[CORE Teen logo: the shape of a house sectioned off into triangles of different colors. Critical On-Going Resource Family Education] [Kayla VanDyke] I would say, become an expert in trauma and I'm serious. And it's a huge burden to put on families but it makes a world of difference. [Allison Douglas] Since all of our kids came to us from foster care, they didn't come to us because everything was okay in their life. [Monica Sampson] There has been some form of abuse and neglect that has brought them to you. [J. Stuart Ablon] Kids do well if they can. Now what that means is if a kid could do well, he would do well. [Caelan Soma] So kids that have experienced trauma are not trying to push your buttons. [J. Stuart Ablon] And if he's not doing well, well something's gotta be standing in his way. And as parents, we wanna figure out what's standing in his way so we can help. [Nicole Pauling] Think about what need are they meeting by using this skill, the survival skill. [Debbie Schugg] What's happening with that little hurting child underneath and how can we meet that need so that they don't need to have that behavior anymore. [Heather Forbes] Ask yourself what is really driving this child's behavior, what is the fear behind this behavior? [Jihad Scott] I was scared of everything. [Vivianna Castillo-Royal] And no one gets you, and you're just alone. [Devon Jenkins] I just felt alone. (lively music) [CORE Teen logo appears on screen: the shape of a house sectioned off into triangles of different colors. Each section has the title of one of the CORE Teen curriculum chapters: Transitions, Continued Connections, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression, Parental Regulation, Trauma-Informed Resource Parenting Part 1 and Part 2, Parental Adaptation, and Relationship Development. Screen zooms in on the "Trauma-Informed Resource Parenting 2" title.] [Announcer] This is "CORE Teen," right time training for resource parents. In this episode, we focus on adolescent behavior through a trauma-informed lens. We'll hear from experts on childhood trauma: [Heather Forbes] This is why consequences and punishment don't work for our kids, they have lost everything. [Announcer] We'll check in with veteran resource parents: [Melissa Peterson] And so how do I figure out what's really going on beneath the rage? [Announcer] We'll listen to the voices of youth: [Devon Jenkins] I never knew stability. I never knew consequence. [Announcer] As we learn about the enduring impact of childhood trauma, and discover how families can help young people heal and grow. (gentle music) [Title Card: Trauma-Informed Resource Parenting 2: Understanding Behavior] [Card: How Children Feel in the World] [Devon Jenkins: Foster Care Alumnus] When I was growing up, we moved a lot just because of the trouble that my parents would consistently run into with their just non-law abiding behaviors. I never knew stability. I never knew consequence. I never knew that you get rewarded when you do things well, even. I just didn't know these things. And I felt like I never had a long lasting relationship. I never had a relationship with my parents or my siblings and I just felt alone. [Monica Sampson] These children have been traumatized, okay. They wouldn't be coming to you if they weren't. [Jennifer Rhodes: Foster Care Alumna] In total I was in 22 foster homes. I was in one group home and two juvenile detention centers. [Promise Adams-Brown: Foster Care Alumna] Well, my mother, she lost custody when I was six years old and it was due to drug abuse. [Jihad Scott: Foster Care Alumnus] Me and my sister we would always get into trouble. And my mother being so stressed out, she would beat us and things like that, more so me. But I would always threaten to like call the police on her, whatever. So one time I actually did, I called the police and I hung up but they came anyways. It was a mess so they took us out. [Promise Adams-Brown] I was sexually abused. [Vivianna Castillo-Royal] I didn't understand that physical abuse was not the norm. [Devon Jenkins] You never know when's my next meal gonna be, when am I gonna shower? [Allison Douglas: Adoptive Parent] When a birth child comes into your family, everyone's excited, people are celebrating. But when our children come to us through foster care they're with us because something really scary or sad has happened in their family. We've had children come to us because they've been removed from their birth parents by the police. We've had children come to us from the hospital because they were there because they've been hurt or abused by their family of origin. [Jonathan Douglas: Adoptive Parent] Or just found abandoned in the car. [Allison Douglas] Yeah, one of our children came to us because he was sitting in a car for lots of hours alone, scared and screaming and crying. [Melissa Peterson: Adoptive Parent, Certified Parent Coach] I adopted an 11 year old girl from the foster care system. And she had a history of neglect, multiple abuse, a lot of maltreatment, chaotic living, just a lot of things going on. [Paty Carroll] All three of the kids had been molested in one way or another. [Nancy Stone] Significant abuse and neglect. [Allison Douglas] Sexual abuse in some cases. [Melissa Peterson] She was not ready to trust anybody. [Allison Douglas] I think that's really how I think about trauma, is something that changes how your child feels in the world. Our kids often feel unsafe. [Jihad Scott] I was scared of everything, the basement, the dark, just under the bed. [Alysha Kostyshyn] I was very vulnerable. [Kayla VanDyke] I was always trying to ruin it, if that makes sense. [Jihad Scott] It's overwhelming. (gentle brooding music) [Card: Decoding Survival Behaviors] [Allison Douglas] When Michael came to live with us and for years afterwards, he was terrified when the doorbell rang or someone knocked on the door. And every time the doorbell would ring he would scramble up a bookshelf or try to hide under furniture. [Jonathan Douglas] Dive under things. [Allison Douglas] He would cry. He would begin acting really erratically and I didn't understand this at all. And I would try to discipline him, really, in some ways until I really figured out this is terror, he's terrified every time the doorbell rings. And so something that to me is exciting, the doorbell ringing, it might be a package from Amazon or it's a visitor, that's exciting, to him was so scary. Because in his world before us, someone coming to the door- [Jonathan Douglas] A stranger coming to the door is dangerous. [Allison Douglas] It's dangerous, yeah. [J. Stuart Ablon: Director, Think:Kids, Massachussetts General Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School] I think the most important thing for resource parents to know in terms of trauma is the impact that it has on a developing brain and as a result, what that leads to downstream. Because I think so often what happens is, as a parent, when you're met with all kinds of challenging behavior it's hard to think beyond the behavior. [Heather Forbes] This can look like defiance, disrespect, disobedience, all these things when it's really a brain issue, not a behavioral issue. [Debbie Schugg: Adoptive Parent] There are these core things that happen to our kids when they have trauma when they're very young and their needs are not met, that come out as really obnoxious, defiant, adolescent behavior. [Shane Read: Foster Care Alumnus] I went off on her and I proceeded to hit her, bite her, spit at her, stuff like that. [J. Stuart Ablon] And realizing that some of that behavior, particularly behavior that's very disrespectful, defiant, scary, aggressive, unsafe, realizing that that behavior flows from the impact of trauma is crucial, because it suggests very different ways of trying to handle it. [Debbie Schugg] A lot of our kids, even big kids, coming to us still are very hurt little children who haven't had their needs met. Who don't believe that they deserve to have what other people have. Who don't believe that they deserve to be happy. [Heather Forbes] Their brain is wired for fear. Every thing that the child interprets, everything that they perceive, it's all going to be from a very fear-based perspective. That means that you may just simply look at that child with a different look and they're automatically gonna think that you're mad at them. [Bruce D. Perry: Senior Fellow, ChildTrauma Academy; Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University]A child who grows up in a household where there's lots of love and attention and the parents are present and they use eye contact when they communicate, eye contact for that child means that you are in the presence of somebody who's interested in you, who cares about you and so forth. But if you are a child who grows up with a depressed, disengaged, overwhelmed parent and the only time you have eye contact is when the parent is angry at you, "How many times do I have to tell you this?" You start to associate eye contact with something that's threatening. They may be very, very bad at reading non-verbal signals. So they may, for example over interpret a little bit of frustration. [Heather Forbes] They automatically think that they are in trouble, that they are gonna get kicked out, that they are the problem. [Samantha Coleman Forton: Foster Care Alumna] I remember so many homes where they would be upset and because of prior trauma, because of other situations of not being told what I did wrong, I always thought I was the reason that you were upset. Even though it could be something completely different that I don't even know about. [Heather Forbes] So they see everything from a fear based perspective. You can ask a child just to empty the dishwasher and all of a sudden you are in this two-hour argument about it. And it's no longer about the dishwasher, it's where they are stuck in that fight, flight, or freeze response. [Announcer] A young person's anxiety may trigger the fight, flight, freeze response, an adaptive human reaction to danger, real or perceived. In a dangerous situation, a youth may fight. [Card: Fight Flight Freeze. Zoom in on "Fight"] [Shane Read] I fought with the mom a lot, not physically just we never agreed on anything. We always argued, we always fought. [Heather Forbes] For a child that is always confrontive, they're always arguing, they're stuck in a fight mode. They will argue about anything. [Announcer] Others do whatever it takes to remove themselves from the perceived danger. This is flight. [Card: Fight Flight Freeze. Zoom in on "Flight"] [Devon Jenkins] I wanted to get away and I used every opportunity that I could to get away for as long as I could. [Heather Forbes] Or we got our runners. Lots of kids just run out of the house, which can be a very unsafe situation as well. Those are kids that the minute that they feel threatened, and again, this is their perception, you may not be threatening so much. But it's their perception that maybe if dad asks me to empty the dishwasher, what if I don't do it right? If I don't do it right then dad's gonna kick me out of the house and then they'll send me to the next foster home 'cause I might put something in the wrong drawer so I can't do it. They're like, "Well, then I'm just gonna leave." Now again, that doesn't make sense to us as adults with logical thinking. But when you are in a fear state, there is no logic. [Announcer] Some young people freeze. [Card: Fight Flight Freeze. Zoom in on "Freeze"] [Samantha Coleman Forton] If they're talking to you about something then if you pretend not to listen or just don't listen at all, they'll stop talking, they'll stop trying to create this connection with you. [Heather Forbes] They shut you out, that's a kid that's really more in a freeze response. They can't even process what's happening. They're so overwhelmed they literally become frozen. And again, it's not the actual chore that you're asking them to do, it's just the fact that you are now in a direct relationship with them that can be overwhelming. [Shane Read] I misbehaved, I'd never listen to her. I was always running away from home. [Vivianna Castillo-Royal] I would just do a bunch of... illegal things and cause fights at school, get suspended. I was this close to getting expelled. [Nicole Pauling] I had a child who ate like this [hunches over and pretends to scoop food into her mouth with an arm out in front of her to defend the space] for years because she would protect her plate just like a dog does. [Paty Carroll] A lot of stealing, I have a lot of kids that like to steal. Don't like to tell the truth about anything, you know, you can stand there and watch them do something, "No, I didn't." (chuckles) [Debbie Schugg] And I had a daughter who, man, you could always tell she was lying 'cause her lips were moving, right? And this kid told hundreds of lies a day, hundreds. [Anthony Boykins: Adoptive Parent] There's times where he would just climb out the window and leave. When I would say, "You don't have to do that you could just walk out the front door and come back through the front door." [Heather Forbes] Look at the behavior of your child and then go back to say, okay, could this be a trauma response? [Debbie Schugg] It's really upon us as the parents to look at what's the unmet need there. And let's not get all caught up in the surface behavior, let's look at what the need is. Because if we can figure out what the need is, then we can meet that need in a healthier way and then the behaviors actually dissipate on their own. [Heather Forbes] Ask yourself, "What is really driving this child's behavior? What is the fear behind this behavior?" You're gonna find the solution is right there. (gentle music) [Card: Kids Do Well If They Can] [J. Stuart Ablon] All of our work flows from a central idea. And the one central idea is the philosophy behind our work and that is: "Kids do well if they can." It's very simple, kids do well if they can. And what that means is if a kid could do well, he would do well. And if he's not doing well, well something is gotta be standing in his way. And as parents, we wanna figure out what's standing in his way so we can help. Most of us tend to believe kids do well if they want to and if this kid just wanted to do well, he would. So if he's not doing well, if he's misbehaving it must be 'cause he doesn't want it, I'm gonna try to make him want it. It's about the worst thing you could do with these particular kids. So what we say is, if he could do well, he would do well. Show me the kid who shows up in your home wanting to wreak havoc and have everything go poorly. Especially these kids who have suffered so much loss, so many transitions, they find their way into your home, man, do they want it to stick. Now what's so hard for us is their behavior is gonna communicate the exact opposite. [Paty Carroll] He did not wanna have anything to do with me. [J. Stuart Ablon] They want nothing to do with you. [Paty Carroll] I tried to hug him, I would try to build a relationship with him he just was not having it. [J. Stuart Ablon] Kids do well if they can. If he could he would. I have yet to meet the kid who prefers behaving poorly to behaving well. [Bruce D. Perry] If you don't understand the sequence of processing information, you will continually make the mistake that children's behavior or adult's behavior is always intentional. The truth is most human behavior is elicited, it's not planned. No kids sits up at night thinking, "Oh, tomorrow in lunch, I'm gonna run into Billy and I'm gonna poke him with a pencil. (cackles) Now I just have to figure out how to get him to run into me." They're not out planning these events, they're reacting to things in the environment. And because they're overly reactive, their responses are disproportionate to whatever the stimulus is. And it gets them in trouble all the time. [Caelan Soma: Director, National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children] So kids that have experienced trauma are not trying to push your buttons. They know what they need. And really from a strength perspective, we need to look at that as, "They know how to get my attention to help them get what they need," right? So they often appear to be trying to make you crazy when in fact they're either just being who they are or they're trying to communicate with you in a way that says, "I need you, I need your help right now." [Bruce D. Perry] When you have a child who's dysregulated and out of control, the truth is that's contagious and we feel dysregulated. And then we almost get panicked about getting them to stop or comply or behave. And so we do all kinds of things to try to regain control. Many of them really aren't gonna help the child. Some of them actually will be even more dysregulating. [Heather Forbes] Sometimes parents get frustrated that they can't get this child to cooperate, they can't get them to be a part of a healthy family system. And they say, they maybe give a consequence "Well, I'm gonna take away your Game Boy," or "I'm gonna take away the books in your room, I'm gonna take away your TV," or whatever it is. Well, it doesn't matter, this child has lost everything. You can't make it worse for this child. This is why consequences and punishment don't work for our kids, they have lost everything. [Kayla VanDyke: Foster Care Alumna] If you're responding from a consequence model like off the bat when something goes wrong, if you're prone to yelling, if you are prone to using punitive measures, you're gonna damage the relationship before it can ever even start. [Heather Forbes] Consequences do nothing but add more stress and more fear. [Announcer] Other traditional parenting techniques like timeout, also miss the mark. [Darla L. Henry: President, Darla L. Henry and Associates] We try to apply traditional parenting to children who've not had early nurturing needs met. They don't understand that. They do however in a sensory level know the experience of rejection. They know the experience of abandonment, they lived it. So for example, timeout, tried and true form of parenting, it's successful. It doesn't work with kids who don't have secure parenting. Why? Because it replicates abandonment. So for them being put into timeout is incredibly anxiety producing. [Heather Forbes] I think when a child is acting out you have to recognize that they're dysregulated, they're out of relationship. And so the best thing that you can do is pull back into relationship with a time-in. So let's say we have this child that is disrespectful and calls you some bad name, profanities going everywhere instead of saying, "You just go your room until you can be nice." No, I want you to say, "You know what? Let's stop, you and I let's go for a walk. I wanna do a little time-in." [Darla L. Henry] So what I say to parents is, "Use timeout if you want, go with them." [Heather Forbes] The time-in is the teaching moment. If they go back to the room they're not learning how to self-regulate in a positive way through relationship. They're learning how to get away from the family. We need to help our kids get back into the family. And so that's why I advocate for time-ins instead of time-outs. [J. Stuart Ablon] Most of us parents, we try to make kids do what we want them to do. And this is gonna sound a little harsh but in essence what we do is we try to use power and control to make kids do what we want them to do. And you can get away with that with some kids. With kids who have had a lot of loss, trauma, stress in their lives, you can't get away with it. So what's the opposite of that though, what's the opposite? What would you do to try to keep somebody calm when they're starting to get dysregulated? And in my mind, there's only a couple of things you can do. One, is you can reflect anything you've heard from the kid. And the other is, you can reassure them that you don't want to try to impose your will upon them and that you really wanna understand. So you can reflect and reassure, reflect and reassure. So if a kid is screaming at you, "I'm not leaving, you can't make me go," or "I'm not gonna eat that," or "I'm not getting up," whatever it is you can reflect and you can reassure. Those are the things that are most regulated, all these are words, reflect and reassure. So what does that look like if the kids say, "I'm not going to school!" Guess what reflect looks like. Okay, sounds like, "Something about school you don't wanna go today?" What does reassure look like? "I don't wanna force you to go to school, that's not gonna be good for anybody. If you've got a good reason, I just wanna understand." In other words, ask for information. But that's counterintuitive 'cause most of us, the answer to our own anxiety is action. Whenever there's something that's bothering us we wanna do something, right? We are always trying to solve problems right when they're happening. And it's the worst time to solve a problem because your kid's already worked up and let's face it, so are you. And two worked up people do not do a good job of problem solving. [Bruce D. Perry] It's really important to recognize that words to a dysregulated child make them more dysregulated. So you should really think carefully about when you bring things up. [Melissa Peterson] Really we talk too much. And for kids who have trauma histories in particular, when they're dysregulated they're not hearing anymore. So just shut up and listen, observe, be curious. [Nicole Pauling] Then when she was calm, you could talk. You can't talk when someone's up here, you have to wait till they're down here. [J. Stuart Ablon] And the crazy thing is that the problems we have during the course of the day, they tend to be pretty predictable. The same thing that causes trouble today is likely to cause trouble tomorrow or the next day. [Announcer] The challenge for resource parents is finding the right time and place for a problem solving discussion. [Silhouette of a house divided into four parts from top to bottom. At the top: "Choose a time and place where you're both calm and accessible."] [J. Stuart Ablon] What it looks like is catching your kid anytime they're calm and accessible. [The second section of the house silhouette fills in with "Make a neutral observation about the situation, not the undesired behavior."] [Announcer] Broach the subject with a neutral observation. [J. Stuart Ablon] Make a neutral observation about the situation that is hard. And call it the situation, not the kid, not the behavior and then let's try to gather information. [Announcer] Anticipate the youth's reaction and prepare to reflect and reassure. [The third section of the house fills in with this step.] [J. Stuart Ablon] Any time you try to have a conversation with one of these kids, the first thing they're thinking to themselves when you say, "Hey, you know I've noticed or can we chat about something?" The first thing they're thinking is, "Uh-oh, what did I do?" And because of that they get a little bit what I call dysregulated. Their emotions start to take over. And the problem with that is then they start to lose access to the smart part of their brain. So we need to work overtime to help them know this is a safe place to talk. [Announcer] Ask questions, talk less, listen more. [The final section of the house is filled in with this instruction.] [J. Stuart Ablon] One of the things you wanna communicate is that you may not like their behavior but you think they got good reasons for it. And again, when I'm saying good reasons I don't mean let's delve into his traumatic past which is probably going to re-traumatize them if we try to make him do that. [Lisa Morrison: Clinical Therapist, The Village Network] A mistake that people fall into a lot is feeling that they need to get into the deep meaningful conversations as soon as possible. And I think that's a mistake. [Alysha Kostyshyn] Don't force the kid to like talk about something they don't wanna talk about. [Lisa Morrison] If the kid's not talking, okay, just be that presence. Because maybe kids have never had an adult, a safe adult present with them before. So just the power of being present with someone doing anything that's human, I think is a good way to build that initial connection without being too direct. [Samantha Coleman Forton] Knowing that there is somebody that's willing to just sit here with me while I go through my stuff by myself is powerful. It can help a lot. And that definitely helped me with a lot of trust. [Alysha Kostyshyn] So kind of like let them warm up to you, kinda let that flower bloom. [Monica Sampson] I think it's important for you to follow their lead when it comes to them talking about their trauma, okay? They may not talk about it and that's okay. [Bruce D. Perry] The hardest part for many people, particularly people that are very nurturing people that wanna help and wanna heal is that you have to put all that aside. And you have to remember they need to drive this process. So they'll tell you, they'll tell you when they wanna talk to you about it. They'll tell you how they wanna talk about it. They'll tell you how long they wanna talk about it. [Alysha Kostyshyn] Like I said, just let the flower bloom. It takes time, it takes that space, it takes kind of like level of trust that they build over time. [Bruce D. Perry] These are kids who've had a really hard time trusting adults. They've had so little in their lives they've had control of. And so when we keep probing and poking, they keep protecting. And so it's really important to learn how to be still and be present. And the more still you are inside, the more likely they are to feel comfortable bringing their storm to you. (gentle music) [Title Card: Trauma-Informed Parenting 2: Understanding Behaviors] [CORE Teen Logo]