#earlydevelopmentchildhood

Tosha, a 27-year old single parent and toddler teacher in a child care center was feeling extremely exhausted and emotional when she contacted her college advisor where she was studying. She stated “I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown and to my breaking point! I have had a group of toddlers for the past two weeks on my own, while my assistant teacher has been out with the virus. I’m working 12 hours a day, in college studying a full-time load and taking care of my three-year-old son alone. This is too much for me! I’m done and I want out!”

The college advisor asked Tosha what her typical day looks like. Tosha said that usually, she wakes early each morning around 6am to dress and prepare breakfast for her and her son, whom she awakens at 7am. After taking care of her son, making lunch, doing some laundry, they are off for the day to her job at the child care center—but lately, she has been working in the center from 6am to 6pm. She’s exhausted, tired, despondent, and feels guilty because she’s not able to manage as she used to juggle work, her son, and study.

Dinner is often fast food, and interaction with her own child is placing a tablet in the child’s hands so she can do her college homework. Now her son is beginning to exhibit challenging behaviors at home and in his classroom. The college advisor asks Tosha to think about how she can minimize the stress by perhaps delaying college at this point. Tosha resists saying this is the only chance she has, and with seven classes to complete before graduation, she doesn’t want to quit school. Additionally, Tosha also told her advisor she wanted to get a second job to pay bills because there is so much financial pressure on her low income from the child care center.

This scenario is real and affects early childhood educators worldwide.

The demands on Early Childhood Educators

Early childhood educators are usually the first port of call for parents as they transition their children from home to socializing and learning with others. Good early childhood educators are a dedicated group of professionals who take their responsibilities seriously. There has always been a big paperwork load to record progress, comply with regulations, follow frameworks, align with professional bodies, continue with professional development, and more. That’s before we even look at interacting with the children, planning learning experiences, documenting learning, developing relationships – all of the things that quality educators do each day. Things that those not in the profession wouldn’t see.

In recent times, these demands have increased. Stories like Tosha’s are becoming more common. Children’s behavior is becoming more erratic and challenging, parental expectations are becoming more demanding, paperwork, social distancing rules, child-adult ratios, space limits, illness, worry, and concern have all been added into what was already a demanding job.

Simple things like having a bathroom break can be problematic, so educators don’t drink a lot or have to wait until another adult can supervise while they step out of the classroom. Understaffing makes this harder. The constant difficulty of finding early childhood staff is the other pandemic that is sweeping the world. Some centers feel they have no choice but to hire someone who is not remotely interested in children just to keep the center doors open. The comparatively low wages don’t help the situation either when educators compare income from a less stressful job to working in an early childhood center. What does this mean for the quality of education and care that is available in the centers?

The statistics before the pandemic, tell us that in America:

42% of degree-qualified educators leave the profession in the first 5 years. At least 66% of experienced educators think about leaving and at any given time 36% are likely to find another career path to follow. Educators leave the profession due to many reasons, such as dissatisfaction with the job (55%), family or personal reasons (43%), are at retirement age (32%), finding a better job (32%), or financial reasons (18%). There is no space here to look into what is included in each of these reasons, but the point is that over half leave teaching because they are generally dissatisfied that the job is not what they signed up for.

Teacher burnout and trauma are real. It’s the other pandemic that we have to monitor, find a way to immunize our quality early childhood professionals use treatments so that they aren’t pushed to the breaking point like Tosha.

Demands on the Administrator

Administrators are stressed, can be overwhelmed with paperwork, the needs of families, and then must make ethical and professional decisions to hire people just to fill the staffing gaps. There is clear evidence about the importance of quality educators but sometimes there is no opportunity to choose high-quality staff. Sometimes the administrator must work in a classroom because of the ratio limits and being short-staffed AND continue with their administrative work too. This puts administrators and other staff members in the position of surviving – not thriving. In some cases, administrators and staff members are forced to make decisions that are morally and ethically uncomfortable.

The demands on the brain

When we feel stressed, the body floods the brain with the cortisol hormone. This is a survival technique cleverly used by the body to keep us safe. Cortisol triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response that puts us on high alert constantly. The brain is looking for danger so that it can move us out of harm (flight), help us defend ourselves (fight), or become invisible by not doing anything (freeze). The high level of cortisol during stressful situations means we end up with a foggy brain – hard to think, remember, make decisions – and it’s exhausting.

Educators and many others have been living in a state of high alert for many months. A small amount of stress and cortisol can be motivating in the short term, but long term, it causes serious physical and mental health concerns. Educators can feel overwhelmed trying to manage their personal and professional lives. They may experience ‘compassion fatigue’, a secondary trauma that occurs when ‘adults become overwhelmed by the suffering and pain of those in their care’ (Nicholson, Perez, Kurtz. 2019).

Ethical responsibilities

As a professional, we have ethical responsibilities to ourselves, colleagues, children, families, the community, school boards, and government agencies. The NAEYC Code of Ethics is utilized by many educators across the world to guide good decisions when we find ourselves in a situation where we must determine the best possible outcome for everyone concerned.

What is your ethical responsibility to colleagues if you know they are struggling as we saw with Tosha at the beginning of this article?

What is the responsibility of the administrator to notice and care for staff?

Who is going to care for you?

It comes down to self-care first, followed by caring for others. Noticing the small signs within yourself and others as the pressure mounts. Not waiting until the stress and burnout signs are obvious before making some changes.

Self-Care responsibilities

What can we do to mediate the effects on educators and administrators?

There are many strategies that will support self-management and self-care. Here are a few to get you thinking:

Self-awareness – Take some time to reflect on how you are feeling – pause, take a breath and notice your emotions. Be honest and it’s ok to cry, get angry, feel sad.

Feelings - Recognize and acknowledge the feelings that come up for you and know that having these emotions does not make you weak – it is a strength to honestly reflect and put steps in place to change the feelings or situation.

Coping - Think about some big life events that were hard to get through at the time. Try to identify the coping mechanism you used then. Perhaps talking to a friend of relative to normalize your feelings, taking a break from the situation, losing yourself in a novel to give your brain a break.

Start to cut - Write down what you could cut from your day or week to reduce the load you carry. It’s important to write down or draw your obligations to get them out of your head, see them clearly, then start cutting. You’ll find it liberating. Remember this is about your survival and not about making other people happy.

Take care of yourself first - Take a walk, have a Friday evening long bath with candles and music, listen to gentle music, download a meditation app and do this when you get into bed or in the morning. Start and end your day in a peaceful way.

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References

Nicholson, J., Perez., L, and Kurtz, J. (2019). Trauma Informed Practices for Early Childhood Educators. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-138-30639-4.

Campbell, J. (2020). Teacher burnout statistics. https://newmiddleclassdad.com/teacher-burnout-statistics/

©Dr Kathryn Murray and Dr Sharon Little, 2021.

Dr. Kathryn Murray is an early childhood pedagogical expert and creator of the Brain-SET Formula© for Classroom Design. She is the CEO of Future Strong Education - a global early childhood consultancy organization based in Australia. Kathryn supports educators and parents to give children the best possible start in life. Find Dr. Kathryn Murray at www.futurestrongeducation.com or connect with her through [email protected]

Have you ever felt exhausted, frustrated, annoyed, or just plain angry because of someone else’s behavior or demands?

Being human means that we experience a range of emotions hundreds of times a day.

But what happens when you can’t or don’t know how to manage emotions? What happens when you feel like you’re going to explode?

As parents, we feel that way at times and can usually find ways to manage it, such as going outside or for a walk. But what happens if you are a child and don’t know how to calm down?

Most of us know that there are two hemispheres of the brain.

The left side likes logic, lists, and is very linear and rigid in thinking. The right side is emotional, creative, spontaneous, and a little chaotic. Trying to navigate between both sides can be tricky.

Dan Siegal suggests that to have a happy life we should float down a River of Wellbeing.

Imagine the river banks are connected to the way we think and behave - the left bank is rigid in thinking, and the right bank is chaotic.

Young children (and adults at times) find it difficult to keep to the middle of the river and often use a zig-zag approach. When children veer close to the left, rigid bank they become sticklers for the rules of a game. As they veer toward the opposite bank they become more chaotic and switch from the rule maker to throwing a giant tantrum. It takes maturity and practice to float down the middle of the river and still stay connected to both banks so that thinking can be both logical and creative.

In my experience, children become overwhelmed by emotions and drift to one side of the river or the other because they are trying to fulfill an emotional need. The trouble is that sometimes the way they choose to respond or fulfill that need is not appropriate or effective. Sometimes those emotions children are trying to manage can end up being out of control.

Research tells us that as emotions rise. The fight, flight, or freeze response kicks in fuelled by a flood of the cortisol hormone in the brain. This hormone keeps us on high alert so as humans, we can survive by hitting out or being verbally abusive (fight), running away (flight), or not talking at all and avoiding the whole situation (freeze). This means that conversation or reasoning cannot physically occur while we are in this heightened state of being alert.

Have you ever seen a child have a tantrum – yelling, crying, screaming, throwing things, stamping their foot, and more? This is due to the overwhelm of emotions and the high level of cortisol swimming through the brain. This is not the time to try and have a rational conversation or explain the consequences of actions. This is the time for a cuddle, space, and some ‘chill out' time.

Giving your child (and you) the space and time to ‘chill out’ and calm the brain, allows emotions to settle and the opportunity for thinking to happen. The level of cortisol created by the body when under stress (from an argument, tantrum, being anxious and other reasons) increases and impacts clear thinking in the brain. Sometimes we call that foggy brain. Taking some time in a ‘chill out’ space gives the brain time to settle, the cortisol level can drop, the sense of safety and security increases and we become calm. That’s the time to go and quietly have a discussion about appropriate behaviors or what might be worrying your child.

Ways to help the calming of emotions include creating a ‘chill out’ space in an area of your home. It’s a space that is removed from everyone (the corner of the living room) but not isolated (a bedroom). This is a safe space for refuge and respite where children can settle and compose themselves so that a conversation can occur. It works well if there are different textures in the space so that it is a sensory experience that helps to calm emotions.

As a parent, remember you need to do this too. You can model the need to take a break from a situation. Use the Think Aloud strategy and say “I’m feeling a bit annoyed. I’m going to ‘chill out’ for a few minutes”.

‘Chill out’ is not ‘time out’ and it is NOT a punishment - it’s a strategy to strengthen family relationships by recognizing the need for calm brains to help compassionate communication and keeps you floating in the centre of the River of Wellbeing.

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Like classroom interactions and behaviors, trauma comes in all shapes and sizes. There is no 'one size fits all'.

How do we know if extreme childhood behavior is caused by traumatic events, anger, frustration, or the children just learning to self-regulate?

In this article we explore what trauma is, how it might look, and the impact on a child’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive abilities as you read on.

Trauma has always existed, and now it’s time to share how we can support children who have been traumatized before, during, and after a pandemic.

What would you do in this real-life situation?

Charlie is an outstanding third-grade student—he excels in his assignments, loves reading, and easily makes friends in the classroom. Ms. Smith, his teacher, calls Charlie one of the “best” students she has ever had in class throughout her teaching career.

Over time, however, something changed—Ms. Smith notices extreme changes in Charlie. He has become extremely aggressive towards her, and his classmates. He lashes out with his fist, words, non-verbal gestures, throws things and no longer participates in any group learning sessions. His whole personality has changed.

Finally, after Charlie physically bruises two of his classmates during an outdoor time, and lunges at Ms. Smith in an overaggressive way she knows that something needs to be done. As what she feels is the last resort, Ms. Smith speaks with a school counselor concerning the patterns of behavior she has observed in Charlie for the past month.

Mrs. Blue, the counselor, speaks with Charlie, who remains silent.

After several weeks of silence, Charlie shared something with Mrs. Blue that explains the aggression—Charlie saw a relative shot in front of him and watched him die. He has been struggling to process this incident.

The trauma and the child

This story is true.

While many educators see varying classroom behavior, misbehavior is hard to ignore. Discovering the “root” cause of the behavior is essential as Mrs. Blue demonstrated in the story.

Trauma can take many forms that can include:

a change in social behavior – keeping to themselves and not playing

becoming overly quiet

uncharacteristic boisterous behavior

aggressive behavior – shouting, hitting, throwing, punching

running away

crying without an obvious reason

being clingy to familiar people

being distant from familiar people

looking sad

emotional outbursts

taking things that don’t belong to them

Although this list may leave us thinking that the outward evidence of trauma covers all behaviors, there are ways to identify when a child is enduring the pain of trauma and find the “root” of the problem. Has the behavior changed recently, is it uncharacteristic, do we have a feeling that something is not quite right?

Behaviors can be induced by primary or secondary trauma. In the story, Charlie wasn’t the one-shot but his witnessing the incident produced traumatic fallout that was exhibited in the classroom.

Primary trauma can occur if the child is personally threatened and is frightened, becomes sick, goes to a hospital, or worse, thinks they may die. This is trauma that impacts the child in a real and personal way. We hear of veterans experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for years after the traumatic events of war where they are literally in a life or death situation (Gluck, Mercado & Myers, 2016). This is the effect trauma can have on an adult’s brain. Imagine how that is for a child.

Secondary trauma can be triggered by observing others being hurt or feeling the fear of violence not associated with the child. Recently triggers could be the impact of COVID-19 on the family. Unemployment, financial stress, at home for extended periods during the lockdown, relatives that may have passed away because of Covid. Again, there is tension, residual grief, the lack of social interaction, isolation, and more (Motta, 2012).

The brain and trauma

Trauma affects the brain in several ways. One of these ways is that the fight, flight, or freeze responses are heightened. Children are on ‘high alert’ assuming danger will take place at any time. This can be exhausting, and children may feel tired, irritable, and unable to focus or function well.

The fight (yell or hit), flight (run away), or freeze (can’t speak or move) responses occur when the mammalian part of the brain, which includes the limbic system takes control. Emotions are stimulated in this part of the brain with links to the brain stem, the survival part of the brain. If a child feels frightened the brain stem gets the legs moving to run away from the situation to survive (Nagel & Scholes, 2016).

Imagine being in this state all of the time - the brain can’t relax, regulate or work out if it is safe or under threat.

The teacher

The classroom climate or tone that the teacher sets is important for establishing an environment in which children know they are safe, feel accepted, and can engage in learning. Some ways to create a positive classroom space includes:

Keep firm but fair routines and structures and give a warning about any changes

Instill calmness into the classroom by using a calm and quiet voice

Include nature – bring plants into the classroom or include cane baskets

Take some learning activities outside

Use a visual timetable so that children can see where they are in the day

Allow children to work alone or in well-chosen pairs

Provide smaller spaces in the classroom so children can have some ‘me’ time

Having fun in the classroom, sharing a joke, laughing, playing a game before recess, sharing personal stories helps to lighten the tone of the classroom and build connections between the children and teacher. This promotes a sense of belonging and security and calms the brain.

The needs of the teacher cannot be overlooked in this context either. Taking care of self is of utmost importance. It’s like when traveling on a plane – the safety warning is to first put the oxygen mask on yourself, then others you are traveling with. It is the same concept here. Self-care and self-love are important for everyone. Take time out in nature, listen to music. Do what makes your heart sing.

The parents

Parents may be undergoing the same types of primary and secondary trauma as their children. As a teacher, assuming that parents can take over once the children go home could be very short-sighted. Many of the same support processes mentioned above for children apply to parents too. Ensuring that parents have a support network, interact socially in non-threatening spaces, have a routine, and don’t take on anything that causes stress is important. Maintaining regular communication with families not only offers support but also allows the teacher to see warning signs of needed further help.

The outside agencies

Social workers, counselors, members of the faith (priests, rabbis, ministers), psychologists, guidance counselors, and other support personnel can support traumatized children and families in various ways. Each support person has their own unique approach. Having a team approach to alleviate the effects of trauma before, during, and after the pandemic is under control, is a priority to ensure that children grow into healthy, happy, and productive adults. Teachers involved in a team approach feel supported and part of a community. Therefore, additional support can be provided to the professionals involved, the children, and families.

As teachers, our overall aim is to provide an environment in which children feel safe to allow them to thrive in our classrooms and perhaps have some respite from the outside world. This means taking care of ourselves first, so we can take care of the children.

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Who is Dr. Kathryn Murray?

Dr. Kathryn Murray is an early childhood pedagogical expert and creator of the Brain-SET Formula© for Classroom Design. She is the CEO of Future Strong Education - a global early childhood consultancy organization based in Australia. Kathryn supports educators and parents to give children the best possible start in life. Find Dr. Kathryn Murray at www.futurestrongeducation.com or connect with her through [email protected].

Who is Dr. Sharon Little?

Dr. Sharon Little is an early childhood program lead and faculty in North Carolina. She is also a project coach, trainer, private early education consultant, speaker, and strong advocate for early childhood education. Sharon supports early educators, the community, and other early childhood professionals in trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate practices, diversity, and higher education subject matter. Find Dr. Sharon Little at Linkedin here.

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Gluck, M., Mercado, E., Myers, C. (2016). Learning and memory: From brain to behaviour (3rd ed.). New York, USA: Worth Publishers.

Motta, R. W. (2012). Secondary trauma in children and school personnel. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 28:3, 256-269.

Nagel, M., Scholes, L. (2016). Understanding development and learning: Implications for teaching. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

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