Who has more fear about heading back to school, you or your child? If we’re honest with this question, we find that as parents we become overwhelmed at many different levels. “Will my child’s teacher(s) understand him or simply react to him?” “How can I get the school to see my child as a traumatized child, not a defiant child?” “How am I going to maintain my work if the school keeps calling me like they did last year?” “What are the afternoons going to be like once homework starts up again…Oh, goodness!”
This article presents four effective strategies discussed that you can use when working to help your child have the best educational experience possible. These include the following: - Be an advocate for you child
- Understand the difficulty of transitions
- Respond instead of react to the child
- Create a stressfree classroom
As I was browsing the Internet looking for other ideas that might be incorporated into this list above, I was struck at the nature of the information available on parenting websites. Backtoschool tips included setting your child’s clothes out the night before, sending your child off to school with a good breakfast, finding a bedtime that allows your child enough sleep, and reassuring your child that his teacher will support him. While these tips would be effective for many children, I know the reality that parents raising children with trauma histories would express. “I did set her clothes out the night before but she got up in the middle of night and cut them up with scissors” or “I made a complete and balanced breakfast but when my child came into the kitchen he melted down, kicking the furniture and throwing things because he wanted cookies instead” or “I have a bedtime set but my child can’t even begin to settle down at this hour of the evening.” And the ultimate statement, “I can’t reassure my child that her teacher will work with her because her teacher does nothing but focus on the negative behaviors of my child and is resistant to understanding my child’s sensitivity to stress.”
Website after website on the Internet offers simple parenting tips, yet for children with difficult and severe behaviors, theses tips prove transparent and ineffective. The reason for this is because these tips do not address the core issue underlying severe behaviorsfear. Parenting children with trauma histories requires parents to move to a higher level of parenting and to live at a higher level of consciousness.
1) Be an advocate for your child.
It takes courage to advocate for your child. Fears of being an “overbearing” or “overlysensitive” parent can be part of the equation. Coming up against a panel of teachers and administrators who stand strong in what they believe can be intimidating. We also fear getting involved and exposing our child’s sensitivities for fear of having our child labeled from the start.
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