How to Help Traumatized Children Learn

By now, we’re all well aware of the occurrence of PTSD in adults and especially military personnel. And it should be that way; we all need to familiarize ourselves with any and all mental health issues that are so prevalent nowadays. But, what’s missing from the public discourse is how much of a problem it can be for young children as well. Childhood trauma, even if it doesn’t lead to PTSD, can lead to real problems in the all-around development of the child as well as impact their school performance and education in general.

The truly baffling fact is that child trauma happens much more often than you might think. More than two-thirds of children in the US end up experiencing at least one traumatic event before the age of 16. Abuse and neglect, some of the leading causes of trauma, affected nearly 680 000 children as of 2013. So, for such a widespread issue, we certainly feel that we need to better understand it if we’re to educate and guide our children.

At KidsKonnect, we’ve made an effort to shine a light on the importance of mental health for kids and how to educate special needs students, but in this article, we’ll focus specifically on trauma and aid you in helping traumatized children learn. 

Do keep in mind that the following is not to be taken as medical advice and is in no way a guide for medical diagnosis. We’d rather have you use it as an informational piece to help you educate and include traumatized children in the classroom, and of course, heighten awareness among your peers as well as your students. Let’s get into it.

Childhood Trauma

Childhood and otherwise occurring psychological trauma is a consequence, or rather a reaction, to one or more traumatic events that continue to cause or have caused an exceedingly high amount of stress. It affects children in a way that they’re not able to cope with particular emotions, or internalize experiences for a prolonged period of time after the event. Therefore, it can have serious ramifications on their well-being in general and almost always affects their school performance.

The Neuroscience of Trauma

Upon experiencing a traumatic event or extreme fear, the brain tends to rewire itself, and in turn, the victim exhibits changes in their behavior. But, not all stressful events inflict neurobiological changes. The neurological consequences of trauma can differ from person to person and can vary depending on the severity of the traumatic event or the child’s neuroplasticity.

That being said, one of the key characteristics of trauma is that it impacts a person’s prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for decision making, rational thinking, remembering important information, etc. This is due to the activation of the commonly known fight or flight response, or the lesser-known dimension of freezing.

Furthermore, in extreme cases, victims may experience occurrences of tonic immobility where they’re completely unable to move or speak. None of these responses are made on the person’s own accord, but rather occur as a hard-wired survival mechanism. Given the severity of these reactions, trauma lingers and can present difficulties for years after the fact.

Additionally, the response of a child in a traumatic situation is at best limited. Plainly put, they’re much more vulnerable in severely stressful situations and are more prone to, as we mentioned above, freeze. Thereby, the consequences can be more pronounced and impactful.

The Traumatic Event

We mentioned “traumatic events” multiple times by now, but what exactly are they? In concrete terms, a traumatic experience/event can be defined as an event that presents a threat to the child’s integrity or life. Besides having an impact on the child’s neurobiology, the traumatic event can cause strong emotional reactions that remain long after the occurrence.

Experiences that cause trauma can include:

• Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse (including parental alienation and estrangement);
• Neglect;
• Domestic and/or school violence;
• Natural disasters;
• Terrorism;
• Substance abuse (both personal and in the family);
• Refugee experiences (including war);
• Sudden and/or violent loss of a loved one;
• Serious accidents or illnesses.

At-risk children groups that are more likely to experience traumas include:

• Homeless youth;
• Children with intellectual and developmental disabilities;
• Children in families under economic stress;
• LGBTQ youth.

How Trauma Affects Child Development?

Although we touched on how trauma affects the brain and its biological development, we didn’t really get into how trauma can affect emotional development or the development of attachment and relationships. These might indicate behavioral changes in one aspect or the other, but we’ll present a more clear-cut picture of those later on. It goes without saying that, again, it’s important to be aware of these issues when helping traumatized children learn.

In short, children who’ve gone through some sort of childhood trauma, which is in most cases family-related, may develop some unusual coping mechanisms that alter their development. For example, they can end up being too reclusive in terms of their own emotions; in other cases, they can be too sensitive to the temper and/or opinions of others. In some situations, they can even react unpredictably to seemingly inconsequential behavior due to them relating it to the trauma in some shape or form.

In no precise “hierarchy”, the following issues can occur in a child’s development.

How Trauma Affects Emotional Responses

The main problem with childhood trauma affecting emotional development is that the children might not fully familiarize themselves with a certain emotional spectrum. Furthermore, not only do they struggle to understand certain emotions, but they can also have difficulties with expressing, managing, and identifying said emotions.

Consequently, their responses can be unpredictable. For example, even remotely familiar interactions (in regard to the traumatic event) or a hands-on, simple reminder of the fact can evoke anger, fear, or avoidance. In some cases where the child has had to numb themselves to cope with a traumatic event, later on, they might tune out other threats to their wellbeing or be vulnerable to external abusive behaviors.

How Trauma Affects Relationships

Given that children learn to develop a sense of attachment to a caregiver or a parent figure, they also learn to trust others and gain an impression of whether the world is a safe or an unsafe place. Therefore, if the parent figure betrays that trust or gives off the impression that they’re unreliable, a child may end up viewing everyone else as capable of treating them like that.

This is further pronounced in cases where there has been a traumatic event in early childhood. Since the image of a caring and loving parent figure has been shattered, in such a case by familial trauma, they would have trouble forming meaningful relationships due to fear and distrust. In addition, they can also have problems with authority figures, be it a police officer or a teacher.

How Trauma Affects Self-Worth

Since children’s sense of self-worth also takes shape during early childhood and is closely related to the reactions of those closest to them, it can be heavily impacted by traumatic events. Abuse and neglect, for instance, can seriously impair the development of self-worth and the sense of value. The child would then blame themselves for the tribulations they’ve gone through, further curbing their self-esteem and exhibiting feelings of shame or guilt.

How Trauma Affects Health

Childhood trauma can also be linked to more general health issues. Namely, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente showed direct links between the “breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults”. Now, this might not be an issue that’s directly connected to child development since the health consequences in question occur in adulthood, but it would be safe to assume that our previous three issues have something to do with it.

Helping Traumatized Children Learn as an Educator

Children who have experienced childhood trauma, especially in cases where they’ve experienced multiple traumatic events, have grown up under a sustained threat to their wellbeing. As such, they’ve learned to operate in a chronic stress response mode, meaning that, in certain cases, their cognitive ability may be somewhat impaired.

Since their attention in early childhood has been largely focused on survival, the child might not be able to think clearly, anticipate future events, or show great rational capacity. Problem-solving and considering alternatives might not be their strongest suit as well. As a consequence, they may show difficulties learning, hindering their academic progress, and will need your help in the classroom.

How to Recognize Trauma in Children

But, in order to help a traumatized student, you, as an educator, will need to be able to detect certain behaviors that potentially denote experienced trauma. Now, we feel that it’s important to point out again that this isn’t to be taken as a basis for diagnosis, but rather as a general rule of thumb that will help you pinpoint which students might need additional help. Some of these may overlap with actual disorders or other problems, but should you see any of the signs, make sure to communicate accordingly and don’t take things entirely into your own hands.

By now, you’d have a general idea of how traumatized children tend to behave, but here are the specific indicators you need to look out for. Depending on the age group, the symptoms and behaviors may be the following.

Children aged 0-3 who have been exposed to trauma:

• Cry or scream excessively or disproportionately compared to their peers and are hard to soothe;
• Have lower-than-average weight and appetite;
• Have memory problems;
• Exhibit excessive distress when separated from a caregiver;
• Don’t engage in playful behavior;
• Avoid eye contact or act numb or shocked.

Older children who have been exposed to trauma:

• Can be hypervigilant or exhibit increased fear;
• Have frequent mood changes;
• Exhibit regressive behavior, i.e. have new problems with basic skills, such as paying attention, going to the toilet, sleeping, or eating.
• Can be more aggressive towards their peers or teachers;
• Can be indifferent and withdrawn;
• Lack self-confidence;
• Experience physical aches that can’t be traced to a single cause;
• Have difficulties focusing, or develop new learning disabilities.

How Does Trauma Affect Learning?

Given all the aforementioned factors, trauma can impact a child’s ability to learn. For traumatized children, even the most basic academic abilities such as reading, writing, discussing, or solving rudimentary mathematical problems may be hard to obtain. This is due to the fact that acquiring those competencies rests upon the foundation of developed comprehension, memory, and organization skills. 

Add to that the fact that learning is largely based on the premise that (in most cases) the student needs to attend class in groups, and drawbacks such as the relative inability to self-regulate emotions, behavior, and attention become more apparent. What’s more, trauma can even hinder the child’s ability for creative play, which is important in more facets than you can even begin to imagine.

Anyhow, to summarize, here are the most common learning problems that may occur on an academic level.

Traumatized children in the classroom may have problems with:

• Reading cues (verbal and non-verbal);
• Processing information (oral and written);
• Understanding cause-and-effect relationships;
• Perspective-taking;
• Identifying and differentiating emotions;
• Setting goals, developing a plan, and acting on it;
• Attention and engagement (due to hypervigilance);

Building a Safe Environment for Traumatized Children

We wish there was a one-size-fits-all solution, but this is children we’re talking about; despite all the information, and having some knowledge of it, of course, the solution to helping traumatized children learn is a many-sided one and it has to do much more with the approach of an educator rather than precise methods.

The first step always has to be awareness of the potential underlying issues, how they influence child behavior, and the barriers that trauma may present. Hence, we committed such a large part of this article to the inner workings of trauma and traumatized children. We, as educators, have to keep all of this information in the back of our minds to – if nothing else – have a perspective of what a child may be going through. 

Awareness

If a student performs badly or is unenthusiastic about a quiz or test, we can’t simply assume that the student is being lazy. Sometimes, things aren’t always as they seem, and despite the plethora of behaviors and symptoms we listed, we have to remember that sometimes none of those, or only some, will present themselves. So, by being aware and having a perspective of what may be going on behind the curtains, we can build a safe environment for traumatized students.

(Re)Learning to learn

The other side of the coin is that when helping traumatized children learn, we have to keep our expectations high. If, for example, a promising student is going or has gone through a traumatic event, we need to be understanding and aware, but we can’t lower the ceiling. Phrases such as “after what so-and-so has gone through… they’ll never get back on track and succeed, so I won’t hold them to such a high standard” can do much more harm than good. Instead, we need to show them and convince them that they can get back on track with our help; we’ll help them learn to learn again.

Trustworthiness

But in order for any of that to be possible, when helping traumatized children learn, we need to build a trustworthy environment by helping our students feel safe and valued. After an aggressive outburst, a traumatized child needs guidance, an indication that there is more suitable language to express their emotions, or frustrations, or feelings. If they are aware that it’s okay to express, they’ll feel safe; if they know that what they need to say carries meaning, they’ll feel valued. Consequently, they’ll trust the teacher and they’ll feel empowered and eager to learn better, rather than be fearful.

In Closing

With the ramifications of childhood trauma being so omnipresent in our society and classrooms, it’s simply inadequate if we as educators don’t do our best to improve our methods and create safe spaces, welcoming students from all walks of life. Only then will we succeed in helping traumatized children learn. We, at KidsKonnect, believe that the best way to do so is to stay informed and keep learning; that’s an ongoing act that should never reach its denouement.

That’s why we dedicated our blog to all sorts of education-related topics – to keep getting better so our students can do the same. Another useful tool, as exemplified by the hundreds of thousands of educators that use it, is our worksheet library, where you can find countless resources that fit any method or approach.