Post Institute

Back to school success means less STRESS for children, parents, and teachers!

Education guru Mel Levine states, "Every child can succeed given the right educational environment and opportunities." If you are a parent of a child who has challenges in the classroom, or an educator of such a child, the following thoughts, based on fifteen years of working with children of all makeup and challenge level, may be very beneficial in helping you to achieve the educational breakthrough with your child that you have been seeking. I encourage you to read these thoughts with the same amount of thoughtfulness that has gone into sharing them with you.

The first day I met Kevin, he was very quiet and withdrawn. At 6’4 and around 250 lbs. he looked more like a recovering college football linebacker and not at all like a student just seeking to complete his high school education. When I shook his hand, the size encompassed by own. I thought to myself, “Oh Lord help us give this child what he needs to get through without crushing all of us in an oversized tantrum.” As time went on the security of the environment and the relationship with teachers and staff began to take root, our college linebacker transformed into a child of five, as fearful as any five year old would be in new environments and meeting new people. Before long, upon entering the building, he would see me walk in and come running and yelling in the most animated voice, “Dr. Post, Dr. Post!” and he would commence to giving me the biggest hug of the day. Not only would he give me the hug but then he would just rest there in my arms for moments at a time as I would rub his back and tell him how glad I was to see him that day. He made it through the year with minimal incidents, did his work, followed directions, and on many occasions was even a leader among the other students.

Are You a Seeker?

In order to be optimally successful when working with challenging children the adult must be committed to one very important and critical variable. That variable is a willingness to grow and expand oneself. Not merely in the way of education by reading more books, learning new techniques, or classroom management styles, but by really willing to challenge who you have been in the desire to become a more balanced, more whole, you. To seek growth is to examine deeply your day to day life. Challenging children are God-given growth opportunities for all of us adults that feel like we are grown up. We are not grown ups, we are merely growing. Stress is a natural catalyst to both growth and destruction. If you fight it, you will be destroyed. If you embrace it, learn from it, you will grow. Neither is peaceful or without hardship and pain, but the latter will ultimately bring you more life joy and passion for your chosen profession.

Questions to consider:

When you encounter a really difficult child, have you stopped to…

• Ask yourself who that child might remind you of from your past?
• What opportunity is this child offering you in this moment?
• When you the teacher or parent, becomes stressed, truly how old are you emotionally?
• Are you doing your absolute best in this given moment?
• Are you stressed?
• How do you know?
• What signals is your body giving you? Shoulder tension, headache, back pain, upset stomach, sore legs, fatigued, sore throat…all of these are body symptoms of stress and emotional upset. What was the child’s morning like?
• Does the child trust you?
• Did you invite the child into relationship with you that day by offering a smile, a hug, a kind word of support and encouragement?

These are merely questions to consider as you seek to become a more mindful, more conscious teacher. One that is not reacting to every negative statement made by a child, or every lackadaisical effort, but rather responding to your own internal messages and thus more accurately responding to the child’s heart.

Are You Committed?

My dear friend and comrade in the war on children’s pain and loss, Pat O’Brien, offers a short poem called The Adopted Teens Prayer: May you love me the most… when I deserve it the least…cause that’s when I need it the most! Pat preaches a gospel of 100% Commitment to children. Are you committed to bringing hope, relief, and then if all falls into place, education to that child who poses so many challenges? Why is hope and relief placed before education if we are speaking of school success? With the passing of the No Child Left Behind laws we have fallen further even further away from the essence of bringing education to a child. We have failed to grasp even the simplest of brain findings that state in a stressful situation a child cannot think clearly or even remember. Our teachers have become stressed trying to teach to successful passing of exams; hence our students become more stressed trying to learn what is required. However, who is really getting lost in all of the stress and chaos? Of course it’s the challenging child; the child who comes to school already at a disadvantage for learning because before he even entered the school building he was already stressed and anxious. What becomes of this child? The focus is placed on his behavioral compliance to get him into the space to learn. Once his lack of compliance increases along with our adult stress, then we begin a slow and tedious process of distancing ourselves from the child, eventually lacking commitment and then possibly giving up.

A teacher at a special school I was consulting at once became irate with me for suggesting that perhaps there was more that could have been done for a child that was eventually kicked out of school. He was so angry I believe he would have fought me had we been in a different setting. To suggest that in our deepest struggles there are still unexplored possibilities was beyond this educator’s framework, or perhaps outside of his commitment level. Commitment does not indicate that you know all of the answers; it simply implies that you are unwilling to give up until you have explored them all.

• Have you phoned the child at home in the evening?
• Taken the child out for a soda after school?
• Gone and joined his family for dinner or invited them to dinner?
• Sought to learn more about whom the child is and where he came from?
• Invited him to church with you and your family on a Sunday?
• Listened to his frustrations and fears about the classroom?
• Sought first to understand and then to be understood?

Commitment is not a fun word. It does not imply easy. Why are we afraid to unconditionally commit to a child? I believe the answer lies in our own fears of being inadequate, not good enough, and thus unworthy. Rather than confront those deep seated insecurities within ourselves it is easier to abandon the child, or to write him off as to difficult or incompliant to the rules.

Before we move on there is one other important point: You don’t have a classroom full of challenging children, nor a family full of them. For many years now I have used the simple formula that in every classroom there is one truly difficult child, who unattended and unmet, that child creates stress for two other children that are sensitive and susceptible. Those three combined can turn any classroom upside down! Stress is the only element distorting your thoughts into believing that you have more challenges than you do. The one who is acting out is the one who needs you the most. The others start off in a better place and usually finish as such. But the one, is where the need lies. Can you be committed?

James was a young man with a unique energy. He could create a dynamic of love and hate within the same hour. Short in stature and slim in build, he was an attractive child of fifteen. He had been through a lot and had struggled in the classroom for years. Over time he made his way to our school. It didn’t take long to realize that we had our hands full because James had one really big challenge: He was terrified of his peers. His fear of his peers surfaced in a unique manner as well, and it led him to need to be tougher and cooler than everybody else. He wasn’t a leader, or a follower but his charismatic personality allowed him to assume either position. He didn’t like rules and didn’t particularly care for adults because he was afraid of them as well. He had been hurt, rejected, and abandoned too many times. The interesting thing is that James really wanted to be in school. There was some morning when he would run out to the van, buckle his seat belt and honk the horn repeatedly until I got there. After telling him that the neighbors were still sleeping and probably wouldn’t appreciate being woken by the beeping horn, he never honked it again, but would just bounce around and yell for me to hurry up. He liked the socialization of school. He wanted to be around the kids but just didn’t know how to interact without turmoil. When school began, his energy levels ran high because there were few other children, but as the numbers of children increased so did James’ stress levels as well as that of the teachers. Regrettably due to my own stress levels I could not be there either. And even further more regrettable, we didn’t make it with James. We lacked commitment.

How well do you understand the child?

During the past 8 years as a speaker, trainer, and consultant around the world, I have come to believe that the single most important aspect of working with children is our understanding of our selves and the child. Since we discussed our own adult process in the first section, let’s discuss our children’s process here. I believe that the parallel processes mirror one another. This simply means that our children, in fact all children, have a unique ability to model our own adult lives. In many ways they reflect our greatest fears, our greatest insecurities, and inadequacies. As we parent our children or work with children professionally, the pain we lived through as children reappears in the present. Our lack of understanding makes it impossible to meet our children in their own healing space. Our lack of understanding makes it difficult for us to honor the life process of our children. When a child is fraught with emotional and behavioral problems, we are exposed to a greater deal of stress. As we become stressed we activate our own past parenting messages. Typically such messages are deeply rooted in stories of feeling ashamed, embarrassed, rejected, isolated, and lonely. In so many ways we take our children’s negative behaviors personally. When you take a child’s behavior personally, no matter what the behavior you are essentially taking away the child’s right for growth and awareness. However that is a belief system based in an understanding of children that says in any given moment a child is doing the best he can. Additionally, stress and fear cause children to act out in ways that are deemed not okay. It is not the behavior that is the actual problem; it is the stress and fear causing. We must come to understand children in their totality as opposed to merely in the moment. If we work to understand the child’s history, his sensitivities, fears, weaknesses, and deficits, we can make adjustments personally and environmentally to better support and encourage the child’s growth. However if we are only reacting to the child’s behavior, getting upset, demanding, controlling, threatening, shaming, etc. we are doing little to help the child grow to another level of understanding and awareness. If you understand, then you act accordingly. We must be cautious in making the judgments, “He knows exactly what he is doing”, or, “he did that on purpose.” Such statements are judgments based on our own reactions to the child’s behaviors. They do nothing to reflect our understanding of why the child behaved in the manner that he did, and furthermore it only reflects our own lack of willingness to be responsible in the areas where our children are demonstrating that they cannot.

Following a lecture in New Jersey I was approached by a school social worker. She began telling me about a child who had otherwise done quite well in the classroom, but during the past six months had all but dropped out of school. “A twelve year old child doesn’t just go from doing his work, attending daily, and interacting with the other kids to completely depressed and failing nearly every subject. It feels like we’ve tried everything and all of his are really worried about this child. Do you have any suggestions?”. I have a belief that almost every severe behavior is predictable. This understanding permits me to look beyond the behavior immediately. In fact, upon hearing of a behavior being presented as the challenge, I begin listening quietly for the story to potentially reveal the root cause. Oftentimes in the midst of hopelessness we begin to look for the fix to the problem rather than the cause of the problem. Naturally if we can identify the cause then figuring out how to change the problem becomes much easier, rather than vice versa. The teacher was looking for a way to fix the child with a magical technique; some method that could be applied to get the child to jolt out of his depression. Instead I was listening for the cause. My wife once said, “Techniques are as superficial as behaviors”. Meaning, merely applying a technique to a problem without understanding it will only leave you seeking a different technique the next time there is a challenge. The first question I remember asking, “has anything significant happened or changed in the child’s life during the past six months?”. In fact, the foster mother of this child had just passed away six months prior! Remaining in the home were the foster child and his foster father. First I offered the understanding by explaining to the teacher that the foster child was certainly grieving, however his bigger challenge was tied into being deathly afraid of now losing his foster father as well, and subsequently his home and maybe even his life! How could any child function in the school environment with those kinds of fears and anxieties lurking under the surface? Second, based on the understanding I offered the fix; everyday at mid-morning and then again at mid-afternoon have the child call his father or have the father call the child. Not for a long conversation but merely just to check in. Make this happen and let me know how it goes in a couple of weeks. Two weeks later the social worker informed me that the child had indeed made a very speedy recovery and his academic performance was turning around.

Secure Environment:

Secure environments in the school are discounted due to our belief that because it is a school it is in fact, safe. Physical safety is only one factor to consider inside of the classroom. Emotional safety on the other hand, could possibly be the most important security factor there is. When working with children who have historically struggled in the classroom, due to any number of behavioral/social/emotional/or academic challenges, it is critical to understand that in many instances these children’s brains operate at a different level. That primary operational level is the emotional level. Stressors in a child’s life dating as far back as birth can set the brain up to be very sensitive and susceptible to stress in the environment. What is oftentimes overlooked is that noises, lights, movement, smells, transitions, temperatures, colors, etc. can all be emotional stress triggers for the sensitive child.

• Noises: Developed as early the fourth week after conception, the pathway of hearing can create an enormous challenge for the stress sensitive child. Children are laughing, teachers are talking, books are opening and closing, pages are turning, lights are humming, bells are dinging, and markers are writing, all creates a vibration which hits the child at the same time. Now we are only speaking of noises here, but don’t forget all of the above mentioned stress triggers are actually hitting the child’s brain at the same time. Lets look at the others.
• Lights: The fluorescent lights used in most classrooms have repeatedly been linked to poor concentration, sight difficulties, and migraines. Such bright lights in a classroom over-stimulate the already stimulation challenged child posing yet another stress trigger.
• Movements: Every time there is a movement in the classroom it can pose a sensory distraction for the easily distracted child. Keep in mind that we all rely on a filtering system within our brain system to block out unimportant data that is flooding us at any given moment. Quantum physicist and pioneering author, Deepak Chopra has stated that we are perceiving millions of pieces of data at any given moment, but our filtering system helps us to stay focused on the task at hand. A sensitive stress response system impacts the sensory filtering system needed for focus. Movements of the teacher, other students, ceiling fan, happening outside of the window and inside the hallway are all distractible elements.
• Temperature: The constant fluctuation of temperature within the varying classrooms keeps the body in a constant state of seeking balance. In other words, the constant changes keep the body stressed at a very unconscious, body level. This experience alone can cause a constant distraction and interruption of the students focus.
• Smells: Smell is the most immediate way to cause the brain to react, this reaction brings about stress. Stress brings about lost focus, concentration, and ability to retain information. Remember when you were a child in the school and as it neared lunch time the smells would begin wafting down the hallway? It would be interesting to know how much information is actually retained from the moment of those first smells until the time lunch is served. Number of human olfactory receptor cells = 12 million (Shier, D., Butler, J. and Lewis, R. Hole's Human Anatomy & Physiology, Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004) Total number of human taste buds (tongue, palate, cheeks) = 10,000
• Transitions: Every time we move from one place to the next, one room to the next, or even one assignment or another, our brains react in a stressful way. Neuroscientist Bruce Perry states that anytime we encounter a new situation we perceive the situation or experience as a threat. Any new sensory experience can cause stress. Important Scientific Fact: Stress causes confused and distorted thinking and suppresses the short term memory making it nearly impossible to remember.

These things are not shared here as a statement that you must do something about each in order to better help the child, but rather as food for thought in consideration for the environments that we are asking our children to learn and function in. Some sensory experiences can be modified to better support the child’s emotional system, however the absolute best tools for a teacher to apply when creating emotional security are understanding of the child’s emotional experience and openness to the possibilities of doing something different.

Are You Putting Love First?

There is a common statement when working with challenging children, “If only love were enough”. Several years ago I began to counter that statement with, “Love is enough, when we truly know what love is!” Unfortunately I don’t believe that love is very common because we struggle to truly understand what love is. We are all so conditioned to believe that the fear based acts we conduct against one another are based in love. Like the statement from dad, “I’m whipping you because I love you and this will hurt me a lot more than it hurts you”. Well I’m not too certain about whether it hurt him more than me, but I can assure you that physical assault had far less to do with love, and far more to do with my father’s fear that I would turn out to be an irresponsible adult.

We currently live in a society where it is not okay to pray in school, nor is it okay for a teacher to hug a child, but we are seriously considering permitting teachers to be able to carry guns in the classroom. Where is the love? And possibly an even better question, once love completely disappears in the spirit of education and fear becomes more dominant will we be able to educate any child effectively?

Love is simple. It consists of joy, patience, support, encouragement, understanding, respect, and discipline. What it does not include is fear, threats, isolation, punishment, shaming, blaming, rejecting, and dominating. The most pleasantly memorable teacher in any adult or child’s life is the one who was not the nicest or easiest, but the one who was the most loving. We mistake loving for being passive, a push over, or easy. Rather than realizing that love is a very passionate emotion. Within passion we can be firm, disciplined, demanding, expecting, and relentless without harming, being mean, or unjust.

Smile, hug, ask, encourage, listen, influence and be happy. These are the keys to any child’s heart. When you fail and become angry, loud, passive, or frustrated, then simply reflect on where you are at. Calm yourself down by sitting still for a moment and breathing. Then apologize to the child and seek to understand further. When you encounter a difficult child or situation remember you are encountering an opportunity for love to have the greatest impact.

Over the years I have become known as one of the premier behavior specialists in the world. I have offered years of tools and techniques to schools, teachers, and social workers in an effort to help make theirs, and their children’s lives easier. However, as time passes I have come to more greatly understand that it is not the tools and techniques that create success but rather the understanding behind them. What we have covered in this brief article are but a few building blocks to school success. Truth be told, a perfect school year is very possible, though perfect does not mean easy!