A Guest Blog: Once Upon a Time

by Abbe McLatchie
@abbeeemc

Once upon a time there was a child who was very sad.  Their mummy and daddy were not able to be good parents to them and they experienced trauma every day.  One day the special social work people swept in on their white steed and rescued the sad child.  From then on the child was loved and cared for in a calm family, they went to school every day and everything was perfect for them from then on in.

If only this was the case for our children.  The children that we foster come from scary and scared, anxious and angry, unsettled and unstable backgrounds, and the love and care we pour into them does go SOME way to beginning to repair and soothe their trauma, but it is not a magic potion.

The trauma that our children experience is far reaching and has phenomenal impact.  If a child has a broken leg, or bruises – physical manifestations of their damage and pain – then it seems that people are far more willing to understand and engage with this to put things in place to support a child in school.  Broken ankle and twisted knee?  No problem, leave classes five minutes early to miss the rush.  Access the canteen before other pupils.  Spend playtime in the library with your favourite friend and a grown up.  Broken heart and attachment disorder?  Stop being so naughty.  Get on with it.  ‘There is no reasonable reason for your child’s behaviour Mrs…’

As a foster parent, your heart sinks whenever the schools number shows up on your phone.  It is very rarely to tell you how fabulous they’ve been this week.  Far more likely is a request to collect early as they’ve had ‘an episode’.

What schools and teachers don’t often understand is how to adapt their processes to help meet the needs of our children.  Punishing and shaming a traumatised child is like painting a puddle – pointless and messy. 

I don’t necessarily blame teachers.  Class sizes of 30+, new fangled behaviour management strategies coming down from the powers that be, assessment for assessment sake and a range of different coloured pens with a code to remember…teaching is a hard job as we should never forget that.  But if my child was dyslexic you would differentiate the learning materials.  If my daughter had a visual impairment you would produce larger font resources and sit her nearer the front of the class.  If my boy had a bladder disorder you’d give him a toilet pass.  Why, oh why can’t you take the time as a whole school approach to listen to me when I tell you how to help my little ones manage their anxiety before the chair gets thrown?  How to give praise in a way that doesn’t induce a swearing spitting meltdown in public view.  How to help them to find a way to tell the truth that doesn’t include acrimonious accusations of lies that they probably don’t even know why they’ve told.

As foster parents we have a huge responsibility in advocating in education on our children’s behalf.  Helping teachers to understand the impact of trauma – and how to help children learn in spite of this – is critical to giving our children a fighting chance for life outcomes.  Sharing articles, resources, knowledge, experience and understanding is invaluable. It makes for happier children, happier teachers and happier schools.  Surely that is a goal that we all want to work towards.  Maybe someone should mention this to the education minister as a priority rather than tests for tests sake.  Just a thought.

How not to talk to your children about adoption.

So, imagine the scene. Four of the massive and me in the car on a sunny morning on an unusually calm day. Ginger, Flossy, Lotty and Peanut, 18, 11, 10 and 4 years old respectively, all on our standard trip to school. Unusually this morning it does not resemble an out take of the chariot scene from Ben Hur, something more sinister is afoot.

Me: Hey guys, you know Eva?

Flossy: Yes

Me: You know how she's been waiting for children, well she's been matched and they're coming in a few weeks.

Ginger, Lotty, Peanut: (Silence)

Flossy: That's good. Can she not have babies?

Me: (knowing she knows) Well, yes but she's decided to adopt to make a family. Like your mam and me.

Flossy: Why?

Me: (Thinks) Erm, I guess, like us, that she felt that it's something that she wanted to do, a positive choice.

Ginger & Peanut: (Silence)

Flossy & Lotty: What's a 'positive choice'?

Me: Erm (Thinks) Erm (Thinks..............inspired by a sports analogy) You know when you pick players for football and some people are always the last to get picked?

Flossy: Yes

(In this moments pause I've had the opportunity to think through this analogy and realised that I've just given the worst and psychologically damaging analogy ever spoken to a child. So faced with the choice of driving the car into a ditch as the ultimate distraction or ploughing on with this stupid analogy I choose to plough on)

Me: Well, a positive choice would be to pick them first..................................

Ginger, Flossy, Lotty, Peanut: (Silence)

Lotty: So, it's like picking someone who's rubbish?

Time Stops. I appear to have undermined every positive thing that I have ever said to them up to this point.

Out of my mouth comes a series of words and phrases, back peddling and squirming. I desperately try to turn what is a doomed analogy around. I'm failing I talk about liking the rubbish players (!!!!!) I'm drowning.
Blessedly, we pull up at school and I mutter something to Ginger about bad analogies. He appears to be throughly disinterested almost pitying my stupidity, he may not have even heard any of it. Peanut is oblivious, Flossy runs ahead to see friends and Lotty is throughly convinced that she's marvellous so is impervious to my deeply harmful analogy. 

I walk Peanut into school, return to the car and gently place my head on the steering wheel.
Every day I'm becoming more and more like adoption's answer to Basil Fawlty.

Guest Blog: Behaviour is communication.

By Ella Hughes
@ellathemermaid

Behaviour is communication.  ‘Managing behaviour’ is about listening to what is being said; not necessarily through words but bodies.  The relationship between those involved is key.  Through mounting pressures in schools, relationships can be overlooked, in favour of desires for a ‘quick-fix’.  There is no one-size-fits-all solution to behaviour management.

I (like the majority of the teaching profession) am hard working, committed and continually learning.  This is my 10^th year as a teacher, 5^th as Deputy Head, I’ve worked in the UK and New Zealand in a varied range of schools, came into the profession through a Biology degree and PGCE and have completed my NPQH.  Yet, until recently, had never heard of Attachment, or the neuroscience behind it.  Attachment is the foundation for all relationships and it deeply concerns me that I could have ended my career with no awareness of its existence, let alone an understanding of its impact for children and schools. 

For any child to learn they must first feel safe. Feeling unsafe, within any setting, inhibits a child’s ability to learn and suppresses their curiosity, independence and resilience.  Their tolerance is dramatically narrowed along with any self-regulatory strategies they may have.  As adults we experience the same, when stress levels exceed our thresholds the reptilian elements of the brain take over and hijack our usual ability to think and feel effectively.  This can lead to detrimental changes in behaviour, as part of the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response.   Either hyper-arousal from the ‘fight’ (aggression, loud, outwardly destructive) or hypo-arousal from the ‘freeze’ (withdrawn, quiet, unresponsive, shut down). 

Often ‘behaviour management’ refers to hyper behaviours but it’s important to remember the often-unseen hypo children too.  Because if behaviour is communication, we must be mindful of our responses to all behavioural changes; not just consequences (or worse punishments) for what is perceived as poor behaviour.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs outlines that to achieve self-actualisation, which includes so much we expect from children (including creativity, acceptance of facts, morality) it is essential that their needs have first been met from previous tiers, which focus on the child feeling safe in every sense of the word; physiological and psychological.  Similarly, the first layer of the ‘Parenting Pyramid’ in the Webster Stratton ‘The Incredible Years’ training includes Empathy, Attention & Involvement and Play, and Dan Hughes’ PACE approach, which aims to make children feel safe, is built upon Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy.  While it may seem unusual to be quoting parenting resources in relation to schools, it makes sense when considering that teachers are ‘in loco parentis’.

To sustainably manage behaviour a change is needed in general approach.  The Incredible Years teaches that parents will usually find strategies such as ‘behaviour charts’ and ‘time out’ ineffective if they are not first dedicating time to play and building their relationship with the child.  The same applies in schools.  Rather than a top-down focus on strategies to ensure children ‘behave better’ a ‘bottom-up’ whole school system of understanding is needed; consistency, boundaries, trust and responsiveness. 

This is, and will continue to be, an evolving area at our school.  The learning and ideas outlined below, from our journey so far, are not unique to our school and need to be considered by the DfE Behaviour Review:

•   Knowledge & Understanding

-        Attachment training needs to be a compulsory element of all teacher training.

-        Whole school training to up-skill & enable all staff; teaching assistants, lunch-time staff, volunteers and governors.  We use childinmind.co.uk

-        We provided all staff with a copy of “Inside I’m hurting: Practical strategies for supporting children with attachment difficulties in schools.” by Louise Bomber and reflected on the reading in Staff Meetings.  Key Stages also have copies of, “What every parent needs to know: The incredible effects of love, nurture and play on your child’s development.” by Margot Sunderland for staff to borrow.

•   Consistent approach

-        Shared language: Behaviour is talked about in relation to safety not shame.  Less words and more listening with our eyes, what is the child’s body telling us?

-        Be mindful of what our behaviour is communicating to the children around us.  Our heightened stress levels can make us unpredictable, short tempered and therefore triggering.

-        Behaviour policy embedded in learning about attachment, neuroscience, trauma and the damage of shame.

-        Curriculum that has emotional literacy, wellbeing and creativity at the core.  We consider PSHCE a core subject alongside Maths and English.

-        Ask children and actively listen to their responses; they often know what they need.

-        Involve parents and carers wherever possible.

-        Well thought out transitions, unstructured times and changes to routines.

•   Strategies

-        Responding to children’s emotional / developmental age rather than chronological

-        Clinical supervision for staff; so they can respond from a place of reduced stress and fear

-        SDQ all children, three times a year; to identify those in need who may slip through the net and to measure emotional impact

-        Protected space(s) for emotional interventions, which ALL children access

-        Playtherapy as past of a tiered approach to creative emotional interventions, nurture and ‘Time in’

-        Dedicated Health & Wellbeing Team

There is an important place for Traffic light systems, reward charts etc within behaviour management, as one part of the whole approach.  Not the primary focus.

These things all take time, money and commitment.  This requires Heads, like ours, to be creative, courageous and child-focused in the face of relentless constraints.

I haven’t specifically referred to adopted children, children in care, or those experiencing identified loss, separation and trauma because I believe that a system built on solid foundations of attachment, neuroscience and being child-focused can meet the needs of all children.  After all, trauma is “a deeply disturbing or distressing experience”, “often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress” which is different for everyone.  As professionals we don’t know the extent of trauma that may be hidden in the life of a child and it is our job to be a protective factor for all children, supporting them in integrating and regulating their emotions.  Ultimately, this will lead to well-managed behaviour in schools.