. Let’s work harder to understand the impact of trauma on children and traumatized children on our schools and other institutions.
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society”
(Pliny the Elder, 2000 years ago)
KARA reports on the issues of at risk children
This article submitted by Former CASA Guardian Ad Litem Mike Tikkanen
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All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
There are many forces at play on Child Protective Services today:
Parental rights, Racial disparities,
better tracking and reporting of
critical child outcomes-based metrics in CPS
and the continued over-institutionalizing
of children in the system
(dehumanizing trends)
KARA reports on the issues of invisible children
This article submitted by Former CASA Guardian Ad Litem Mike Tikkanen
Signup For KARA’s FREE Friday Morning Updates
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
INVISIBLECHILDREN – KARA (KIDS AT RISK ACTION
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society”
(Pliny the Elder, 2000 years ago)
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