Growing up in a home where you are beaten, raped, or starved by the most important authority in your life teaches a brutal lesson: authority is cruel, and it is to be hated and feared. Real‑life stories of my home state Minnesota child deaths and severe maltreatment make that reality painfully clear.
Foster parents, teachers, and law enforcement often endure violent responses from deeply traumatized children that they did not “cause” in any ordinary sense. Unpredictable and sometimes dangerous behaviors are driven by repeated pain and terror—often years of it—visited upon a child who has never been able to escape a toxic home. A child psychologist once told me: “Don’t stand between that child and his escape route.” Be very careful about how you use your body, your voice, and your authority with children whose early experience of “authority” was traumatic.
A high‑ACEs child’s reaction to what looks like a harmless command, word, or action can be an immediate violent response. We have learned something similar over the past 30 years watching veterans return from war with violent or suicidal reactions to ordinary triggers. For the child—or the soldier—this is seamless behavior. It just happens. There is no pause to think, only raw survival instinct.
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 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 by his father over many years. Andy was left alone for days in a one‑bedroom apartment, tied to a bed, sexually abused, beaten, and starved from ages four to eight. By the time he entered my caseload in Child Protective Services and the public school system, he was on multiple psychotropic medications and already seen as “a problem student.”
Most likely, she stood between this 12‑year‑old and his escape route (the door) and used a word, tone, or phrase tied to a lifetime of terror. It is hard being a teacher with growing numbers of high‑ACEs children in the classroom. Andy made teaching difficult for many educators over many years. So did many of the other 49 children on my caseload.
One or two abused children in a class can make teaching both dangerous and impossible. Many teachers spend most of their time trying to prevent a child’s self‑harm or violence toward classmates instead of actually teaching.
Student violence is not rare
and it starts in elementary school
In Virginia, a former assistant principal was indicted on multiple felony counts after a 6‑year‑old brought a gun to school and shot his teacher during class, prompting intense scrutiny of school responses to violent and high‑risk behavior in very young children. In another recent case in Harford County, Maryland, local authorities reported that two teachers at an elementary school were attacked and injured by a single student, highlighting how even one highly dysregulated child can upend safety for staff and students alike. cbsnewsyoutubecnn
In Winston‑Salem, North Carolina, a classroom video went viral showing a boy repeatedly slapping his teacher in the face during a profanity‑filled tantrum in front of laughing classmates; he was later charged with assault on a government official as state data showed nearly 1,500 assaults on school staff in a single year.
Source: North Carolina student charged after slapping teacher
Near St. Louis, a Missouri student was caught on video repeatedly punching her 65‑year‑old teacher, knocking the educator to the ground and sending her to the hospital with head injuries, while prosecutors moved forward with criminal charges in juvenile court. Source: Missouri student faces charges after beating teacher
A Colorado task force on aggressive student behavior heard testimony from teachers who suffered concussions, broken bones, and other serious injuries after being punched, kicked, or tackled by students, with many saying they felt pressure not to officially report the assaults. Source: Colorado task force tackles aggressive and violent student behavior toward teachers
A Boston University review of national data and front‑line reports found that U.S. teachers in middle and high schools are increasingly being hit, kicked, bitten, and struck with thrown objects by students, contributing to trauma, burnout, and decisions to leave the profession altogether. Source: What’s Behind the Rise in Violence Against Teachers?
This trend lines up with what front‑line teachers in Minnesota and across the U.S. are describing—classrooms where trauma, dysregulation, and untreated mental health needs drive frightening outbursts, and where educators are increasingly injured, traumatized themselves, and driven out of the profession.
“Just deal with it” is not a trauma strategy”
A Star Tribune article recently described Minnesota schools adopting a new policy stance that essentially requires teachers to “just deal with it” when confronted with severe student misbehavior. Without substantial backup—far more training, trauma‑informed support, smaller class sizes, mental‑health staff, and safe procedures—telling teachers to simply absorb the impact of escalating student violence guarantees more chaos and more harm.bbc.co
There needs to be a much better understanding of the mental‑health crisis that is driving what we are seeing in classrooms, hallways, and school offices today. A growing share of students are not “ready to learn” in the traditional sense when they start school. Children coming from abusive and chaotic homes often lack the basic skills needed to sit still, trust adults, regulate their emotions, or collaborate safely with peers. Extreme anxiety, hypervigilance, and overwhelming behavior problems can make teaching impossible and the classroom dangerous.
Meanwhile, broader policy choices are compounding the problem. When federal and state leaders weaken definitions of neglect, gut regulations, under‑report abuse and neglect data, and slash funding for child protection and mental health, they are not “cutting red tape” they are increasing the number of deeply traumatized children who show up in schools and neighborhoods with no meaningful support.
The cost to teachers
and to all of us
The problems teachers and other service providers face daily are more serious and dangerous than ever. Surveys in the U.S. and abroad show sharp rises in threats, harassment, and physical attacks on educators, with many teachers reporting broken bones, cuts, bites, and bruises as a routine part of their job. Some analyses suggest that between one‑third and one‑half of teachers can now expect to be harassed, threatened, or attacked at some point in their career, and more than 40 percent say they have seriously considered leaving the profession because of violence, threats, or chronic lack of support.bbc.co
Without more effective training and resources, we should fully expect that teachers, police officers, foster families, social workers, and health‑care workers will be harder to recruit and will leave their fields more quickly in the years ahead. When we fail traumatized children in their earliest years and then ask under‑resourced adults to “just deal with it,” we are quietly building future prisons, not healthy communities.
Students need to be “ready to learn” in ways that account for trauma and toxic stress. That means early intervention, strong and accountable Child Protective Services, serious mental‑health funding, and trauma‑informed training for everyone who works with children. It means understanding that when a third‑grader punches a teacher, or a 12‑year‑old like Andy explodes in violence, we are seeing the visible surface of years of invisible harm.
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society.”
Pliny the Elder wrote that 2,000 years ago. He could have been writing about our classrooms today.
KARA reports on the issues of at‑risk and invisible children. This article is submitted by former CASA guardian ad litem Mike Tikkanen.
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All adults are the protectors of all children.
KIDS AT RISK ACTION / KARA / INVISIBLE CHILDREN
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