Question: We adopted our son at two, but we were his foster parents since he was three months. He is now in second grade and is really struggling in school both academically and with bad behaviors. His teacher is not open to hearing me talk about trauma and how his trauma is impacting his learning and behavior. I think she thinks that since he’s been with us for almost his entire life that he hasn’t had trauma. We seem to be getting nowhere with her. Do you have any suggestions for helping her understand that there may be a cause for his struggles other than just being bad?
We welcome our guest Sarah Naish, the CEO and Founder of the Centre of Excellence in Child Trauma in the UK to contribute to answering this question. Sarah is the adoptive parent of five siblings, a former Social Worker, and the author of many books on foster parenting, including The A-Z of Trauma-Informed Teaching.
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Hey everyone, this is Dawn. Welcome to Creating a Family's Week in Wisdom. This is our time to answer your questions. Along those lines, don't forget you can send in your own question at info @creatingafamily .org.
Put something in the red line about question for week in wisdom or question or something along those lines and it will find its way to me and we'll work on getting that question answered. Alright,
today is a question we received about schools and working with our kids on schools. Oftentimes on these weekend wisdoms I am the one who's answering the question,
but in this time we are tapping into the wisdom of Sarah Nash. Sarah is a prolific author about foster parenting. She is from the UK.
She has written so many books on foster parenting including her latest, which is is the A to Z of trauma -informed teaching. Sarah is the CEO and founder of the Center of Excellence in Child Trauma.
She is also the adoptive parent of five siblings. She was a former social worker. She has done it all. She is terrific. So we ask her this question. We adopted our son at two,
but we were his foster parents since he was three months. He is now in in second grade and is really struggling in school both academically and with bad behaviors. His teacher is not open to hearing me talk about trauma and how his trauma is impacting his learning and behavior.
I think she thinks that since he has been with us almost his entire life that he hasn't had trauma. We seem to be getting nowhere with her. Do you have any suggestions for helping her understand that there may be a cause for his struggles?
struggles other than just being bad. So there's two things here, really. I understand there are professionals around who are very closed -minded. Yesterday, for example,
I spoke to a foster parent who told me that a social worker told her she needed to get therapy to stop being a therapeutic parent. Those extreme examples are out there of people that are so closed -minded,
so threatened by... having to think differently about how children from trauma need looking after and need responding to that they get very blamey and very shut down.
When I had that situation, I changed schools because if you can't open that person's mind, if they are completely closed off to it and they are stuck with it's your fault,
you are the parent you are causing this. this. If you've given them resources, because there's loads of research and stuff out there about in utero trauma and the impact of early life trauma,
there's a ton of stuff out there. We've got a lot of stuff out in ATP and I'm sure you've got a lot of stuff as well, Dawn. - Yeah, we do. - Yeah, if you've given that to the teacher and they've got their fingers in their ears, going blah, blah, blah,
we have to go somewhere else. But with a child who's really struggling and being haunted every day. I don't know if you have these in the US, but we have farm schools. So when COVID happened,
a lot of farm schools opened, and many of our adopted and foster children are thriving in farm schools where they go maybe two or three days a week. And a lot of it is very outside,
very open air, and they're much calmer. So we don't have our, the US is big, the US is the UK, but they're undoubtedly our school. that are like that, but that is not the norm.
There are charter schools, but they're often very similar as far as the structure. So assuming that this parent doesn't have the option of choosing a school that would allow her child to be less structured,
what would you suggest? - Personally, I had home school, especially with one child, you may be interested to know that all our farm schools were started by adopters and foster parents, and it's that. they couldn't find anything that kind of suited their children and that was how they all started.
So I think they started off by people getting together and homeschooling their children and then sharing resources and that they grew from there because we have to look at this child and think you know what's his behavior telling us his behavior is telling us I'm not ready for school I can't manage this is he seven seven chronologically chronologically.
How old is he emotionally? And when we look at how old the child is emotionally, when we look at the stage they're at instead of the age they're at, we have to amend what we're doing to that emotional age of the child.
So sometimes, for example, in the UK, you start school at the age of four, many of our children adopted, they're simply not at the right stage. So we keep them back and keep them back until we finish school.
think they're ready. But we do have a fight on our hands. It's not straightforward because every day you're sending the child to school and you've got a teacher there who is blaming and not getting it and resistant to it.
I wouldn't be able to send my child there. I wouldn't be able to do it. I would be looking. We had to move 125 miles for my children to go to a school that I felt was trauma informed enough to get them through.
And it's not an easy thing to do. to do. You know, one thing I would throw out is that from my experience, this child's in second grade, it could be that teacher, and that in third grade,
you would not have that, not have a teacher who is struggling with that. So one thought, this doesn't help our questioner for this year, although I'm going to suggest something for this year too,
but before their school year, at the end of the previous school year, talking with with whomever be at the guidance counselor, be at the school social worker, be at the principal about saying, "I need you to be selective at what teacher my child is going to get for third grade.
These will be his behaviors. These are the causes for his behaviors. And I can and will work with that person, but I need somebody who can work with me." I have found that to be very successful without having to move schools.
And you could could find that you have a principal who is not receptive and then you really are up the creek. But the other thing I would suggest for this year is all schools here in the U .S. have guidance counselors and many of them have school social workers,
both of which could be a real asset, professional to professional. They can talk with the teacher and he or she might be more receptive hearing it coming from a professional.
So, I just, I think it's really important for me to be able to talk with the teacher that out there. Yeah, that's really good. We don't have school social workers here, but people who foster, they have a social worker and you're right, we would be asking those social workers to go and speak to the teacher and some of them can do that.
They are able to do that. Okay, thank you. I hope that has been helpful for you. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah, for your expertise. Before you go,
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