When Learning is Trauma: Dr. Daniel Franklin, Lois Letchford, & Lisa McCarty

Thank you. Well, we're 2 minutes early, but that's alright. We have a lot of people watch later rather than live. So welcome to When Learning Is Trauma, and today we are delighted to welcome Dr. Daniel Franklin. Welcome. And I'll do an introduction. Dr. Franklin is the author of Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities. Strategies to Succeed. Perfect.

Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities by Daniel Franklin.

Keep going.

This is a book.

Yep.

It's a book specifically written for parents, just like your participants today, parents who have children with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, processing issues, visual processing, auditory processing, It's written to be really accessible, easy to use, and it's filled with answers to everyday questions of parenting a child, teen, or young adult with a language-based learning disability.

Brilliant, brilliant. And you have a master's degree from Harvard in education, reading, language, and learning disabilities, and a PhD from UCLA in education.

That's correct, yes.

Board-certified therapist and over 30 years of experience in education, teacher administration, and consultant. And you said you are trained in school?

I'm a trauma-certified, trauma treatment certified professional.

Brilliant. Thank you. And welcome, Lisa. We— I always appreciate Lisa being here. Can we call you Daniel or Dr. Daniel?

Oh, Daniel. Please call me Daniel. Everybody does.

We, we, I'm really fascinated with your story. Can you start from the beginning?

Well, sure. I had 4 siblings, most of them older than me, and all of them learned to read easily, quickly, well, and then I came along. I was the 4th in the line and could not learn to read, write, spell, or frankly do math. at all, um, in preschool and kindergarten, and then in first grade and second grade and third grade, I continued to struggle enormously with regard to all areas of written language skills in particular. Um, in those days— this is back in the early '70s— very little was known or even heard about dyslexia, and— but it is abundantly clear now that I am enormously and very proudly, uh, dyslexic, and it is a characteristic, a learning characteristic, that is both, both a blessing and a curse. Uh, it's a curse— maybe that's an overstatement— because learning, uh, managing the demands of school is very challenging when you have slowly emerging reading, writing, spelling skills, but it's been a blessing In the experiences I've had along the way, the people I've met, the help I've, I've received, and the curiosity that I've developed about this very interesting and unique learning characteristic, and that I've been able to create an entire career around supporting the needs of children, teens, and young adults with dyslexia. And dyslexia is very commonly co-occurs with ADHD. So ADHD is another area in which I have rather extensive, uh, experience and an area where I provide a high level of support to students with ADHD.

Yeah.

Um, Lois, your question when we started speaking about this a couple months ago was trauma and why is it that we need to take trauma into account when we are supporting children, teens, and young adults who've had a long history of learning challenges. And the reason is clear, that when a child struggles, especially in a way that is glaringly obvious, for example, struggling at school, the fear, the levels of self-consciousness and self-awareness are at an exceedingly high level. And this indeed creates a trauma response. It is a response of acute and chronic anxiety, elevated levels of stress, which also means elevated levels of stress hormones like cortisol. And when one lives with chronic and elevated levels of stress, that, that in itself becomes a challenge because stress enlarges The amygdala, which is two little knobs deep within the brain. It's the warning system of the brain, and when that warning system is always on, it tends to enlarge the amygdala. It makes the amygdala more reactive, so it's easy for these individuals to quick quickly lapse into periods of stress, anxiety, dysregulation, and as Lisa, our participant today. well aware that the post-traumatic stress syndrome is— has a universal impact regardless of the underlying cause of it. It can come from something very sudden and unexpected like a car accident or something long-term like a learning disability or an abusive relationship, uh, and similar other experiences. I'm wondering, Lois, perhaps this is a good opportunity for us to share this very short 11-minute documentary called Unteachable that I'm featured in, but it's largely about an extraordinary teacher, Mrs. Shirley Gott, who was absolutely gifted in supporting children who had learning disabilities. Shall we run it now?

That'd be brilliant, yes, yes.

Perfect timing. Okay, let me see if I can do this right. There we go. Here we go. I might not have done that right. Let me go back. Let's see. I might ask my colleague, Tana, to join me for a second. I may have missed a step here. And let's see here. Let me— I'm going to start it over. And so— oh, I missed the screen share part. Okay. So that's the step I missed.

There we go.

And should I click on that? Okay. And share.

Now.

When you can't read, people think you're stupid. Teachers don't like you because they think you're not trying hard enough. They ignore you or single you out. So you cause trouble, either to get attention or get away from it.

I don't like to cause trouble.

I grew up here on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In many ways, it was a perfect childhood. I had 3 older brothers and a younger sister to play with. My parents had lots of friends, and there was always something fun to do at our house. But then school started. I liked kindergarten. I was an excellent napper. I could stack blocks like a champ. Everyone liked me. But there was a workbook for copying letters. By the end of the year, mine was still blank. I hated that book. I hadn't opened it once. In first grade, when I looked at a sentence, The words shifted and fragmented on the page. The only way I could tell if a book was right side up was by the pictures. When I was called on to read, I panicked. I created such mayhem I was expelled from 2nd grade. By 3rd grade, I'd been in and out of 3 different schools. By 4th grade, I learned to fly under the radar and be invisible. Or just disappear. Out here, school didn't matter. That's what I told myself. But I hadn't learned how to read, write, or do basic math. I couldn't spell my name. It's clear now that I was dyslexic. Sometimes in life you can identify the moments in which everything changes. I didn't realize it then, but now, 40 years later, I know that the moment I entered 5th grade, my life changed. And it was all because of my teacher. In the 1970s, in the few buildings that were left of the abandoned military base, Camp Wellfleet. A small public school called the Clinical Teaching Center opened. My classroom is on the right side in the center. There's nothing left of the buildings now. It's just forest. In the morning, I started out on the regular school bus with my sister, then transferred to one of those half school buses— we called it the fat bus— that took me the rest of the way to the Clinical Teaching Center. My classmates and I were all anxious. None of us could read or write. We were the unteachables. But then there was Mrs. Gott. None of us 5th graders had experienced much kindness from a teacher before. But Mrs. Gott? To this day, she is the nicest person I've ever met. Mrs. Gott's classroom was the first time that I thought Maybe my problems with school were not all my fault. Mrs. Scott and I were inseparable. That's me squeezed in beside her. She was the first teacher I dared tell I didn't know the letters of the alphabet or how to spell my name. But Mrs. Scott never doubted my abilities. Of course you can, Daniel, she'd say. And then she'd help me. I began to trust her. And then myself. Yeah, it's this way. The chalkboard would be right there. Mrs. Scott's desk was right there. We had the alphabet up along the top on the chalkboard there. We had the reading corner There. We would have our math instruction over there. And we had sort of our desks laid out at a slight angle. They weren't perfectly square. Mrs. Scott didn't hold advanced degrees and only received training to be a reading teacher much later in life. She taught for 10 years before retiring. But she had a gift for teaching reading to students like me. And so, in 5th grade, when I was 11 years old, I read my first 2-syllable word. It was this one: Bos-ton.

Boston!

On this pencil sharpener in my father's office. Boston! I was born in Boston, and now I knew how to spell it. Our class often went to the dunes to write in the sand so we could feel what it was like to make letters. I practiced my name over and over and over. Mrs. Gott always let us explore at our own pace, and what happened is that learning stopped being so scary. It felt like fun. My shame and anxiety slowly diminished. I was not just learning, I was learning that I could learn. And even more incredible, I was good at it. Mrs. Gott liked to tell us stories. She told us of a place in America where you could stand in 4 states at once. We didn't believe her, but then she said she'd been there. I remember the day she taught me that the 4 letters O-U-L-D make the same sound in the words could, would, and should. I was astonished. This is what's left of the Marconi Towers, where the first wireless transatlantic communication took place in the early 20th century. Mrs. Godd said the towers had received distress calls from the Titanic. The clinical teaching center was near here, and my classmates and I played among the ruins. Our school was later named the Marconi School, and it has always struck me as ironic It's hard to believe that in this place of communication, there was once a school for kids with communication problems. Current neuroscience research shows that a trusting relationship between a teacher and a young student, not a regimen of homework and testing, is key for learning and development. Mrs. Gott understood this intuitively. She didn't punish or offer rewards. She practiced patience and kindness. In 7th grade, I was mainstreamed back into the local public school. Reading remained incredibly difficult, but at least now I had a foundation. Not being able to read as a child still carries a lot of shame, and only recently have I dared tell anyone how significant my challenges with dyslexia were. Dyslexia is not something you cure. It's something you learn to live with. It was because of Mrs. Gott that I decided to become a teacher myself. In consulting with new students, I ask what they like most about a teacher. They always say, I like it when the teacher is nice. What I see too often is that a child who is falling behind at school is told to buck up, to show some grit, as though the desire to do well is all that's missing. But in my 30 years of teaching, I have never met a student who doesn't want to succeed. And the result of telling that student to show some grit Is that he or she internalizes failure? I know absolutely that failure isn't the fault of the child, but that of the environment in which every student is expected to learn the same thing in the same way. I called Mrs. Gott every year on her birthday, including her 98th, her last. She was always among the first people I called when I achieved a new milestone, like when I graduated from high school as class president, or when I earned my master's degree in education from Harvard University, and when I earned my PhD from UCLA. She was never surprised, and her response was always the same. She'd say, Of course you did, Daniel.

So that's Unteachable. The filmmaker is Anthony Sharon. He's actually a very highly regarded documentary filmmaker, and he created this as a public service, and he's very happy for anyone to have it and share it. So whatever format you need it in to share with your audience, and you can do it however you like that works well for you from a technological standpoint. The filmmaker Anthony Sharron made the film because he had a very keen interest in better understanding, better the trauma associated with all types of struggles, including those that occur to children, teens, young adults in school. And he also had the remarkable capacity to understand The solution and treatment for trauma is another person. And that's the good news about trauma, that the treatment of trauma, especially for children, teens, and young adults, invariably is the healthy connection to a healthy person, and presumably an adult.

Yeah.

The mechanisms of attachment. Attachment is a person's internal model of what a relationship is like. And when a child has a healthy, positive connection to other adults, they are better able to manage the overwhelming complex sensations that come with a lifetime of acute anxiety associated with any manner of challenges. In my case, It was struggling at school. I should say I was blessed to have, and still am, thanks to God, 2 marvelous parents, loving, caring parents who still live on Cape Cod. I'll be visiting them next week, who were enormously supportive to me as, as parents. But a child also needs a teacher. A child also needs another adult who's out—

Time.

Not in the world, not in the home.

Yeah.

But in the places where danger is encountered. And for a child with dyslexia or any other learning challenge or behavioral challenge, having that secure attachment figure out in the world is critical. And it served me enormously well as a child, and it became a source of strength and motivation as I got older. And as Anthony Sharon has documented so beautifully, Mrs. Shirley Gott remained my friend throughout her entire life. She only passed away a few years ago in 2011, and we, we had been very close friends throughout her entire life. And I think of her every day, and I draw on what she taught me as a child in her classroom every day to do the work I do. With children with learning disabilities.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. You know that, that, um, who was it we had? Steve?

Hugh?

Yes. No, no, no, first one said exactly the same thing.

Oh, Dijkstra.

Yes. They need an adult and, you know, one adult, and if it's outside the family, I think that's a big bonus, isn't it? Yeah.

I have a question. So this teacher was— you were in the 5th grade when you were introduced to her. So prior to the 5th grade and you're struggling, was your home life any different? Was there— was there— because a lot of times parents get pretty nervous that their kids aren't doing well. And before anybody can really hone in on and recognize the actual problem, Sometimes the people at the school, the way they're speaking with the parents, gets everybody into a panic, and they can— there can be some chaos at home. Was your home life any different before the 5th grade, before you had this teacher that was— that you were connected to?

Not really. Home life was actually quite good, and my parents saw how I operated. among my siblings. I was normal. And how I operated in our community. I was very active in our community. I participated in sports. I was very good at attending to community activities and family activities. And I functioned well and functioned very normally. It was at school where the challenges were. And as Anthony Sharron has documented so well in this film, It was also a source of tremendous trouble. By the time I entered the 5th grade, I had been in and out of 4 or 5 schools by that point and expelled twice from schools for complicated behavior. Children who feel threatened, they do typically one of two things. They shut down and become a lump, or they become reactive.

Yeah.

And that was me. My behavior was, uh, sort of this extroverted behavior, and that became rather unwieldy for teachers at times. And so, uh, schools kept moving me along. And when I entered Mrs. Gott's classroom for the first time, I immediately felt like, oh, this teacher likes me, and she's treating me kindly and treating me with love and was never— had a capacity to stay attuned, stay empathic, stay connected to me. And since she did that from the outset, I never exhibited challenging behavior in her class, ever.

Wow.

There you go.

I was, you know, I walked into her class as I did 5 years previous, willing to give the teacher a chance. But the minute they started calling me stupid and lazy and ridiculing me in front of other children and blaming me for my inability to perform how these teachers wanted me to perform, uh, that's when I became reactive. I felt it was unfair, and it was.

Yeah.

And I wasn't going to take that kind of abuse sitting down. I was going to speak my mind and If I felt I needed to just get up and leave the classroom, as I did on a number of occasions. It's a type of behavior that's not appreciated frequently by teachers in schools, but in retrospect, it was very empowering to me as a child.

Right.

A big part of what has given me the resilience to prevail against great adversity.

So were you quite articulate in school?

Um, I was—

no.

All forms of language, not only reading and writing but speaking as well, were difficult, as is the case with many children with dyslexia. I had a speech impediment.

Right.

I still do, but it's not as pronounced now as it was when I was a child. I mispronounced many words. I had a stutter and a stammer and a lisp, and characteristics if you listen to me carefully, or maybe you don't have to listen carefully, you can still hear. But these are things that I've come to appreciate about who I am and appreciate in other people too.

Well, so my— I have 3 boys. 2 of them struggle in school. My youngest is very dyslexic. My middle son struggles with dyslexia. More so with dysgraphia. They both struggle with dyscalculia, so they had a rough time in school. My youngest son goes to a specialized school that deals with different learners, and what I noticed was when he's trying to explain something and the more anxious he's getting, it doesn't go well. When he has command of the thing that he's trying to explain, He— that anxiety is key. When that anxiety isn't there and he felt— feels in charge of something that he knows well, he's a great speaker. Did you find that for yourself?

I think I did. For example, outside of the classroom, I grew up doing all kinds of sports, and I enjoyed— grew up on a small farm. We had goats and chickens and ducks and rabbits and horses and lots of different animals around. And I enjoyed attending to the animals. I enjoyed— my mother maintained a very large vegetable garden, close to half an acre of cultivated land, and participating in all the things that we did as a family and as a community. And I operated very well. In those environments. It was the structure of classrooms, the rigidity of some teachers, not all. I had many amazing teachers along the way, and a few who weren't so amazing or kind.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, I had a lot of resilience because I came from a home that I— in which I was loved, I was believed in, and I was never made to feel different. in any way from my siblings, who, uh, all of whom learned to read early, learned to read well, had great mastery of written language, something that came very slowly for me and with great effort.

So in your book, I would imagine that a lot of those learned experiences are why you're so successful being able to navigate or showing other people how to navigate this.

Yeah, I've taken a lot of my experiences and I used them first, actually, to develop a curriculum. My book was based on a UC San Diego graduate extension course I teach on supporting children and teens with learning and behavioral differences. And many of those strategies are things that I found worked well for me.

Yeah.

Not just things that I learned in graduate schools of education. at Harvard, at UCLA, and other places I received continuing education. But things that I discovered that I needed, and the type of help I needed to learn and to develop skills and to manage the demands of school, are the things that I've included in my, my book. And so that parents have easy access to lots of different strategies.

Yeah.

And also I offer a perspective about learning and development that focuses on the quality of parent-child relationships as hands down the single most important ingredient to success in life. Children who have healthy, positive relationships with their parents invariably do well in life despite having any of the common or less common learning and behavioural differences that we're all aware of.

That's an interesting point because I You know, you have the children and the parents and then there becomes a fight almost with the school as the parent supports the child. Have you noticed that?

Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of schools do not understand the critical— do not understand learning as the outcome of social interaction. And this is a big problem. The human brain is a social organ. What do I mean by that? Well, as it turns out, the human brain only develops fully and completely and well in the context of relationships with adults and other adults, parents and teachers. And the brain, the human brain, is designed to function optimally and to learn and develop skills in the context of relationships. And when learning is mediated by a more skilled adult, not only does it occur better and more quickly, um, it's actually the most natural way for learning to occur. And for individuals who have slowly emerging written language skills, it's essential that learning is highly mediated by an adult who can manage the complex demands of written language, because while a child is learning to read, they cannot read to learn.

Yes.

And so until an individual is a skilled reader, um, you cannot use reading as an efficient means of acquiring information. In the same vein, while an individual is learning to write, you cannot write to learn. What do I mean by that? Well, all of us as adults have sat down to dash off a very quick 30-second email, and 30 minutes later we're developing a much more complex, much more involved email.

What are we doing?

What we're doing is we're using writing as a thinking tool, as a tool to develop ideas and express ideas and explore ideas, and we can because we're skilled writers.

Yeah.

But a child who is not a skilled writer cannot write that way.

Yeah.

Yet we're often told that if a child has a writing assignment, they have to do it on their own. Well, that's nonsense, because if that child is not a skilled writer, they're going to sit down and have an acute panic attack and be left alone with really complex and painful feelings about being unable to do something they're expected to do. And they, they will learn one thing very well, that is—

To not do it.

They're not good at learning.

Yes.

And they'll learn something else very well. That when they're struggling, all the grown-ups who are important to them walked away and left them to struggle and to have a very difficult, painful experience. And that is probably one of the leading reasons why individuals with learning and behavioral differences have a lifelong challenge feeling competent.

Interesting.

That they weren't given the help they needed when they needed it. You know, everyone goes It goes on and on about making students independent. Well, I'm all for independence, but I can guarantee you one thing: if you want to make a student dependent on everyone for the rest of their lives, do this: withhold the support they need when they need it. I guarantee you, you will create a person who is going to be dependent for the rest of their lives.

Right.

So what should we do instead? What we should do is identify when a student is struggling, identify what it is we need to do to help that child and provide that child with that help. And we do know this about school, whether a child has dyslexia or ADHD or both, which is very common, the demands of school, whether it's the written language demands or just the executive demands— being on time, being organized, managing time well, planning, those critical executive functioning skills— when the demands of school, whether it's written language skills or executive skills, when they exceed the capacity of the student, we need to step up as the adults, as the teachers, as the parents, as the school administrators, as the clinicians, and do something about that, not allow that child to languish. Those are the children who do not prevail, uh, end up not feeling good about themselves, end up following paths that people follow when they have low self-esteem, when they have felt abandoned by people around them. And that's why I always say this: the difference between a helicopter parent and a helpful parent is this: a helicopter parent provides help that a child does not need. A helpful parent provides the help that a child does need. And children with language-based learning disabilities need a lot of help. So let's give those kids a lot of help and let's stop shaming parents for giving help and stop shaming children for needing help. And let's understand learning as the outcome of social interaction. And let's understand that until children are provided with the support they need when the demands of the environment exceed what the child is capable of, let's provide those kids with extra levels of support so they can prevail. They can learn, acquire skills, and be successful in life. And so let's move on.

I think that's a problem in schools everywhere where the child is perceived as bright but just not trying.

They're perceived as lazy.

Right. So that the, you know, the adults around them can tell that they're bright kids, And so when it comes to something like writing or taking notes or reading or whatever, they say, well, they could do it if they want to, they just choose not to do it. And so what advice would you give to a parent who's having that problem with the school, where they recognize that the child's having a learning difference and the school is saying, no, no, they're just not trying hard enough?

When a child can do something, they do it. Watch a child trying to learn to walk.

Yes.

They go to all ends to learn to walk because they want to walk and they learn to walk. Children trying to speak, making sounds, trying to communicate, mimicking the adults around them. Children love achieving mastery. Children love being good at doing things. And if there's a child who is not being— is not good at something at school, there's a reason why. And to simply shame, shame the child, say you're not trying, is a completely insensitive and also an inaccurate characterization of, of the child. So let's keep in mind that children like to be good at things. They like to be able to do what they can. on their own. And yes, there are lots of kids who are very, very bright but have very, very slowly emerging written language skills, reading skills, writing skills, and executive functioning skills. And until those skills are strong, it's hard to do things on your own.

Yeah.

And that we need to be willing to understand when a child is struggling at school, we need to think about What we change in their environment to make them successful, not how we try to change something inside their head, which you can't really do very effectively. Only time will change the things inside the head, and we need to be able to provide the help that's needed when it's needed for as long as it's needed until those kids acquire those skills. And it will happen. I'm a very skilled competent reader, I'm a very skilled and competent writer, I manage my life extremely well, but those are all capacities that I developed much later in life, even though I was given all the same opportunities as my siblings and my peers who acquired those skills quickly and easily.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you've said a lot there and my mind was blown with the number of things you said, but you know, my quote, the quote on my email is that learning and learning problems dwell in activities and cultural practices, and not in the heads of individuals, which is Curt Dudley Marling. I've got a question here from Chris, and it says, excellent point. I'm not sure which point that was.

All of them.

Yeah. What would you say is the most important step for schools to take to accommodate students that are struggling?

So one thing we know very well, that children who struggle need a lot of individual support. And there's some very good science on the benefits of one-on-one instruction. So we need to find ways to provide children, teens, and even young adults who are struggling, whether it's in grade school or high school or college or even in graduate school— I work with some enormously intelligent graduate students now who still actually have some slowly emerging writing skills—

Yeah.

And need a lot of individual help. So writing support in graduate school is a great example because oftentimes if you show up at graduate school and you say, oh, I'm not an especially good writer, they'll say, oh, well, we teach this— there's this writer— writing seminar. And you go and you show up and there's 40 students and one instructor, and you're supposed to learn to write by being in this seminar.

Yeah.

And you might come away with a few points here and there, but what you really need as an individual. We know one-on-one support is hands down the single best way to address the learning needs and help individuals manage the demands that exceed their, their capacities. So let's, let's do that. Um, let's make some changes on the expectation when a child is, is expected to be good at something. We noticed this a lot with written language skills. I see this all the time. Kids struggle and struggle and struggle with written language, and something happens around 5th or 6th grade where suddenly they are better able to learn to read and write, spell, and so forth. There's a strong developmental component here. It's just not— it's not only the type or amount of remediation. We need to think about the developmental timing. timeline as an important variable in how and when a child learns. Math is another great example, and I think I can use myself as an example. I'm actually quite good at math now. I was not good at math at all, even through high school.

Yeah.

I began to get good at math in graduate school, and I can tell you, because I was both a teacher and a learner throughout those years, that I had not really developed the— whatever it is— the neural structure in the brain or whatever it is to be good at math until later in life.

Interesting.

By the time I was taking my, uh, math competency, um, exam, it was the Doppel Mathematical Reasoning Exam, which I scored very high in, um, but I would not have scored high on that exam had I taken it in high school or, you know, in college. It's actually only given— that particular exam is only given to individuals applying to graduate school. So that exam might not be the best example, but what I'm trying to explain is that it's not just, um, how and how much, uh, intervention is provided. We need to be willing to accept different developmental timetables.

Yes, and schools have one trajectory and only one.

Only one.

Yes, that's right. You brought up a point to me, you know, that you said you had a really good home background and that really supported you all the way through. And that brings into play all other factors that are going on that limit students' growth. You know, when you get culture and you get family background and whatever, that changes the dynamic. Could you speak on that?

Sure. That there are an enormous set of challenges that exist in the world for kids. That it is not just the challenges they experience experience in home. We know from various assessments that children who are exposed to violence in their communities, violence or abuse in their own homes, drug and alcohol addiction or exposure to individuals with drug and alcohol addiction, coming from households where parents are struggling in other ways with issues concerning the law or lack of formal education. All of these are very significant threats to children, teens, and young adults. That there are an enormous number of environmental variables that can really hinder a person's opportunity to grow and develop. And when there are things in the environment that are lacking, as a society we need to have the sense of responsibility to find ways to provide meaningful substitutes to these children, to find other mentors, other adult mentors, to find other opportunities for these children and teens to get positive, healthy support and mentoring from other adults. And the type of social and emotional coaching that people who are fortunate to come from healthy homes— and I consider myself to be one of those lucky people— that they're the type of modeling that I experienced allowed me to develop critical social skills to navigate the world. Yeah, even as a teenager when I did not have well-developed academic skills.

Yeah, yeah. And you said you're a trauma expert. What comments and what thoughts have you got on coping with trauma, particularly as an adult, with helping younger ones go through it?

You know, there's a saying in trauma treatment. For adults, trauma treatment is time, talk, and tears. But for children, it's not language. It's attunement. It's empathy. It's engagement. And it's being careful to not press too hard for intellectual processing of trauma with children. That what we want to do when we're helping treat children with trauma is to engage them Activities they like. If they happen to be verbal, then that's great. But a lot of children with trauma need to engage in positive nonverbal activities with adults— board games, building things, doing arts and crafts together, taking walks, listening to music, playing music— and all the things that, that we can do with a child that help them feel connected. and help them feel that the adult who's with them is attuned and empathic and caring, all of which can be done without language. Because issues of trauma transcend language, especially for children, and that we want to find ways to engage children, teens, even young adults in nonverbal types of communication and activities and do it in a way That is done with empathy and a sense of relatedness and connection. And these are some of the things that we, we know work extremely well in terms of treating trauma with children.

Absolutely.

And even if the trauma comes from something as seemingly as benign as having a learning difference or a learning disability like dyslexia or ADHD. Of course, we know many children have trauma as a result of experiencing very bad things in their environment.

Yeah.

And it is tragic and painful to consider. All one needs to do is turn on the news and observe the horrors that children and everybody in the Ukraine are experiencing now. And we're going to have an entire nation of traumatized children and people. And as a, as a world, we need to come together and think about other types of things that we're going to need to help them with. Not, not just the weaponry needed to defend themselves, but the understanding of meaningful types of trauma treatment that the entire country is going to need in the coming weeks and months and years ahead.

And I really wish that people would start to understand the full impact that some of these kids with learning differences, you know, their, their educational experience is sometimes extremely traumatic. And I was just working with a client who has been through a lot, and I think I mentioned this on the last show. And I was talking to this person again, and this person had gone through a terrible childhood, multiple issues. And 2 times he broke down in tears and said if he could ask God to take away any of the situations he'd been in, he said, hands down, I would have asked him to take dyslexia away from me, because it was that hard for him to navigate in the education system. And I don't want that to be minimized, that we have to do better. We have to make connections.

Yep.

With these children, even when it looks like they're struggling and maybe their behaviors are getting in the way, that's critical. To being able to, to get them through this system without being damaged.

Absolutely. Nothing is more glaring than a disability in the area of reading, writing, and spelling when you're in school. And nothing is more humiliating to be the one who's thought to be the dumbest, right? Because you can't do the one thing everyone is expected to do. And then that's a traumatizing experience. And, and there's lots of bad news. The good news is there's a lot we can do.

Yes.

And one of the things we need to do is provide children with a very high level of proactive and explicit support with regard to managing the demands of school.

Yeah.

Hold the line one second. I will close my door.

That's okay.

I wish we could get the learning differences even into the ACE score. I'm so glad you brought that up. I don't know why it's not in there.

So Lisa, the ACEs, 10-question ACEs, is one of the most critical surveys we can use with children. Would you like to explain ACEs to our group today?

Well, basically, the more adverse childhood events that a person goes through, they're really at risk adverse other things going on. And so I guess that as the score gets higher, it's presumed that they've been through a lot of trauma, and I don't see educational experience on that, and I think that that's a mistake.

I do too. Another one that's also not on there is issues concerning race.

Yes.

That individuals who stand out in terms of their race relative to their environment is also a factor.

Mm-hmm.

So the ACEs currently are 10 realms that are evaluated by a clinician that can be administered very quickly. There are questions like, did the child have exposure to violence in their home? Did they witness it? Another one, did they experience physical abuse or Or sexual abuse or verbal abuse? Um, did their home have individuals with drug and alcohol issues? Uh, was there a crime? Was there a parent incarcerated for crime? Um, these are— I just rattled off maybe 5 or 6 of the 10 or so areas, and the scoring just, uh, affirmatively to one—

Yes.

Of those 10 questions is a known risk factor Not only for all kinds of social and emotional issues, but medical conditions.

Right.

The likelihood that an individual will develop cancer in their lifetime can be predicted by scores on the ACEs, which would be a wonderful show in and of itself. If there's ever a time, I would love to explore the ACEs with groups, just go through the various items. describe the many unfortunate side effects, or rather issues that correlate strongly with a score of even 1 on the ACEs. And I think there are currently about 10 questions. And yes, having a learning disability is, as far as I know, is currently not one of the issues measured on the ACEs.

Well, every several years we redo the DSM, so why can't we redo the ACE score?

Very good question. I agree. Yeah, we should take that and consider that. I have poked around a little bit, and yes, there are— there is evidence and documented evidence that individuals who've had a, you know, documented learning or behavioral difference do exhibit higher levels of anxiety and Depression and other not good characteristics.

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah.

Our time is nearly up. Have you got anything else you'd like to conclude with?

Yes, that if you're a parent and you have a child who's struggling at home, do not be shy about providing very high levels of ongoing proactive help. Provide organizational help, provide planning help, provide support your child with their school assignments. If your child is learning to read, then read the assignments to your child and check for understanding. If your child is learning to write, engage in a highly collaborative, interactive process when you have to complete a writing assignment. Keep all of your notes, document what you do, and submit the whole portfolio of work to the teacher so they can understand how your child got from the writing prompt that they were asked to write on to the completed writing assignment. So keep the notes that you take or generate while working with your child. Um, these are things that work well. When a child with a learning disability has to take a quiz or an exam, I highly recommend dynamic assessment. That is, uh, the child takes a test one-on-one with a proctor. It could be a teacher or tutor or parent, and the student has a copy of the test, but the proctor has a copy of the test too, and the proctor writes down all the prompts and clarification and support that was needed for the child to answer all of the questions correctly. And we know from looking at the proctor's version of the test how much help was actually needed, and it gives us a better understanding of what the child knew and did not know upon taking the test so that we can provide ongoing instruction such that the child eventually takes the test independently with no help at all. And so it's called dynamic assessment. It should be written into every single IEP, and I highly encourage parents to advocate for it when their child has tests and quizzes at school.

That's fantastic. That is really good. And where can listeners find you?

I'm really easy to reach, uh, danielfranklinphd.com. It's all one, danielfranklinphd.com. You can also just Google Daniel Franklin PhD, and I come up very high on a search, not because I'm famous, but because my IT guy did a great job with search optimization. So yeah, danielfranklinphd.com is the best way to reach me. I welcome questions. I reply to all emails. I love hearing from people, from parents, from students. From teachers, clinicians, and other individuals who have this blessed opportunity to do the work that we do supporting children, teens, and young adults with a wide range of learning and behavioral differences.

That's fantastic.

That is fantastic. Lisa, where can people find you?

Facebook mostly, Monday Afternoons with Lois, and I'm on LinkedIn but not usually actively on there. And one of these days I'll get on Instagram, but not so far.

Well, Lisa, I hope you'll join me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn.

Okay.

And I encourage you to— actually, I'll look you up.

Yeah, do that. Do that.

I'll send a connection into you too, Lois.

Yes, I haven't seen you at all. We mustn't be connected there.

I bet we are. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I have almost 19,000 followers on LinkedIn. And I spend about 15 to 20 minutes every single day.

Oh right. I've— since I've had my accident, my social media input has plummeted.

I'm sure. Well, hopefully you'll recover soon and get back up posting on Instagram and your LinkedIn posts and everything else.

What I took away today was the thing that I learned about my son. From you, and it's learning you could learn.

Yeah.

The big deal.

Very important.

Learning you could learn. Well, I've got to thank my son Isaac and his buddy Chris for the support, because without their technical expertise, this show would not go on. And hit the like and subscribe button and the bell for notifications and share the channel with friends and family so we can grow the channel. Find me Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and my website, loislatchford.com. Next week's guest is Mike Stickler from Leadership Books, bestselling author and sought-after conference speaker. So just thank you for joining us today. Absolutely loved what you spoke about and get to know more about trauma-informed care and know that we can prevent it. But we can also deal with it. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Dr. Dan. It was a pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you, Lisa.