Listen to thisThe Home Nightmare
Home is meant to be where we are safe. It is our refuge from the outside world and all the uncertainty and chaos that can bring. I don’t think I felt safe in my home. I lived in fear of my father and his anger problems and the verbal daggers that flung straight into my soul with little effort and stunning accuracy. The reality is that there are a lot of children who can’t feel that safety when they are at home because of housing insecurities, unsafe living conditions, and food insecurities. These make it so difficult for these children to focus in school because they have bigger things they are worrying about. Will the lock on their bedroom door keep him out tonight? Will their mom get out of jail for a visit this weekend? Will Dad come home drunk out of his mind again? What will be for dinner because they had nothing in the fridge this morning? Will they be evicted because Mom got another one of those notices on the door? Where can they go to be safe? Big adult problems swirl around in a growing brain that can’t process or understand all the moving parts. Let's think back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Safety is second on the triangle after physiological needs like food and sleep and self-actualization (learning, mastery) is at the top. Why do we place these expectations on the children we work with, to have academic growth and success when that is at the top of the triangle and without the basics, they actually can not get there? It is not in their wheelhouse of possibility without these other important parts. Safety is meant to start at home, but home might be the nightmare they can’t escape.
Its About the Trauma
I had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain of the school system and shadow the school board's BSA through her daily visits to various schools as part of my final practicum. Her phone never stopped ringing, beeping, and buzzing with support staff and school admin seeking her help and her calendar was always full. Her brain is always developing new ideas to help the support staff she encounters create programming, interventions, and safety plans for the thousands of children in our school system. What always struck me was her rapport with not only the staff but each child she worked with. This week was all about the allocation of staff for the next year. We went through each child with needs spanning from physical to behavioural and went through their histories to establish needs for things like EA’s or CYC’s. I noticed at the end, that the common thread to children needing support for behavioural issues, was trauma. That box was ticked for every single highflyer at each school we visited. It tells you a lot, because behaviour is communicating fear and physical, emotional, and mental pain and these little ducks are doing their best to cope in a world that has failed them over and over.
At this school, a child had transferred in few months prior. He was put in daily holds when escalated to prevent harming themselves or others. As we were wrapping up the day, a call came over the school’s walkies for support. Immediately the BSA jumped up and I was directly behind her. She passed me her keys and coat and threw her hair up in a messy bun as we rounded the hallway and entered the room. I saw two EAs in a floor hold with this little duck screaming at the top of his lungs. No one spoke, they mouthed words to each other and motioned for pillows to be shifted to prevent injury to staff and to this little one who was trying with every tiny muscle in his body to escape. He was in pain, not physical pain but emotional turmoil. He screamed about his mother and how much he hated her and other things that were hard to hear. The pain in this child’s screams will stay with me forever because it was gut-wrenching to see that someone had hurt him this badly. It turns out, his home life was atrocious, and his grandparent was looking after him. This day, he found out his mom was picking him up from school and went immediately into fight or flight because he didn’t feel safe with her for very good reasons. I watched as the staff held him, and as his tiny body began to relinquish control of the situation, their hold began to relax with him. The BSA began to rub and massage his arms and legs, and the EAs were rubbing his back and playing with his hair until his whole body relaxed.
Restoration
The restoration part of NVCI that can be easily overlooked because there isn’t time between answering this support call and going to the next. This continued for another ten to fifteen minutes and he began to perk up again and have soft conversations. They offered him all his preferred calming items, water and a snack. The fact is, this is the most important part because it restores the relationship between the CYC and the child, so we must try to make the time. This young boy eventually returned to class. In this sacred space, I realized that this moment, that day, was the safest this little one ever got to feel and that was heartbreaking.
Enduring and Surviving
That’s true for a lot of the children we encounter as CYC’s every single day, some multiple times a day. The pain these little ones have been put through would be unbearable for us as adults. They need our help to co-regulate because they absolutely can’t do it on their own. Providing them with their basic needs, as much as we can in the confines of our agencies and school boards really Is an integral part of walking with them through their scary stuff. It can help them get to a place where they can be successful. Imagine being constantly afraid and always waiting for the next shoe to drop from anywhere. How exhausting must that be? To always be weary of the intentions of adults, and always preparing for the next attack that they have to endure and survive? So, for those children who come to school and end up asleep under a table for five hours of their day, let them sleep. It may be the only place they feel safe enough to let their guard down.
