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Monday, May 31 2021

Restorative Justice - Proceed with Care

Restorative justice is an approach for dealing with the damage sustained by individuals and/or society as a result of offending behaviour.  It became popular in the late 1990’s and subsequently developed into an accepted technique to patch up the relationship between the victims and offenders of crimes.  By 2006 a range of authorities used this approach as part of their procedures in dealing with ‘crime’ including police, judges, politicians and victim support groups.  The practice of restorative justice eventually found its way into schools and in some cases, it became so important it underpinned their discipline policies.  I understand the attraction of this approach, in theory everyone thrives but there are times when this is really inappropriate and damaging especially to the victim.

 

Restorative justice is a procedure where all stakeholders affected by an injustice together confront the situation and have the opportunity to clarify what happened, how it affected them and how to repair the relationships.  This process has been commercialised by a number of organisations and they present their structured approach to this process.  What they have in common is that a meeting is organised by a facilitator between the victim and the offender with the aim of having the perpetrator listen to the victim’s statement so they accept the impact of their behaviour and empathise with the victim.

 

The facilitator would guide the meeting following a process based on similar questions as those below:  

 

  • Who has been hurt?
  • What are their needs?
  • Whose obligations are these?
  • What are the causes?
  • Who has a stake in the situation?
  • What is the appropriate process to involve stakeholders in an effort to address causes and put things right?

In 2013 the Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems Group based in London, in a review of this process stressed the need for the offender to meet the victim face-to-face.  They suggested that it is effective because:

  • The offender has to learn about the harm they have caused to their victim, making it hard for them to justify their behavior.
  • It offers a chance to discuss moral development to offenders who may have had little of it in their life.
  • Offenders are more likely to view their punishment as legitimate.

 

An extension of this approach occurs when the perpetrators explain what motivated their behaviour, what they wanted to achieve.  This allows the perpetrator to give their side of the story.  The programs tend to avoid shaming and stigmatizing the offender however, for the children we focus on, this public exposure to their inappropriate behaviour reinforces their sense of worthlessness.  Their personal experience of toxic shame; that they haven’t done something bad to others but they are bad for others.

 

This leads to the first of my concerns, understanding the power of the victim!  Experienced teachers who have worked with severely dysfunctional children will have witnessed the power of being a victim.  These kids will consciously or even unconsciously ‘annoy’ a fellow student who has little control over their behaviours.  They can be barefaced in their attempt to get the ‘perpetrator’ to lash-out at them, it’s as easy as insulting their mother!  When the perpetrator attacks the ‘victim’ he or she runs to the authority for protection.  Less subtle ways use behaviours described as passive-aggressive where the victim continually ‘annoys’ the perpetrator by just being ‘around’ until they get sick of them and they ‘attack’ them. 

The diagram below illustrates this connection.

 

This becomes a cycle: when the victim informs the facilitator, this is an act of aggression against the aggressor because they expect the aggressor will be punished.  If the facilitator is not mindful of the manipulation taking place, they will punish the aggressor who has now taken on the role of victim.  This use of victim power is not likely to be revealed in any restorative justice approach.  It requires the expertise of the facilitator, it is unlikely any student with a history of abuse or neglect would have the insight to point this out.

A second concern is an inequity of the relative personal power of the aggressor and victim.  Some students develop disorders that attract the diagnosis of narcissism, sociopathy or even psychopathy.  These students care little about the feelings of their victims and in fact they enjoy seeing them suffer.  This presents a huge problem for meetings facilitated using a restorative justice approach. You can rest assured that both the victim and perpetrator know where each stands; the victim understands they are no match for the perpetrator and the latter will even enjoy playing with the facilitator.  I have seen these people in action, to the uninformed facilitator the perpetrator will admit to all their wrong-doings, they are only too willing to apologize to the victim.  Both the perpetrator and the victim know that if the victim doesn’t declare satisfaction with the process and ‘forgive’ the perpetrator once the process is over they will be dealt with!  In these cases, the facilitator will report an ‘excellent outcome’ where punishment was avoided!

 

The danger of using restorative justice practices for disputes between individuals is fraught with danger.  Of course, there are cases where the approach will benefit all involved but this is not as likely when you are dealing with students whose dysfunctional behaviour caused the dispute.  These very damaged kids do not have the personal qualities developed to undertake what is a relatively sophisticated process.  This is why our approach of providing structure, expectations within a caring and supportive environment is important.  Eventually these kids will start to develop the qualities of trust and a healthy sense of their own worth.  If this can be achieved then these students could benefit from restorative justice but we would hope that by then there would be no need of this approach!

Posted by: AT 12:38 am   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Monday, May 24 2021

Trauma Informed Teaching

In recent years it has become widely accepted that trauma can have devastating consequences on the mental health and performance of individuals.  Much of our work at Frew Consults Group is underpinned by our understanding of the effects of early childhood trauma and we are finding an increasing number of professional development programs offered to schools that market themselves as being ‘trauma informed’.  It needs to be acknowledged that there is a potential danger of those delivering these programs.  Trauma, and the resulting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a very complex mental health injury and it is critical that those delivering these courses and the teachers that participate do not over-step their professional responsibilities and to exacerbate the psychological injury already suffered by these children.

 

Trauma occurs when events challenge the very foundations of our expected survival.  We all function with the expectation that we will endure and this gives us the confidence to plan and act within our community.  However, there can be times when these expectations are shattered through the experience of:

  • Unexpected life-threatening events such as car accidents, earthquakes, severe illness, the death of a loved one, anything that threatens your stable view of the world.
  • You come face to face with human vulnerability, you witness the injury to another person that demonstrates the fragility of life, in an instant the world changes through events that are out of your control.
  • You come face to face with the capacity for others to preform what can only be called evil in the world.  History is littered with such events, take a tour of any of the more than 1,000 Nazi prison camps created in the period between 1933 to 1945 or visit the ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia.  Just visiting such places fills or at least should fill one with an overwhelming sadness.  You can only imagine being an inmate of such a facility.

 

The damage done by any such traumatic event is the result of the chronic level of stress that is experienced, it is so powerful it overwhelms a person’s ability to cope or integrate the emotions involved.  This inability to defend one’s self against these threats means that the individual is unable to discharge the energy that the fight/flight/freeze response has generated.  This leaves the individual is a state of constant readiness with their brains awash with a chemical cocktail including adrenaline, catecholamines and especially norepinephrine.  Amongst these chemicals is cortisol which is linked to the healthy discharge of the energy but if this does not occur than the constant presence of cortisol has an erosive effect of the very structure of the brain.

 

This inability to defend themselves means they are constantly ready for action.  They exist in a state of neuromuscular readiness, primed for action; tapped in a highly aroused state.  This situation results in the following experiences:

  • Intrusive Thoughts - the individual may experience vivid flashbacks of the events, suffer nightmares or develop false memories to protect themselves from the truth of their experience.
  • Avoidance – People will consciously or even unconsciously avoid situations that are associated with the traumatic event or even just avoid any stressful situation as they don’t trust their ability to cope.
  • Hyperarousal – these victims are always ‘ready’ they are constantly scanning the environment for potential threats.

 

 

This very brief description of trauma is simplistic, the intricacy of this psychological injury is overwhelming.  In practice trauma is described in three ways:

  • Acute – this is often associated with a single event such as a car crash or witnessing a serious accident.  This type of trauma can usually be successfully treated by a qualified mental health expert.
  • Chronic – this is linked to multiple, long-term and/or prolonged exposure to traumatic events.  Things like domestic violence, bullying, serving in war zones or working in frontline services like police, ambulance personnel and even teaching in a dysfunctional school.  Chronic trauma is much more difficult to treat.
  • Complex – This is particularly relevant to our work because it describes multiple exposure to traumatic events and can be coupled with childhood neglect.  These are the conditions for the children that are the focus of our work.  They are by far the most difficult and dealing directly with the child’s trauma must remain with the health professionals.

 

There is real structural damage to these children’s brains. Such alterations are:

  • The amygdala which is that part of the brain that initiates the fight/flight/freeze reaction to stress is increased in size making the child more predisposed to being set off by imaginary threats
  • The hippocampus, that part of the brain associated with memory formation and therefore learning.  This is reported to have a 12% reduction in size
  • The prefrontal lobes, the executive part of the brain where our working memory functions are 20% smaller and have lesions on the surface.
  • The cerebellum, which is critical for the interpretation of the environment’s potential threat is reduced in size
  • There is a reduced efficacy of the corpus callosum which hinders the coordination between the brain’s hemispheres

The result is a real and permanent intellectual disability.

 

Students with early childhood trauma have rarely had positive experiences in forming healthy relationships.  They will:

  • Minimize or misinterpret any positive stimuli – they don’t trust compliments
  • Are hypersensitive to negative social cues – they expect the worst 
  • Find it extremely difficult to understand or read the non-verbal cues of others 
  • Have a high propensity to be overwhelmed by the emotional content of any incoming stimulus

 

Compounding these problems is the damage done by persistent neglect in early childhood.  The brain is developed though its response to incoming stimulus.  The most graphic example of the need for a stimulus at the time the brain is acquiring a proficiency is for sight.  If a child, born with cataracts does not have them removed within the first year, the lack of incoming light to the brain is not present and so the child does not learn to see.  If the cataracts are removed at a later time, it will be too late because the neural material in the pertinent part of the brain has been removed, pruned to improve the efficiency of the brain.  This phenomena takes place for all learning tasks.  It is particularly important in the formation of attachments and the lack of appropriate stimulus; a mother’s appropriate attention leads to problems associated with connection.

 

An extreme example of the real damage that occurs to children who suffer from early childhood complex trauma is illustrated by the comparative MRI’s of two children, one from a healthy environment and the other from a child rescued from the infamous Romanian orphanages founded under the reign of Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1980’s.

 

 

You can see not only the significant reduction in size of the orphan but also there is an increase representation of the black areas which illustrate areas of their brain damage.

 

It is the complexity of the damage done to children that makes treatment extremely multifaceted and challenges the most qualified of the medical profession.  The skills needed are well beyond the qualifications and experience of the best teachers. This is why any training under the guise of ‘trauma informed’ must emphasis that trying to directly assist any child suffering from PTSD is potentially damaging.  The only approach, as is always the focus of our work is to provide an environment that is:

  • Structured - so the student can begin to trust their ability to predict what will happen
  • Predictable – The students know what to expect when they choose to behave in a certain way or safely anticipate the behaviour of others
  • Built on Healthy Relationships – the relationship between the teacher and student is the most important feature of any education setting that has children who have been exposed to complex trauma. 

By providing such an environment you allow the child to begin to trust themselves to take control of their lives.

Posted by: AT 07:51 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Monday, May 17 2021

Dealing with Justified Anger

In the last Newsletter, ‘Dealing with the Angry Ant’ (4 May 2021) we discussed that anger when justified was an appropriate emotion.  For the damaged kids we focus on, all too often use the energy the anger generates for behaviours that do not address their grievance but lead to unwanted consequences that will see them punished.  The legitimate sense of ‘unfairness’ they experience only reinforces their sense of hopelessness.  One of the most difficult but valuable skills you can teach these students is to address injustice with honest assertiveness.

Teaching how to appropriately assert their rights can be achieved through direct instruction, that is you run lessons on assertive behaviour but, in most mainstream classes only one or two students in the class might need to learn these skills.  The best way, as is the case with teaching most social skills is through modelling the behaviours you want the students to adopt and taking advantage of those inevitable ‘teaching moments’ to reinforce the skills you want them to develop.  Intervening when the situation appears and then explaining what is happening and what should happen not only instructs the student who needs to learn assertiveness but also reinforces the sense of fairness you expect in your class.  This gives rise to a sense of community within your students as outlined in The Tribal Classroom (01 August 2018).

As pointed out modelling is the best way to teach social responsibility and outstanding teachers do this through:

  • Respond to kids with unconditional respect.
  • Always respond to a child in and adult manner​​​​​​​
  • Not judgemental
  • Listen unconditionally to what is said.

Make sure you always:

  • Let them tell their story without interruption.
  • Take their complaint seriously.
  • Validate their emotions without conceding the legitimacy of their complaint.
  • Let them know you are listening in a non-aggressive manner.
  • Don’t take their anger personally.
  • Make sure you really understand the issue.  Summarise the main points as you see them and repeat them back to them.
  • Seek clarification if needed.
  • If possible, reach an agreed understanding of the dispute.

A mistake made by some teachers, especially those in their early years of their careers is to try to be liked by everyone; this is a sign of mediocrity.  This is most demonstrated in the way you actually listen to the students, particularly when they are emotional.  The following points build a framework for ensure this does not happen:
Respect – Do not make your support conditional, that is don’t say things like:

  • ‘If you do what I want I will be fair to you!’
  • ‘If you don’t, I will reprimand you!’

Unfortunately, about 90% of teachers operate in this fashion.  This approach is taken by those teachers who use a ‘buddy’ approach to their work, the kids behave because they want your attention and the child must compromise his or her own needs to placate the teacher.

Another mistake, teachers make is to constantly try to find fault with what the child is reporting.  They determine what is the difference between what they are saying and what you think is going on so they can mount an argument that satisfies their version of the disputed situation.  Nothing new is learned if you take this approach.

Be empathetic by:

  • Listening to the student with a view of seeing the situation through their eyes.
  • Combine how they see the situation along with how we see the situation to create a new, shared belief about what was really going on.

This approach is often called serial processing, we begin to learn new things – we change our belief schemas and the teacher and child can change their opinion of each other!  When we do this new respect and trust can be accomplished.

An opportunity to teach appropriate assertiveness regularly occurs in your day-to-day teaching.  Take the following example.  A particular child is always late for class and this is a situation that should make you angry.  You could yell at them, punish them or use the boundary questions outlined in the previous Newsletter you can deal with your justified anger, in front of the class the following way:

  • Explanation – Convey the situation as you see it and be specific.  Point out to the child that because they are late the rest of the class must wait while you go over the initial instructions of the work, that is unfair.
  • Feelings – Let the child know how you feel and take responsibility for these emotions.  When you are late, I get frustrated because you inconvenience me and your classmates but importantly you are missing out on sharing the lesson with all of us.  This last part is to build their feeling of belonging to the group.
  • Needs – Say what you want.  Be selective, realistic and be prepared to negotiate but come to a plan everyone understands and agrees with.  For really oppositional kids to admit they agree is too hard so accept their acknowledgement that they understand.
  • Consequences – Outline how things will be if there are changes or if they stay as they are.  This is when you outline the positive and negative consequences for that behaviour if it continues.

When you start to introduce this assertive approach, the following script will help until you integrate the steps outlined above.  In the first instance you say the following to the particular student:

  • When you …”
  • “I feel …”
  • “Because …”

With more difficult students a more direct approach may be needed: ​​​​​​​

  • “If you …”
  • “I will …”

Appreciating the protective qualities of strong boundaries and the constructive way to assert your rights is really the best lesson you can give any student particularly those whose early learning may have damaged any sense of worth they might have had.  These steps are the underpinning of any proper behaviour when dealing with other members of any community!

Posted by: AT 08:00 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Monday, May 10 2021

Dealing with the Angry Ant

An issue that frequently co-exists with the dysfunctional behaviour displayed by the children who have suffered from childhood trauma and/or neglect is their inability to express anger in an appropriate manner.  Anger is just an emotional state like happiness, sadness, disgust, etc. that is a result of the child’s interaction with the circumstances in which they find themselves.  It should be a healthy reaction to a clash between what they want to happen and when that doesn’t happen.  Unlike feelings of fear and anxiety, anger has the potential to lead to destructive behaviour especially in the children on which we focus.  Everyone needs to be taught to deal with anger, there are times when it provides the energy to address unfair treatment towards you, it primes you to assert your rights in the group.

 

Like all emotions, anger is initiated by the clash between the child’s internal expectation and their observations of the situation in which they find themselves.  For those children, who have developed a healthy sense of self, the anger in most cases is justified, that is they should be angry because they are being, in a sense violated.  Things such as someone cheating on them, making fun of them or they are being betrayed by someone they trust.  These kids have a better chance of dealing with anger in a functional way because they have a healthy and valued sense of their ‘self’.

 

However, the students who struggle to control their anger, those we focus on do not have the same healthy sense of their ‘self’.  In an early Newsletter (Toxic Shame – 3 July 2017) we discussed how these children developed a detrimental sense of their worth.  This sense of toxic shame is incredibly significant as their internal expectations are of their sense of worthlessness, they don’t make mistakes they are mistakes’ sums up their sense of who they are and what they deserve.  When they are faced with situations as outlined above, cheated on, ridiculed or being betrayed their initial emotional response is shame, frustration and this proceeds on to anger but instead of analysing the source of their anger they blame themselves, their anger is self-destructive.

 

There is, as with all dysfunctional behaviours related to kids who suffered early childhood trauma, a difference between the response of the boys and the girls. Although it is not exclusively the case in general girls internalise their emotions while the boys act out.  This difference can be seen in the proportions of males incarcerated compared to females.  This does not mean the girls don’t experience anger, for the same reasons but they are more likely to deny they are angry, they pretend the confrontations do not matter, they are not offended.  Their response is something like ‘I don’t care’ or ‘I didn’t want that anyway’.  It is easy to overlook the girls because they don’t really upset anyone else but they do deserve to be taught how to deal with anger!  Boys, on the other hand act out either to ‘punish’ the person who precipitated the anger or ‘self-destruct’ by hitting walls or destroying property.

 

It really is worth the effort to try to teach these kids how to deal with anger, first by reassuring them that anger is a healthy emotion that is informing them that something is wrong!  The best way is to teach them boundaries!  (see Teaching Practical Boundaries – 31 July, 2017 and Boundary Considerations – 22 October, 2018)!

 

It is worth revising the steps in setting boundaries and connecting these to outbursts of anger.  The steps are:

  1. Stay Calm – you know your boundaries are being traversed because your emotions change, in this case you feel the frustration growing to anger.  If possible, this is the time to take charge of the emotions (see Mindfulness - June 17 2019 for tips on how to control these strong feelings)!

 

  1. Ask the questions
  • ‘What is really happening’?
  • ‘Who is responsible’?
  • If the answer is me – then I have to change what I’m doing
  • If the answer is not me – then I have to work out what I want to happen and act to make that happen

 

The second step – ‘what is really happening’ is a time you can teach the students about their faulty beliefs, that is how their perception is affected because of their expectations.  These faulty expectations come from their toxic shame base.  Even though there are huge variations on this process the major ones are:

  • Over-Generalisation – this is where some small part of the interaction is hurtful or unfair and so the whole situation is contaminated.
  • Magnification – this is much like the previous point but the reactive anger grows until it is way out of proportion to the real situation.
  • Mind Reading – This is really the student’s expectation in action, the situation isn’t defective they are.  They know things will be painful and so they are primed to react in a negative manner. 

This is when you can teach the student how to identify the type of anger they are experiencing.

 

The next step, ‘who is responsible’ provides the opportunity to identify if the anger is justified or not.  Life is not fair, for all of us but for these kids it has been blatantly unfair.  The hard part of this step is to convince them that sometimes their anger reflects the very random nature of life.  Kids get caught in the rain, they get in the canteen line that is slower than all the others, they stub their toe just before a game of soccer, this is a time when anger is an inappropriate exaggeration of the natural feelings of disappointment.  The answer to the question is no one is responsible for the situation but you are responsible for the anger.  Therefore, if that is the case then you need to teach the child to be more rational about life expectations.

 

However, as stated anger is a healthy emotion so it follows it is justified and someone else is responsible.  Typical situations that provoke justified anger are things like someone cheats on you, they may steal your turn, spoil your work or tell lies about what you have done.  Other personal attacks are when others exclude you for no reason or make fun of you or you are betrayed by someone you trusted.  The answer in these cases is others are responsible.

 

The problem here is the kids expect that by pointing out the validation of your anger is enough to solve the problem.  However, in the real world those others who deliberately hurt others are rarely going to accept that responsibility.  This is the time you need to get the student to identify what they want to happen in the future and what they need to do to achieve that goal.

 

After this process has been completed and the situation is unresolved then it is time to revisit the process and if things can’t be resolve then ‘let it go’.  This step is a mature approach but it doesn’t come with the passing of years, it is learned wisdom and if it’s learned it should be taught!  The next Newsletter will focus on the development of assertive behaviour and much of what to do when wronged is down to the child’s self-confidence.  The serenity pray, used by recovering addicts to deal with their sense of powerlessness is equally relevant to the process of dealing with anger. Grant me the serenity:

 

  • To accept the things I cannot change
  • Courage to change the things I can
  • And wisdom to know the difference
Posted by: AT 09:34 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
Monday, May 03 2021

A Time for Reflection

When Marcia and I retired from teaching over four years ago we still had the passion for education and a predilection for providing support for those children whose behaviour was so dysfunctional it inhibited not only their learning outcomes it also stifled the learning of their classmates.  Our special interest in focusing on this specific feature of the characteristics that must be considered in any classroom has its geneses in our years working is special education settings that catered for these disruptive kids.

 

When faced with a cohort of students where the vast majority are classified as conduct disordered or at least oppositional defiant it made sense to look for the cause of their self-destructive behaviours; it soon becomes obvious they really don’t want to be in the situation they find themselves in, they want to be what we would call ‘normal’.  We soon realised that almost without exception these children suffered from early childhood abuse and/or cruel neglect.

 

With that, as our motivation we started this journey over four years ago offering resources, training and development and a regular free Newsletter, at last count we are at Number 158!  We have also written books specifically aimed at supporting this work. The first ‘The Impact of Modern Neuroscience on Contemporary Teaching’ and ‘Insights into the Modern Classroom – the Getting of Wisdom for Teachers’.  We are pleased to announce the publication of the third in this series ‘Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids’ shown below.

 

 

This is a time to take stock and ask you our supporters for guidance as in how to proceed from here!  Could you please take the time to provide feedback on how we can improve our service and importantly inform us of topics we should explore or re-examine.

 

Thanks for your support!

Posted by: AT 11:22 pm   |  Permalink   |  0 Comments  |  Email
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PRINCIPALS

John R Frew
Marcia J Vallance


ABN 64 372 518 772

ABOUT

The principals of the company have had long careers in education with a combined total of eighty-one years service.  After starting as mainstream teachers they both moved into careers in providing support for students with severe behaviours.

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