How Community Networks Stem Childhood Traumas

young people are looking for a role model to emulate

as a college teacher of young adults I have seen whole classes disrupted by bad influence role models - young rebels who think arguing with the teacher makes them look powerful - most of those failed the subject

last semester I had a class of all boys - usually a recipe for trouble - but - one boy was outstanding - while wearing rebel type denim jacket patches - he was actually the perfect model of punctual, fine, upstanding, well-behaved, intelligent - communicated clearly and respectfully at all times - also humorous so we had great fun - he also finished his work early. The whole class rallied around him as the natural leader - and despite some slower students, all passed the subject.

So - like in Africa - initiation rites for young males to adulthood - jump over that bull - or go hunting in the forest - something that challenges and excites and they can feel proud to be a part of - not a street gang selling drugs because bad role models make that appear to be their best option.

Though I didn't scrutinize comments, I did peruse most. Everything said adds to Big Picture -How Kids Turn Out Everywhere Determines Everything. BUT per usual I note key omission- abuse OF/BY our courts, esp. family courts, is part of problem- powerful sources want focus to stay only on poor. Problems with foster care issues are getting more attention (need still more, as does issue of excess incarceration with juvenile courts), BUT what KEEPS GETTING IGNORED by powerful -Family Courts over past 20+ yrs have ordered at least 1 Million kids into custody or unsupervised visits with abusive parent, DESPITE definitive documentation, conferences, pleas to many sources, books, presentations to Congress, ETC. AND 4 award-winning documentaries with 5th in process! AND abusive custody/visits is by no means limited to poor & in fact is probably more re middle class & above white families as fathers most able to hire unscrupulous lawyers & otherwise influence courts! BUT learning what one lives knows no class, color boundaries....hence cycling abusive behaviors keep multiplying. Those who manage not to repeat abusive behaviors usually at least have health, ETC. issues similar to anyone subject to trauma. New legislative proposals AGAIN are in the offing re Safety First re kids in divorcing & otherwise troubled families. The Oscar-winning Spotlight movie re abusive priests (& some of those involved directly with that) is helping focus. I have 5 sons-2 step, 11 grndkd, in WWhos...

To reduce the abuse that often accompanies foster care, the St. Louis child protective services unit established a policy to place children with relatives, neighbors, and within their own neighborhoods via P.I. work. This policy was implemented with the use of private investigators that were able to find those that knew the child. The traditional social workers were not engaged in this search, and the success rates of finding people as well as reduction in abuse was high.

There is still a separation trauma with foster care. The children still need a lot of understanding. A young girl still fears the police because police officers took her away from her mother. Martin Seligman claims children outgrow their traumas. They clearly do not. Post traumatic stress lasts a lifetime.

I've been very excited about the ACE study. As a child I suffered prolonged sexual and psychological abuse. As an adult I have an array of autoimmune conditions and other physical ailments. And obviously the emotional after effects of such a background.
I've worked quite some time in healthcare and was enthusiastic about somehow bringing the awareness of ACE into this setting. But as I explored the role of Psychiatric / Mental Health Nurse Practitioner soon discovered that prescribing medications was the " cornerstone" of what I'd be doing.
Morally and ethically I won't do this as I believe a large percentage of people diagnosed with mental illness are children of trauma. I don't want to pathologize adults or children who are struggling with traumatic childhoods.
I'd like to focus on the solution rather than mask the problem . But still not sure how to do this

How very striking in this otherwise informative article that there is no mention whatsoever of the terrible impact repeated evictions have upon children. In light of the fact that Matthew Desmond's extraordinary, gut wrenching book, "Evicted" is in the forefront of our collective social conscience, we cannot ignore the devastating impact of these repeated evictions. When we discuss ACE scores, evictions should be among the top issues considered to be deeply traumatizing. Children are wrenched out of schools, cut off from former school friends, lose most of their meager possessions when landlords summon law enforcement to help evict people, find themselves shunted from shelter to shelter or living on the streets, suffering hunger, fear, and so on. Extreme poverty, homelessness, and the attendant issues associated with these conditions, e.g. health and mental health challenges, simply cannot be ignored as we consider long term solutions to teen pregnancy, violence, school attendance, etc. The stakes are far too high. Unless we forge a comprehensive and holistic set of policy initiatives, these problems will persist.

Liberals and conservatives often disagree about the causes of poverty and other social ills, but no one disagrees about the cause of childhood trauma - bad parenting.

The problem is clear, while the solution is complex.

What this piece!shows is that once there are fewer and fewer intact families with little in the way of mentally and physically mature adults having babies, then they are going to heap abuse on the nearest person, which is the children. there is a direct correlation between the welfare state, mothers going back to work, and welfare in the increase in academic failure, juvenile delinquency, and the use of substances by juveniles. We haven't even touched on gun violence in the day to day life of many children. The trillions of dollars of money spent over the years on resources, services, personnel, etc. Is not really having much affect as Minnesota spends more than many states but has lower student scores in reading and math than they did 35 years ago!

Um yeah, we've known all this for years, decades even. And pretty much everything that brought about success was a program. It was not a middle ground as you suggest between progressive and conservative ideologies. Progressives have always understood that investments in communities result in better outcomes for everyone - ultimately at lower costs to society versus a police state and mass incarceration. This should be music to conservative's ears, but rather they would hold that troubled youth personally responsible for their own rescue all the whilst looking to cut social program budgets and profit from charter schools and the prison industrial complex. So don't draw some equivalence here as if is a little of both from both sides: it's NOT. Only one candidate has been quoting that "it takes a village".

A valuable accompanying read here is Sebastian Junger's ne book, "Tribe." The author discusses how "tribal groups" (communities) function best when there is interdependence among members, and how traumatic experiences create vast divisions between individuals. Responsibility is placed on the loss of community and community spirit by what I call me-ism.

Many thanks to Mr. Bornstein researching the studies to show we can improve social ills and poverty in the inner cities. It's not surprising that it takes a combined effort on the part of parents, leaders in the community, civic associations, schools, etc.

We know, it all starts with the children - each facet - upbringing / parental or adult guidance / proper pre school and after school daycare / appropriate nutrition and medical needs. I also was pleased to see it can be done without large sums of money; while funding is necessary, it's used with discretion.

We can solve these problems which afflict our lower income communities; we need to replicate those efforts being used in Walla Walla, Washington.

I am so glad the ACES study exists and is informing policy. It seems intuitive that childhood trauma can affect the rest of your life, but data is of course very helpful for those who need convincing. Props to these communities for enacting positive change--I hope we can all learn from them.

I believe the issue of childhood trauma bespeaks the value of family planning, including birth control and reproductive choice. Every pregnancy is not necessarily a cause for celebration; reproduction does not provide or salvage relationships. I'm one of those people whose existence seems to have revolved around teaching the parties involved to become responsible, productive citizens. That didn't work out quite as planned. My distancing myself from my family circle was the only salvation for all involved. Although this cast me in the role of black sheep, so be it. On the up side, I've been a loving mother to my own children. I really get the concept of unconditional love.

Sorry for wandering a little off topic to the piece, but to reiterate - you can't make somebody want something they really don't want. Once a child is here, however, there is an implicit obligation of nurturance. If policies and programs can help with this, that's good news. Nothing, however, replaces knowing you are loved by those with whom you live and grow. I can kind of see by the comments, we drastically underestimate the loneliness and suffering of so many kids.

I think there’s far more trauma among children in the country than is recognized and diagnosed, because there is far more trauma among adults than is recognized and diagnosed.

Great article-- thank you so much for covering this critical issue!

I love this series. It focuses on things most communities can do, that have been shown to have a wide and sustained impact. These are the kinds of things all of us should be learning about and engaging in.

As adoptive parents, we know the effect of childhood trauma first hand. The consequences of a high ACE score are profound, impacting every realm of a child's life. Luckily, trauma awareness is spreading among parents, schools and communities. There is new understanding and hope. Delinquency is an outmoded concept. Juvenile crimes are a result of society's crimes against juveniles.

If the parent/parents don't have parenting skills, how does one expect the child to grow up with self-regulating or parental skills to pass on to their own children ?
From generation unto generation ?
From the news recently, a woman who shook her baby & screamed at the baby to "shut the f_ _ _ up".
That poor woman (child) needs, not retribution, but loving & parenting skills teaching.

Excellent reporting, so inspiring. Please keep focusing on these issues! They are crucial for the world's future. (Expand ACE data to the Congo, refugee camps, and favelas....)

TRAUMATIC STRESS Has been acknowledged as the cause of many problems, both mental and physical. Since brain studies have become possible, results corroborate the facts of the negative impact of traumatic stress on the development of children even before birth. The orientation in mental health clinics has shifted from an inadequate behavioral model to a trauma-informed model, though the shift of paradigms has not yet trickled down completely. The community building projects in WA show the power of the Internet in equalizing progress in communities. Going around and asking people what they need has resulted in great success. Such grass roots organizations are effective because people are coming together and helping each other. That's a shift away from the Reaganesque garbage that government is the enemy. What he really was saying is that he didn't like to pay taxes. Seeing the government as an essential partner in grass roots organization and community activism is, in a phrase, government of, by and for the people. As we said in the 60s, Power to the People!

This is wonderful evidence to support the work of many grassroot networks or Ecosystems to solve local problems, informed by local stakeholders, accessing local (or if available national) resources to cultivate and grow workable solutions. The key to driving real broad impact is how to connect, catalyze and scale this great work. Breaking down institutional barriers to collaboration (like competition for grants), incentivizing and even rewarding deep and transparent partnerships is an important component to this work but even more important is identifying and deputizing citizens to do something. Many people are unsure of their role in society without being given permission to act. Leaders of all stripes should be actively engaging a large and diverse contingent of stakeholders. Because it really does take a village...

The title of this piece concerns me. The practice of managing the care of an individual according to data developed about a group can be harmful if the group is not correctly defined. We suffer from a lack of understanding about individual emotional make-up. There is a willingness in the health care industry to group everyone's trauma as the same, needing the same approach, and then using group data to justify it. If enough traumatized children benefit from such programs, enough to move data points, suddenly people in the mental health community conclude it's the best approach for everyone. As a small child I was under the care of a woman who threatened my life repeatedly. Being involved in groups made my circumstances worse. The only thing that helped me was learning how to unravel all the stuff I made up and put into my head. Everything else was a wet band-aid waiting to come off at the wrong time.

If, at the national level of political action, the twin senses of service and social problem-solving could establish even marginal dominance over the currently divisive culture of negative partisanship, the country might move forward. Ah, but I dream.... Problem-solving serves nobody's perceived parochial interest even though evidence shows it's good for the country.

The children; think of the children, the nation's future.

www.endthemadnessnow.org

What about the traumas that communities deliberately inflict upon others who are different? How do you gain the trust of someone whose community has singled them out for being different by tolerating bullying behavior on the part of officials, neighbors, and others? What do you do when the people you are trying to involve have been alienated through a concerted effort on the part of the community? I speak from personal experience.

I was abused as a child. Because I came from a middle class family it was assumed that I was either lying, exaggerating, or worse. No one believed that middle class parents could or would abuse their children. What was conveyed to me was that I deserved to be bullied, pushed around, injured, shunned, and generally isolated. The decisions I made to protect myself emotionally did just that but at a price. I pass as human. I do not feel human. So when people write about getting the community involved I laugh since I wouldn't bother involving myself in a community after the way I've been treated by a community, especially one that has always claimed to be tolerant and caring.

A fascinating article. Besides a high ACE score, the other thing to pay attention to is the rate of functional literacy in children. There are many studies on literacy rates, but a blog article by Mike Tikkanen quotes Rubin Rosario's statistics that show that 85 percent of juveniles who come in contact with the juvenile justice system are functionally illiterate.

I don't know anything about Rosario's work, but I do know that my almost forty years in a high school classroom teaching English make me a believer in them. The kids in trouble were so often the kids who cold barely read. Poor reading scores ensure that kids will have trouble in all of their classes. Kids who rarely read also lack the experience of seeing the world through the eyes of different narrators, and so become hardened in their own often dysfunctional view of how the world works.

The solution to this problem is much like the local initiative solutions that Bornstein describes: well-funded school libraries, curricula that is shaped to be interesting to the local students, parent literacy outreach programs, etc. National tests and curicula just throw cold water over local efforts to turn kids into avid readers.
http://teachloveofreading.blogspot.com/

You are locked on a ward in a state hospital. They have labeled you schizophrenic, say it is genetic. They pour powerful mind control drugs into you, and tie you down when you refuse. They tie you to a bed and inject drugs into you until you are almost unconscious.
That was my reality at Connecticut's former Norwich State Hospital. It was absolute hell, as I was told I was defective and would be "mentally ill" for the rest of my life.
Then came along trauma informed therapy, which said I was a perfectly ok human being, but had been trained to be dysfunctional by trauma, and that knowledge was the door of liberation. No more drugs, just personal work to get healthy and to understand what had happened.
This article looks at the way that community can use the ACE study perspective, but I maintain that trauma informed care is most useful at the personal level. It lets us learn and grow and belong, and we are no longer de-selfed by the shrinks and their labels and horrible, horrible drugs.
For me, the best community involvement would have been counselors in high school and support groups for kids from painful homes. Thank you to those who do the work, from those who did the ACE studies, to the therapists who help the lost and battered.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene

excellent
In subsequent years, researchers have looked into the neurobiological mechanisms of how so-called toxic stress — excessive or prolonged childhood stress that goes unbuffered by supportive adults — can cause children’s emotional systems to become overwhelmed and dysregulated. The effect is that children become susceptible to having their “fight, flight or freeze” responses triggered. This makes it difficult for them to learn in school or preschool or to form friendships, and leads them to act out or withdraw in ways that can harm themselves or others, including their own children or grandchildren.

In the United States, nearly one quarter of all adults have three or more of these ACEs

Great pro-active, pro-child article!

Why is it that every time successful programs come along, the funding gets cut?

Why, Mr. Bornstein, is this hard to believe? We have known about the value of connection -- at the family and community level -- since before these began to deteriorate decades ago.

“Every day, we read about violence, suicide and overdoses in the news,” says Porter. “We now know that these things are largely driven by ACEs. We’re the first generation that actually has the knowledge to drive these rates down."

These are the most accurate and hopeful words I can imagine. Treating the many problems in our society depends on an accurate assessment of the cause(s) and we have denied them for so long and tried many things that do not work - discipline, medications, etc. Using the available strengths of many people to support parents and families and lovingly mentor children will provide almost unimaginable changes. We are finally looking in the right places. Let's hope that Hillary sees this clearly and supports it fully,

On one side is the ACE study, and on the other is the American Congress. One tells us what suffering is and what it does to people, on the other is devoted to alleviating the suffering of the powerful.
So with a Congress like that, just what hope do the people have that legislation will emerge that will help the poor, rather than bomb people in the insane Middle East wars?

Broken hearts never heal. That is the principle behind breaking a horse, or a child. If your intention is to break a horse, then you don't care if it suffers during the breaking. The will of the American people has been broken in the same way. We have been broken to the reins, to accepting our new status as servants of the 1%. Just look to this election to see our "choices". A lover of the traitor Kissinger or a lover of himself.

It is my contention that America died during the '60's, when those bullets killed JFK, RFK, MLK jr., and many others. What has taken over is international global corporate power, and he delights in suffering, if he can find a country that hates unions and works the people to death, that is his child.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene

Nice column. It's incredibly hard to get people out of their individual "silos" and work together on community projects unless there is someone who knows what kinds of disparate resources are available and is able to motivate them. It's not that people don't want to help. It's that they're so busy trying to handle their own issues that they honestly have very little idea what they can do to contribute.

“We have to expand leadership to include the people who are most affected by problems,” said Laura Porter, who directed the council from 1998 to 2013. “Not just advice, but real leadership. People will step into that space, and what happens is you get this expansion of resources.”

Laura is in good company: “If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.” [John William Gardner, was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson.]

This is a good example of the type of 'Meaningful Use' of electronic health records that federal and state governments should be sponsoring in their efforts to automate health systems.

These are also the type of programs that need to be implemented in Central America to stabilize communities and create conditions for human and community development.

Community is so important, and its loss can be devastating. Facebook can help lots of mobility challenged people connect with each other. When children become traumatized, they need friends, whether immediately available or further away. Any of us could act out or rely on substances to help us feel better. In fact, we see a major party presidential candidate acting out verbally. The man needs help, and his improvement could improve the tone of the whole world.