Cindy Perkins, a school counselor from Maine is on a noble mission. After listening to her at this week’s ATTACh conference, I realized once again what an uphill battle we have in teaching schools how to help traumatized children self-regulate instead of punishing their behaviors.

Cindy works with the P.L.A.C.E. model developed by Dan Hughes. The acronym stands for:

P = Playful – a way to engage the children.
L = Loving - giving the child the concept that all children are loveable and able to love.
A = Accepting – the concept that you can accept the child while not condoning their behaviors
C = Curious – approaching a child in a non-judgmental way
E = Empathy – the idea that the adult has an understanding of the child’s trauma and pain and is willing and able to hold the child’s giant emotions.

I’m not convinced that Hughes’ acronym is the easiest model to teach to educators about our traumatized children. But I agree wholeheartedly with Cindy about what she had to say about the importance of Acceptance. This is the message for educators...that the children are NOT their behaviors. And if we don’t look for, and understand, the underlying cause of the behaviors (trauma), then we are only going to make behaviors worse, because we will have unintentionally (I hope) tapped the child's fear and shame.

YES YES YES! That’s it in a nutshell. Children who come from backgrounds of trauma operate from the emotions of fear and shame. Anything that happens to trigger either of these emotions (things that are seemingly innocuous to emotionally healthy adults), send them into a downward spiral that produces all the behaviors that teachers then try to control. And the behavior management methods that are typically used to control these behaviors (point systems and time-outs) do the exact WRONG thing. They reinforce the child’s shame (I’m a “bad” kid) or fear (I’ve been rejected and sent away...abandoned...once again.)

Engaging children with empathy, acceptance, understanding, and in a playful way, is the only way to keep the child feeling safe while teaching the child how to self-regulate and change his/her behavior. The goal is to TEACH the child not PUNISH him. And our children will not self-regulate and “behave” when a consequence is levied the way emotionally healthy, attached children will.

Now, if Cindy and about 10,000 other counselors and psychologists would go to every public school in the country and shout this from the rooftop...then, maybe things would start to change!

Thank you Cindy!