Yes, you do. If you want to prevent trauma, then you must promote relational health!
When asked about trauma in children, Bruce Perry has said, “It isn’t about our history of adversity, it’s about our history of connectedness.” Turns out quality relationships can prevent an experience from becoming a lasting trauma.
Myths about trauma
Experiences might feel traumatic. But they only become lifelong traumas if we don’t have people to help us process the experience in a healthy way. Adults who attune to children, provide co-regulation to navigate strong emotions, and help children tell the story of their experience may help to prevent trauma. This type of quality connection helps the child’s brain integrate the experience in a stable way. The connection to an attuned other helps the child make sense of the experience so it doesn’t wreak havoc on the brain.
In this training, Laura provides updates to outdated beliefs about trauma, shares key strategies for promoting relational health, and demonstrates why relational health is the foundation for all health and well-being.
Current “truths” to help prevent trauma
In August 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated it’s policy statement regarding preventing toxic stress. Their policy paper, pointed to the importance of “Safe, Stable, Nurturing Relationships (SSNRS’s)” as the foundation for health and well-being. There is a wide spectrum of adversity that runs from discrete, threatening events (such as being abused, bullied, or exposed to disasters or other forms of violence) to ongoing, chronic life conditions (such as exposure to parental mental illness, racism, poverty, neglect, family separation or a placement in foster care, and environmental toxins or air pollution; unrelenting anxiety about a global pandemic, climate change, or deportation; or social rejection because of one’s sexual orientation or gender identity).
Although children experiencing catastrophic events such as abuse are at a high risk for toxic stress responses, research suggests that the largest number of children at risk for toxic stress responses are those affected by ongoing chronic life conditions such as NEGLECT. This finding suggests that although interventions targeting children with acute threats are needed urgently, those interventions alone will almost certainly miss large segments of the population who may also develop toxic stress responses and their associated poor outcomes.
This wide spectrum of adversity underscores the fact that ACE scores and other epidemiologically derived risk factors at the population level are not valid or reliable predictors of outcomes at the individual level. While the ACE study is still very useful, it isn’t complete. More is to be learned from focusing on the quality of the relationships children have.
How do I prevent trauma?
In this training, Laura will actively demonstrate how to develop “SSNR’s,” or safe, stable, nurturing relationships. The Academy found SSNR’s to be tantamount to relational health. But many adults are using outdated practices they still believe are relationally healthy such as putting kids in time out, punishing, separating children who engage in conflict, distracting kids who go through a challenge, and more. Many people eschew training of this type because they believe they are ‘doing’ all they can to promote relational health. But if you are still engaging with children using 20th century practices, you are likely not using all the tools we now have for preventing trauma.
Laura will take participants on a journey of exploration: what does it mean to provide a safe, stable, and nurturing relationship to each child in your care? How to you individualize your approach depending upon the child’s experience, needs, neurology, culture, and abilities? What are some “old habits” that are not in service of relational health? What are some “new habits” adults might consider adopting to replace the old?
Trauma is preventable. Let me show you how.