1. From Toxic Stress to Health, Hope and Resilience:
What’s in Your Backpack?
Janice M. Gruendel, Ph.D., M.Ed.
Senior Fellow, Institute for Child Success
Research Professor, UNC Charlotte
Opening Plenary
August 3, 2018

2. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time
T.S. Elliott

3. Alert! This is a journey about you and the children you care for, and context matters…

4. Healthy Safe Smart Strong
We envision an America where all children can grow up...
Healthy Safe Smart Strong
We are not there now…

5. We are not there either…
Moving to Two-Gen Policy and Practice
Ascend at the Aspen Institute
We are not there either…

6. We envision a nation where all children are reading at grade level, measured at the 3rd grade
We are not there yet…

7. We live and work in a country facing increasing individual trauma and societal stress.
This is not OK

8. Our work for today What do we want? Digging into the neuroscience
What’s in our backpacks?
Now What?

9. What do we want?
All of South Carolina’s young learners to be healthy, safe, smart and strong…

10. Behavior incidents Chronic absence Teacher and caregiver turnover
Self-efficacy Self-regulation A positive, trauma-informed learning climate
Teacher and caregiver satisfaction and sense of value Better family-school engagement
Children who love learning Greater school readiness rd grade reading proficiency
And…

11. THE GOOD NEWS: THE SCIENCE CAN LEAD US…
Strong & Healthy Families
Healthy Children, the earlier the better
Strong, Healthy Teachers, Schools & Communities
THE GOOD NEWS: THE SCIENCE CAN LEAD US…
It says, to raise kids who are healthy, safe, smart and strong “we” need to invest in…
RESILIENCE

12. Our work for today Digging into the neuroscience What do we want?
What’s in our backpacks?
Now What?

13. We have devised a simple way to talk about brain development
The early years really matter
Intertwined cognitive and social-emotional development Executive function Self–regulation Empathy
Trauma Toxic Stress Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)
Poverty Racism & Implicit bias Educational and health inequity Politics…
We have devised a simple way to talk about brain development
Mindfulness
Kindness
Health
Hope
Happiness
Resilience
We can build it…
Gruendel,

14. Recognizing universal challenges and extra stress for some…
Parental Health & Mental Health
Child Health, MH and Behavior
Family Basic Needs
Maternal depression Parent-child attachment
Domestic violence
Substance Abuse
ACES
Unstable/unsafe housing
Family and community violence
Not enough food to get through the month
Unstable child care
Weak social networks & social capital
Unstable work status
Needs of aging parents
ECE absences/
suspensions/ expulsions
Developmental delays
School performance
Health problems
Social-emotional challenges
Anxiety/fear/aggression

15. When Stress Becomes Toxic
NORMAL STRESS
Getting immunized; Meeting new people; First day at school. First day at work. Presenting big ideas at a public meeting; Performance evaluation
TOLERABLE STRESS
Serious Illness; Death of a loved one; Frightening accident; Acrimonious divorce; Persistent discrimination
TOXIC STRESS
Tolerable stress that is NOT buffered by caring, actively-present adults (or peers). The body’s stress system activates and stays at high levels “like revving a car’s engine for hours every day.”
This causes damage at the cellular level of our bodies, impacts our health and mental health, and can be passed from one generation to the next at the genomic level.

16. When you dig into the science, this is what you can find…2
When you dig into the science, this is what you can find…
Key Concepts: Toxic Stress. Harvard Center on the Developing Child, Retrieved July 2015 3 1

17. Our work for today What’s in our backpacks? What do we want?
Digging into the neuroscience
What’s in our backpacks?
Now What?

18. Thinking about the kids in your programs, what’s in their
backpacks?

19. What do I know? What can I know? How can I know it?
ACES and trauma among my students
Their strengths and buffers
What do I know?
What can I know?
How can I know it?

20. A real story by a real child:
The Ghost and the Girl

21. Remember, we are the sum total of our life experiences….
Prenatal to Three Years
Three, Four & Five Years
1st through 3rd Grade
Teachers included…

22. About you My classroom climate My program climate
My “growing up” life: ACES and Resilience
My “now” life: Challenge and strengths
My classroom climate
My program climate

23. This is called Secondary Trauma. It is real, and it is not healthy.
“[M]any educators who work day-in and day-out with youth who have experienced trauma find that they begin exhibiting symptoms similar to those of their students—even when they haven’t had to endure trauma themselves.”
This is called Secondary Trauma. It is real, and it is not healthy.

24. Our work for today Now What? What do we want?
Digging into the neuroscience
What’s in our backpacks?
Now What?

25. Because grownups experience stress, too
As leaders, we can support adults who are the buffers against toxic levels of stress in children’s lives…
Parents, across generations
Early learning professionals
Mentors
Coaches
Principals
Because grownups experience stress, too

26. As early educators, in we can…
Create wellness opportunities for ourselves
Meet children and families where they are
Join a team of “brain builder’ champions
Increase trauma-informed practice in our classrooms and programs
Keep an eye on our backpacks and learn to tell our stories…
Recognize that sometimes we are the buffers to toxic stress
Focus on empathy and social-emotional learning
Trauma.
Disability

27. We can identify children and families in need, in need through a real-time Early Warning System -- including data on development,risks, absences and behavior challenges -- as early in a child’s learning experience as possible.

28. Click NOW
We can partner with families and the community to invest in mindfulness and to promote trauma-informed practice and social-emotional learning, in programs and at home
Click Later

29. Finally, we learn to can listen with humility
Opioids
Child Abuse or Neglect
Violence. Death. Separation
Trauma.
Disability
Finally, we learn to can listen with humility
Click Later
…because everybody has a story…

30. The Bottom Line: What’s in their backpacks…

31. …has a lot to do with what’s in ours…
So, what’s in your backpack?

32. Yes, this is hard work. Becoming “real” always is…
Today, in America,
making change for the youngest children we live with and support
may be our best bet for the future…
Yes, this is hard work. Becoming “real” always is…

33. "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near
the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things
that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you.
When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you,
then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.“
The Velveteen Rabbit

34. for who you are and all that you do, for every child every day…
THANK YOU
for who you are and all that you do,
for every child every day…