School Safety – Raising Devon

Recently I’ve seen several headlines about schools who are introducing yoga as a way to address student behaviors. The West Fargo Pioneer (link no longer available online) explains this way:

Behavior issues stem from a multitude of reasons. However, studies show that students today are more likely to experience trauma and have mental health needs, increasing the likelihood of classroom disruptions and behavioral issues.

In a classroom of 20, one or two students on average will be dealing with serious psycho-social stressors relating to poverty, domestic violence, abuse and neglect, or a psychiatric disorder, according to the Child Mind Institute.

This type of stress can shorten periods of brain development and limit brain growth in early years, making it harder for students to regulate emotions and concentrate on learning.
And while schools can’t control students’ experiences outside the classroom, they can help students learn how to cope with stress and regulate emotional outbursts. Social-emotional curriculum aims to help students recognize and deal with emotions and tackle the increased presence of stress and trauma.

It’s absolutely true that every classroom has children who have experienced trauma. Early childhood trauma is an epidemic. It’s absolutely true that these experiences affect a student’s ability to learn and cope in school. It’s also absolutely true that some students will benefit from yoga. It will help by,

Reducing stress
Improving concentration
Increasing self-esteem
And more…

This is why PBS suggests Managing School Stress by Bringing Yoga Into the Classroom. And Education Week applauds Ditching Detention for Yoga: Schools Embrace Mindfulness to Curb Discipline Problems.

Great ideas, however news articles like these give the impression that yoga is an inexpensive, quick fix for childhood trauma. For kids on the moderate to severe end of the spectrum, this simply isn’t the case.

Here’s the problem

Many kids with developmental trauma are so dysregulated they cannot follow instructions or calm themselves enough to even choose to participate in yoga. A 10-year-old who flips desks, curses at the teacher, and fights with other kids is likely not able to safely or effectively participate in yoga.

Furthermore, kids who have extreme behaviors and emotions may be extremely disruptive during yoga activities. This can cause other students to be unable to focus and benefit from the exercises. A 6-year-old who refuses to follow instructions, pesters other kids, and runs around in circles, will disrupt the entire atmosphere.

If a child has a cold, a spoonful of honey does wonders. However, that same spoonful of honey is not able to cure a child who has strep throat. Here’s the ugly truth about trauma: Some kids who have experienced trauma have needs far beyond what a spoonful of honey can heal. Without comprehensive and specialized treatments, these children are unlikely to benefit from yoga at school. They probably won’t even be able to successfully participate.

A spoonful of honey soothes a sore throat, but it can't cure strep throat. Yoga in schools is wonderful, but kids with developmental trauma need comprehensive, specialized treatments. There are no quick fixes or easy solutions. Click To Tweet

I cringe at the “yoga in school” headlines because they minimize the devastating, often debilitating, effects of trauma on our kids. Most people who read the articles, or just skim the headlines, will assume childhood trauma is easily treated.

Don’t get me wrong – I applaud schools incorporating yoga into their curriculum and behavior programs because it can be helpful to so many children. However, yoga cannot curb extreme behaviors caused developmental trauma. It is a far more complicated and challenging issue.

Let’s get our kids to a healthy place where they can benefit from yoga. You can help by learning how trauma effects kids and sharing our video to help raise awareness for the need for accessible, affordable, and effective treatments.

Only a few days ago, I had the opportunity to plant a gun in a school.

The doors were unlocked. There was no security guard. No office staff was signing visitors in. No one was monitoring the surveillance cameras.

It was Saturday morning, and I was attending my son’s recreational basketball game at a local public middle school. The school was wide open. I could have easily walked in with a duffle bag slung over my shoulder, an AR-15 and ammo hidden inside. If I was a student, I could have stashed the weapon in my locker, but the heap of lost and found items would make a good hiding place too. And just that easily, I would have secreted away a weapon for easy access.

There’s always a way to get a weapon into a school. More than once I thought about this as I watched students at my daughter’s charter school pass through metal detectors. They pulled three-ring binders, laptops, cell phones – anything with metal – from their bookbags and passed them around the detector. But couldn’t a pistol be hidden in a binder and pass into the school undetected?

As controversy swirls around efforts to keep guns out of schools –school officers, armed teachers, wanding, metal detectors – we must remember these steps alone cannot protect against every determined and resourceful would-be school shooter. It’s not enough to try to stop violent plans already in the execution stage. Instead, we must understand what leads young people to act violently and implement comprehensive, proactive measures to address the underlying causes.

It's not enough to try to stop violent plans already in the execution stage. Instead, we must understand what leads young people to act violently and implement comprehensive, proactive measures to address the underlying causes. Click To Tweet

Dr. Terry Levy of Evergreen Psychotherapy Center co-authored “Kids Who Kill: Attachment Disorder, Antisocial Personality, and Violence” in the aftermath of the Columbine school shooting. In it, he pointed to evidence of the relationship between early childhood trauma and violence.

Research has shown elevated cortisol levels caused by early childhood trauma, typically chronic abuse and neglect, can impact a young child’s brain development. As a result, they may struggle with emotional regulation, linking cause-and-effect, abstract thinking, and other high-level brain functions. Not all, but some of these children may become aggressive and violent.

The correlation between early childhood trauma and violence is frightening given the number of students at risk. According to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins, almost half of all children have experienced at least one type of childhood trauma. As a result, a staggering number of students walk into our schools every day with a festering wound borne of childhood trauma. Most often, the wound is unrecognized and untreated. At best, we might slap on a band aid, but rarely do we treat the underlying trauma.

We’ve known about the link between childhood trauma and violence for 20 years, yet little has changed. Our society does not recognize the devastating impact of childhood trauma on it’s victims or the collateral damage on our community as a whole. We do not prioritize funding for research needed for prevention and meaningful treatments. And as a result, our communities continue to face acts of violence from young people.

Just last month we learned about four North Carolina (my home state) middle school students who were planning a Columbine style attack on their school. This was thwarted, but you can be sure many other future attacks will not be stopped in time. For a determined would-be school shooter, there’s always a way.

Childhood trauma is an epidemic in our society and without treatment, children will not heal and will have little hope for a happy and productive future. For some, their trauma wound will grow so unbearably painful they’ll lash out violently. No metal detector, locked door, gun sniffing dog, or wand will stop them.