Post by corkwing on Nov 17, 2014 15:36:28 GMT
Here are my notes from Bruce Perry at the Adoption UK conference 2014:
Humans are relational beings. Much of the higher parts of our brains are to do with being relational. Our brain is designed for living in small, multi-age, multi-generational units. They aren’t designed for modern life. The number of people per household is falling. Less people per household means less people to interact with. Less people to interact with means less positive interactions. Less positive interactions means that we’re slower at learning how to relate.
A major factor in dealing with stress events is relationships. If something stressful happens and all around you are calm, that acts as a buffer and your own stress is reduced. If they are exhibiting signs of stress themselves then the stress will be amplified in you.
The brain is incredibly complex. Models of the brain are incredibly simple and so are wrong – but some are useful.
The brain is developed in layers from the primitive to the complex – the bit that does all the abstract thinking and problem solving. The nature, timing and pattern of activations all interact to influence the development of neurones.
Messages come into the brain at the primitive level and are filtered before being passed on to higher levels. As you’re reading this, your brain is ignoring a whole pile of signals from your body. Your butt is telling it what your chair feels like; your eyes are picking up a whole pile of peripheral information; your lungs are telling you how your breathing is going. All of that stuff is getting ignored. The level to which the messages can go are based on their importance to the task in hand and your current state. If you’re stressed, very few signals get passed to the highest, problem-solving parts of your brain. Your reactions are coming from a part of the brain dependent on your level of stress. If your life is in danger, your reactions will come from the lowest part of your brain. If you’re peaceful and relaxed, they can come from the higher parts of your brain.
The brain works largely on pattern matching. It recognises certain types of object or situation. It then categorises new experiences as a variant, not a new experience. For adoptive parents, we are a version of an earlier, unpredictable person.
The brain also works on associations. So when a baby is hungry and cries, the (good) mother will pick it up in a certain way, speak in a certain soothing way, put it to her breast and make eye contact. The baby’s needs will be satisfied and it will associate mother, being cuddled, eye contact, tone of voice with the pleasurable feelings of being satiated. If, on the other hand, they are neglected then they may be bunged into a cot with a bottle and the only constant to go with the feeling of having their needs met is the smell of faeces and urine. So they associated those smells with comfort. Hence they wet the bed and smear.
We lay down these associations at a very young age.
The brain doesn’t like to be wrong, so if it has an association, it will try its hardest to maintain that. It will look for all of the evidence that supports it and ignore any that contradicts it. This can make us vulnerable if we’ve had excellent parenting because we’ve created a model that says that other humans are fantastic. We will therefore ignore any evidence to the contrary. The girl who has an abusive boyfriend will find it hard to accept that he’s horrid because her model of the world says that people are lovely. She will ignore the times that he dumps on her because her brain is only taking in the times when he is nice, kind and brings her flowers.
These pictures can be modified but it takes work. The child who thinks that everyone is wonderful will modify that view based on how many “nasty” people he or she comes into contact with. The child who thinks that everyone is against them can again have that view modified by the number of caring, loving, constant people that they come into contact with.
The education system is designed for children at or around the average. Those above average are bored. Those below average don’t understand or can’t cope. They drop away and so the gap widens and widens and widens.
Putting children into groups based on chronological age is bad news for those who are behind emotionally and relationally. They don’t know how to interact with their peers so they have less positive interactions. Their peers find them annoying and immature and so don’t want to relate to them. The result is that the child has less positive interactions and so doesn’t learn how to relate and again falls further and further behind relationally. They need to be with others of similar emotional and relational capabilities to be accepted, have positive interactions and learn to move forward.
Dr. Perry talked a little about ADHD, etc. His view was that some traumatised children exhibit the symptoms because they are delayed, not because they have the actual disorder. E.g. with ADHD, they’re stressed and so they can’t sit still and concentrate and they exhibit impulsive behaviour.
The child who has a world view where adults are unkind and unpredictable and unreliable… They get a good teacher who loves, cares and understands and the child starts to incorporate that into their model. And then the end of year comes and… guess what? They’re moved to a new class or school. They suffer that loss and their model drops back down again.
There are neurones that start at the lowest part of the brain and run through the higher parts, connecting them all and regulate them all. If their development is disrupted then the child will likely end up with physical, emotional and intellectual problems (e.g. asthma and diabetes have higher incidences in traumatised kids). These problems are interconnected, but too often they are treated in isolation.
Stress is normal, natural and healthy – in the right doses and context. We get stressed, we move to a higher level of activation and then we come down again. If we repeatedly don’t manage to come down before the next dose of stress then we become sensitised. Our baseline stress level goes up and any form of stress will send our stress levels soaring immediately: we will blow up where a normal person would react much more linearly.
Predictable, moderate, time-limited doses of stress can help us to become resilient to stress: a stressful situation will not affect us until it becomes critical.
You can’t change any neural network unless you activate it.
Therefore if someone has become sensitised to stress, you need to subject them to predictable, moderate, time-limited doses of stress in order for them to become resilient. And no, he didn’t explain how you do that (unfortunately).
Brain function depends on state. His slides had five levels: calm, alert, alarm, fear and terror. Just as you wouldn’t try to teach a child when they’re asleep – they’re not in the right state – so it’s pointless to try to teach them when they’re in the state of fear. It won’t go in. If a child can regulate, then they can learn. Suggested that schools should focus on regulation rather than rules. So if the child regulates by standing up, rocking, chewing gum, repetitive noises, then it’s better for them to do that so that they can learn. But it’s against the rules: we can’t have that! OK, well what happens if you DON’T let the child do that?
Reminding a child of the rules doesn’t help them to regulate. When’s the last time that someone pointing out to you that you were doing something wrong led to YOU feeling calmer and more regulated?
Rhythm is good for regulation. Good language is rhythmic. Bad language isn’t. If teachers don’t use a rhythmic voice pattern then it’s hard to take in. (Think the person who speaks in a monotone without pauses: how hard they are to listen to)
Suggested that our kids can fit a lot of diagnoses but he likes the suggestion of “developmental trauma” proposed by Van der Kolk.
There can be co-dysregulation if you have a reactive child and an overwhelmed teacher or parent. Tiny mistakes are magnified by the sensitivity of the child. As the child reacts, so the teacher is triggered and they both spiral upwards.
Suggestion to help regulate when things are getting out of hand: step back, lower your voice and disengage. The opposite to what we normally do: step forward, raise our voice and get involved in a good-old shouting match.
A key is to regulate yourself. Look after yourself. If you can stay regulated, you can help your child.
Start the day regulated and get regulated before you interact with your child. Maybe get up 10 minutes early. Wake your child by a gentle shoulder massage. Starting the day on a time-critical path is a recipe for disaster!
In order to communicate with them you need to regulate then relate then reason.
Your sense of time, or ability to think in terms of time, is dependent on state:
Calm – Extended future
Alert – Days or hours
Alarm – Hours or minutes
Fear – Minutes or seconds
Terror – The moment
So yes, a sticker chart may work for a child who’s calm or alert. They’re not going to work for a child in a state of alarm or fear. Many behavioural modification programs are based on the assumption that the child knows what is right. That may be true when they’re at “calm” but not if they’re at “alarm” or worse.
The rewards that are meaningful are based on your state:
Calm – Abstract – Beliefs and values
Alert – Concrete – Relational
Alarm – Emotional – Sweet, salty, fatty foods; sex and drugs
Fear – Physical – Relief of distress
Terror – Didn’t get to write it down
It can help your child if you can be present, parallel, not face to face, and attuned. Walking together or being in car is good for being parallel. Being attuned: don’t ask about it. E.g. when child comes in from school, don’t ask how their day went. Let THEM tell you when they’re ready.
For normal kids, you are safe; separation is scary. They slowly explore out from you and return when overwhelmed. Their circle of where is safe slowly grows.
For traumatised kids, separation Is safety; you are scary. They will explore coming closer to you. Be careful how you respond or you will scare them away.
What can you do?
Becky Bailey’s “I Love You” rituals.
Book – something like “Doodles, Diddles and…”
Flash cards from Mount St. Vincents.
Can contact Dr. Perry’s team through the child trauma organisation website and they can point you in the direction of how to get them.
Walking is the number 1 regulatory activity.
The time of day that things happen can set you up for success or failure – last lesson of the day in school is a big no-no for anything new!
Recommended in class doing regulatory activities: 5 mins at start; 5 mins in the middle; 5 minutes at the end. Yes, that’s 15 minutes out, but research shows that kids learn faster.
TV, films and video games can be regulatory activities. Taking them away as punishment when a child is dysregulated and thus “naughty” isn’t productive!
Biting themselves, cutting, head-banging, etc. are regulating activities designed to help the child to dissociate. They are self-inflicted dissociative behaviours. They stimulate the body to produce opioids. If they’re sensitised then they will release more and feel great!
For teenagers that have severed contact… Send letters and texts. Things like “I love you; I’m thinking about you; hope you’ll be ready to come back sometime”. KEEP ADVICE OUT OF IT. Advice will just drive them away.
Humans are relational beings. Much of the higher parts of our brains are to do with being relational. Our brain is designed for living in small, multi-age, multi-generational units. They aren’t designed for modern life. The number of people per household is falling. Less people per household means less people to interact with. Less people to interact with means less positive interactions. Less positive interactions means that we’re slower at learning how to relate.
A major factor in dealing with stress events is relationships. If something stressful happens and all around you are calm, that acts as a buffer and your own stress is reduced. If they are exhibiting signs of stress themselves then the stress will be amplified in you.
The brain is incredibly complex. Models of the brain are incredibly simple and so are wrong – but some are useful.
The brain is developed in layers from the primitive to the complex – the bit that does all the abstract thinking and problem solving. The nature, timing and pattern of activations all interact to influence the development of neurones.
Messages come into the brain at the primitive level and are filtered before being passed on to higher levels. As you’re reading this, your brain is ignoring a whole pile of signals from your body. Your butt is telling it what your chair feels like; your eyes are picking up a whole pile of peripheral information; your lungs are telling you how your breathing is going. All of that stuff is getting ignored. The level to which the messages can go are based on their importance to the task in hand and your current state. If you’re stressed, very few signals get passed to the highest, problem-solving parts of your brain. Your reactions are coming from a part of the brain dependent on your level of stress. If your life is in danger, your reactions will come from the lowest part of your brain. If you’re peaceful and relaxed, they can come from the higher parts of your brain.
The brain works largely on pattern matching. It recognises certain types of object or situation. It then categorises new experiences as a variant, not a new experience. For adoptive parents, we are a version of an earlier, unpredictable person.
The brain also works on associations. So when a baby is hungry and cries, the (good) mother will pick it up in a certain way, speak in a certain soothing way, put it to her breast and make eye contact. The baby’s needs will be satisfied and it will associate mother, being cuddled, eye contact, tone of voice with the pleasurable feelings of being satiated. If, on the other hand, they are neglected then they may be bunged into a cot with a bottle and the only constant to go with the feeling of having their needs met is the smell of faeces and urine. So they associated those smells with comfort. Hence they wet the bed and smear.
We lay down these associations at a very young age.
The brain doesn’t like to be wrong, so if it has an association, it will try its hardest to maintain that. It will look for all of the evidence that supports it and ignore any that contradicts it. This can make us vulnerable if we’ve had excellent parenting because we’ve created a model that says that other humans are fantastic. We will therefore ignore any evidence to the contrary. The girl who has an abusive boyfriend will find it hard to accept that he’s horrid because her model of the world says that people are lovely. She will ignore the times that he dumps on her because her brain is only taking in the times when he is nice, kind and brings her flowers.
These pictures can be modified but it takes work. The child who thinks that everyone is wonderful will modify that view based on how many “nasty” people he or she comes into contact with. The child who thinks that everyone is against them can again have that view modified by the number of caring, loving, constant people that they come into contact with.
The education system is designed for children at or around the average. Those above average are bored. Those below average don’t understand or can’t cope. They drop away and so the gap widens and widens and widens.
Putting children into groups based on chronological age is bad news for those who are behind emotionally and relationally. They don’t know how to interact with their peers so they have less positive interactions. Their peers find them annoying and immature and so don’t want to relate to them. The result is that the child has less positive interactions and so doesn’t learn how to relate and again falls further and further behind relationally. They need to be with others of similar emotional and relational capabilities to be accepted, have positive interactions and learn to move forward.
Dr. Perry talked a little about ADHD, etc. His view was that some traumatised children exhibit the symptoms because they are delayed, not because they have the actual disorder. E.g. with ADHD, they’re stressed and so they can’t sit still and concentrate and they exhibit impulsive behaviour.
The child who has a world view where adults are unkind and unpredictable and unreliable… They get a good teacher who loves, cares and understands and the child starts to incorporate that into their model. And then the end of year comes and… guess what? They’re moved to a new class or school. They suffer that loss and their model drops back down again.
There are neurones that start at the lowest part of the brain and run through the higher parts, connecting them all and regulate them all. If their development is disrupted then the child will likely end up with physical, emotional and intellectual problems (e.g. asthma and diabetes have higher incidences in traumatised kids). These problems are interconnected, but too often they are treated in isolation.
Stress is normal, natural and healthy – in the right doses and context. We get stressed, we move to a higher level of activation and then we come down again. If we repeatedly don’t manage to come down before the next dose of stress then we become sensitised. Our baseline stress level goes up and any form of stress will send our stress levels soaring immediately: we will blow up where a normal person would react much more linearly.
Predictable, moderate, time-limited doses of stress can help us to become resilient to stress: a stressful situation will not affect us until it becomes critical.
You can’t change any neural network unless you activate it.
Therefore if someone has become sensitised to stress, you need to subject them to predictable, moderate, time-limited doses of stress in order for them to become resilient. And no, he didn’t explain how you do that (unfortunately).
Brain function depends on state. His slides had five levels: calm, alert, alarm, fear and terror. Just as you wouldn’t try to teach a child when they’re asleep – they’re not in the right state – so it’s pointless to try to teach them when they’re in the state of fear. It won’t go in. If a child can regulate, then they can learn. Suggested that schools should focus on regulation rather than rules. So if the child regulates by standing up, rocking, chewing gum, repetitive noises, then it’s better for them to do that so that they can learn. But it’s against the rules: we can’t have that! OK, well what happens if you DON’T let the child do that?
Reminding a child of the rules doesn’t help them to regulate. When’s the last time that someone pointing out to you that you were doing something wrong led to YOU feeling calmer and more regulated?
Rhythm is good for regulation. Good language is rhythmic. Bad language isn’t. If teachers don’t use a rhythmic voice pattern then it’s hard to take in. (Think the person who speaks in a monotone without pauses: how hard they are to listen to)
Suggested that our kids can fit a lot of diagnoses but he likes the suggestion of “developmental trauma” proposed by Van der Kolk.
There can be co-dysregulation if you have a reactive child and an overwhelmed teacher or parent. Tiny mistakes are magnified by the sensitivity of the child. As the child reacts, so the teacher is triggered and they both spiral upwards.
Suggestion to help regulate when things are getting out of hand: step back, lower your voice and disengage. The opposite to what we normally do: step forward, raise our voice and get involved in a good-old shouting match.
A key is to regulate yourself. Look after yourself. If you can stay regulated, you can help your child.
Start the day regulated and get regulated before you interact with your child. Maybe get up 10 minutes early. Wake your child by a gentle shoulder massage. Starting the day on a time-critical path is a recipe for disaster!
In order to communicate with them you need to regulate then relate then reason.
Your sense of time, or ability to think in terms of time, is dependent on state:
Calm – Extended future
Alert – Days or hours
Alarm – Hours or minutes
Fear – Minutes or seconds
Terror – The moment
So yes, a sticker chart may work for a child who’s calm or alert. They’re not going to work for a child in a state of alarm or fear. Many behavioural modification programs are based on the assumption that the child knows what is right. That may be true when they’re at “calm” but not if they’re at “alarm” or worse.
The rewards that are meaningful are based on your state:
Calm – Abstract – Beliefs and values
Alert – Concrete – Relational
Alarm – Emotional – Sweet, salty, fatty foods; sex and drugs
Fear – Physical – Relief of distress
Terror – Didn’t get to write it down
It can help your child if you can be present, parallel, not face to face, and attuned. Walking together or being in car is good for being parallel. Being attuned: don’t ask about it. E.g. when child comes in from school, don’t ask how their day went. Let THEM tell you when they’re ready.
For normal kids, you are safe; separation is scary. They slowly explore out from you and return when overwhelmed. Their circle of where is safe slowly grows.
For traumatised kids, separation Is safety; you are scary. They will explore coming closer to you. Be careful how you respond or you will scare them away.
What can you do?
Becky Bailey’s “I Love You” rituals.
Book – something like “Doodles, Diddles and…”
Flash cards from Mount St. Vincents.
Can contact Dr. Perry’s team through the child trauma organisation website and they can point you in the direction of how to get them.
Walking is the number 1 regulatory activity.
The time of day that things happen can set you up for success or failure – last lesson of the day in school is a big no-no for anything new!
Recommended in class doing regulatory activities: 5 mins at start; 5 mins in the middle; 5 minutes at the end. Yes, that’s 15 minutes out, but research shows that kids learn faster.
TV, films and video games can be regulatory activities. Taking them away as punishment when a child is dysregulated and thus “naughty” isn’t productive!
Biting themselves, cutting, head-banging, etc. are regulating activities designed to help the child to dissociate. They are self-inflicted dissociative behaviours. They stimulate the body to produce opioids. If they’re sensitised then they will release more and feel great!
For teenagers that have severed contact… Send letters and texts. Things like “I love you; I’m thinking about you; hope you’ll be ready to come back sometime”. KEEP ADVICE OUT OF IT. Advice will just drive them away.
