SESSION TWO LOGISTICS Session Two: Understanding Behavior Duration: 2 - - PDF document

CYFD’s Mandated Foster Parent Training: Promoting Successful Placements and Child-Well Being

SESSION TWO LOGISTICS

Session Two: Understanding Behavior Duration: 2 hours Session Goals: This session builds on earlier content, emphasizing that many challenging

behaviors displayed by children and teens make sense when you look at their life experiences. Caregivers are encouraged to explore the lens children and adolescents may be using to understand themselves, their relationships and their world.

Materials Needed: 

Whiteboard or flip chart and markers

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PowerPoint slides

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Pens and paper

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Multicolored markers on each table

Session Summary: 

There are two primary functions of behavior:

• Safety. This includes actions designed to keep the child or

teen safe in the face

• f perceived danger.
• Getting needs met. This includes actions designed to help a child or teen meet

physical, emotional or relational needs in the face of perceived deprivation, rejection or abandonment.

Teach  ARC, or Attachment, Regulation and Competency, is a framework for working with children and teens who have experienced trauma. ARC builds on the resilience of children, teens and families.

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Ask

 Read the question on the slide aloud. Ask participants to respond.

Do

 Write responses on the whiteboard or flip chart. Make sure to keep the list of behaviors for future use. Notice any similarities in what various group members are naming; pick a few common behaviors and ask, “How many of you have seen these same behaviors?” Refer back to these behaviors throughout today’s session, connecting them to content as possible.

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Teach

 Children and teens who have experienced trauma have many challenging behaviors that are confusing, hard to manage and may lead to strong emotional reactions in caregivers.  When we do not understand where this behavior comes from, it is easier to get caught up in our own emotional responses.  In today’s group, we will be focusing on understanding what might be underneath some of the more confusing or challenging behaviors you observe. In

• ur next session, we’ll talk more about how to understand and support your own

reactions to such behavior.

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Ask

 Read the first question and ask participants their thoughts. If no one answers, throw out some possible prompts. You might mention things like cooking a favorite food, typing, driving, changing a diaper.  Why do these things feel so easy? Emphasize answers such as “Because I’ve done them a million times.”

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Teach

 Many years ago, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow proposed that certain needs drive behavior. According to his theory, people are driven to get their needs met in a hierarchy — and that we must have our basic, or lower level, needs met first, before we think about higher-level needs. In that sense, lower-level needs always win. Meeting basic survival needs, for example, will always trump our need for things like achievement.  For instance, if a person is cold, hungry and has inadequate shelter (physiological needs), those needs will drive behavior more strongly than the need for connection or approval (love and belonging needs). Similarly, if a person believes that he or she is in danger, the need for safety will drive behavior more strongly than the need for respect from others (esteem needs).  What we consider to be core values may follow a similar hierarchy. We may value, for instance, community, relationships and respect. But those values are likely to fall by the wayside when a person feels his or her survival is endangered.  This may be one reason why children or teens in your care may seem in some moments to share your values, but in others to lose sight of them. This is because the values and needs that drive our behaviors may vary depending on our emotional state and situation at the moment.  Keep in mind that survival will always trump other values and needs.

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Teach

 Because behavior is designed to meet a need, the behaviors you observe will tell you something about the needs and drives a child or teen is experiencing most prominently in a given moment.  For instance, if you see aggression or tantrums, it may suggest that there is an underlying survival need driving behavior. It could be that the child’s or teen’s brain is responding to the perception of danger (remember, the child’s or teen’s lens will drive perception).  Behavior and particularly sudden changes in behavior are good clues that a child

• r teen may be shifting into danger mode.

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Teach

 Olivia, like all kids who have been affected by trauma, has learned behaviors based on repeated experiences of danger. These behaviors may appear to make less sense now that she is out of the situation. However, originally, they were ways to take care of herself.  Read the paragraph out loud to the group.

Ask

 Note: Write answers on the flip chart or whiteboard.  What was the situation that Olivia was repeatedly exposed to?  What behaviors is Olivia showing that she has learned?  Why do you think these make sense?  What other behaviors might she have learned in this environment?  Have any of you had children in your homes that displayed similar behaviors?

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Ask

 Note: Add to the answers on the flip chart or whiteboard.  In this example, what was the situation that Olivia was repeatedly exposed to?  What behaviors is Olivia showing that she has learned?  Why do you think these make sense?  What other behaviors might she have learned in this environment?  Have any of you had children in your homes who displayed similar behaviors?

Teach

 Notice how, in this instance, Olivia’s learned behavior is very different from the previous example.  Compare the list generated here to the list the participants generated at the start

• f the group. Note any similarities between the two lists.

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Teach

 To understand trauma-related behavior, it is important to understand three factors that we will discuss in detail today:  The lens the child or teen is using to understand the world.  The need the child or teen is trying to meet with his or her behavior.  The child’s or teen’s ability to recover.

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Teach

 Most of the children and teens who come into your home will have a number of different challenging behaviors. Some of these behaviors you may see over and

• ver and others may be unexpected or unpredictable.

 When there are many challenging behaviors or interactions, you can get caught up in a cycle of reacting — responding quickly to manage or stop behavior without really thinking about what is going on.  This quick reaction can leave you feeling burned out, helpless and ineffective, particularly when your actions don’t have the desired effect.  A starting point in dealing with hard behavior is to try to get in front of the behavior— to become purposeful and active in planning a response, even knowing you are not going to get it perfect on the first try.  To be proactive, you need to: – pick a limited number of behaviors to focus on; and – think about what you want to see less of — but also what you want to see more of

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Teach

 Identify the Child’s or Teen’s Patterns  Use your detective skills: Read the clues that tell you about your child’s or teen’s needs, feelings and experiences  Remember the function of children’s and teens’ trauma-driven behavior:

• Survival (fight, flight, freeze, submit)
• Need fulfillment (emotional, relational and physiological needs)

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Teach

 Hoarding

• Is it about fulfilling a need? Does she fear not having enough to eat? Is it a

survival strategy?  Bedtime separation anxiety

• Does she need relational reassurance? Is she afraid of the dark or of being

alone — or does she worry her foster parents won’t be there when she wakes up? Does she have difficulty with transitions?  Throwing objects

• Is this a survival response? An attempt to get attention or help, or create

space for herself?

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Teach

 The needs that drive the behavior of children and teens in foster care are often intense, laid down by years of violence, neglect and loss.  These are going to be the most difficult behaviors to change, since they are focused on survival, even when there is no objective need for this behavior anymore.  As caregivers, we often try to fight those behaviors. We withdraw attention from the attention-seeking child or teen, for example, or exert power over a child or teen who is acting aggressively.  The problem is that our reactions may actually escalate these behaviors, since they reinforce the fear that drives the behaviors in the first place. For instance, withdrawing attention from the attention-seeking child or teen may reinforce that no one cares about him or her or will meet his or her needs. This may lead the child or teen to work harder to elicit a response. Exerting power over a child

• r teen who is acting aggressively may reinforce that the world is unsafe and

lead to more powerful maneuvers to keep him- or herself safe.  One of our strategies should always be to try to identify and meet the child’s or teen’s need, even when it feels counterintuitive.

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Discuss

 Read or ask a volunteer to read the slides about Olivia.  Do any of you have ideas how the responses of Olivia’s foster parents might be meeting her needs?  Put yourself in the shoes of Olivia’s foster parents. What might feel hard about meeting Olivia’s needs in this way? What do you think Olivia’s foster parents might struggle with? Link this back to the importance of paying attention to our

• wn emotional responses.

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Teach

 It is not always easy to identify what needs are driving child or teen behaviors. However, dysregulation (feelings, body states or behaviors that seem disorganized

• r out of control) often acts as a clue that a child or teen has an unmet need; it

can be the first sign of challenging behavior to come.  You can work to get better at reading a particular child’s or teen’s dysregulation

• clues. For instance, one child might show distress by shouting or screaming,

another by getting silly and a third by withdrawing.  Once you learn a child’s or teen’s dysregulation clues, find ways to support regulation using the skills taught in our last session. Often, if you can respond quickly enough and support regulation (both the child’s or teen’s and your own), you can cut behaviors off before they start.

Ask

 Do you feel you are sometimes able to cut behaviors off before they start with your child or teen by supporting regulation?  Can anyone give an example of a time you were successful in shifting behaviors?

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Do

 [Review slide, noting that everyone in this room may not have experienced a “benign setting”, benign being that you experienced caregivers who met your needs, both emotionally and physically]  These beliefs about the world is what we call the Internal Working Model.

Do

 [Review concepts, provide examples as needed. It can be helpful to pick a case to use as an example]  Make sure to note that by identifying the disconfirming stance it will help you identify individualized interventions.

Do

 So putting this all together, our role is [read slide]

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Teach

 A trigger is a signal that there is something dangerous in the environment right now, based on an individual’s past experience with danger. It may or may not:

• Mean there is actual danger present
• Be associated with specific memories of an event Shifts us into danger

(self-protection) mode

• Mobilizes us and puts us on the express road to action

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Teach

 Triggers are signals, or clues about our world, that have been learned as a result

• f previous experiences of danger.

 These signals or clues help us mobilize rapidly when there is danger. This rapid mobilization is a way our brain has learned to keep us safe.  The more frequently someone has experienced danger, the more rapidly these clues will lead to a survival response.  Once our brain has learned to read and react to these signals, we may mobilize even in the absence of actual danger.

Teach

 As we start to move into discussing behavioral interventions and strategies, first, lets just reflect on how hard it is to change a behavior! Would anyone like to share a behavior they have attempted to change? How difficult has it been to change? (perhaps provide an example of your own and the struggle to change… trying to not eat sugar, trying to not have road rage…. )

Teach

 Read slide first.  After point 3… So when a child displays a behavior we need to be curious and ask, “what function does this behavior serve?”  Making a hypothesis about the purpose of the behavior can help inform the interventions that will address the behavior and support the child.

Teach

 Although not all problematic behaviors are trauma related, we want to keep in mind that all behavior is communicating something and our role is to figure out what that something is to assist in helping the child meet their needs in appropriate and adaptive ways.  We do want to keep in mind though, that children who have experienced trauma may develop behaviors that are functional in the trauma setting, but considered problematic when displayed in their new setting.  Children may perceive triggers within the new setting and respond with behaviors that were useful (safety, access to food, attention…etc..) during traumatic events.  For example, a child that may have experienced, or is experiencing food scarcity, they may steal. In the trauma setting, this is functional. You need to eat, so you do what you need to to survive. In the new setting however, stealing is a problematic behavior.

Teach

 This flow chart provides an overview of the functions of behavior. If we assume all behavior is meeting a need, what is the need?  Provide an example walkthrough on the flow chart.

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Teach

 Most behavior serves some function. Think of your own behaviors and why you may engage in them. For instance, you may pace when you are worried to manage your energy, you might carefully look around for someone you know or something familiar when you enter a new situation or you might become quiet and pull back when someone hurts your feelings.  We all have behaviors that arise to protect us and get our needs met. When these behaviors come from repeated experiences of danger, or significant neglect, they may be very rigid or seem undesirable. But just like our own behaviors, they were learned to serve a function.  Because of their histories of violence, abuse, loss, neglect and separation, the two major functions of behavior we often see in children in care are behaviors designed to keep them safe and behaviors designed to help them get their needs met.

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Teach

 As we just discussed, one primary function of trauma-related behavior is to keep a child safe.  Many different things may feel dangerous to a child or teen. However, once someone feels as if he or she is in danger, there are only a few behavioral options available.  The actual behavioral choices a child or teen makes may vary. Generally speaking, they fall into four primary survival responses:

• Fight: An aggressive response to attack or ward off the danger.
• Flight: A withdrawal response to escape the danger.
• Freeze: A high-energy, becoming still response, which is an attempt to

remain unseen or unnoticed (used when neither fight nor flight is available).

• Submit or comply: An attempt to accommodate or placate the perceived

source of danger.

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Teach/Ask

 Think about the animal pictures shown a moment ago. How much energy might these animals need to survive the various situations in which they find themselves? Note: You may want to switch back to previous slides to show visuals.  When our brain perceives danger, energy is released into the body.  The more chronic the danger response has been, the higher the likelihood that the starting baseline energy level for a child or teen will be high, so that the child’s or teen’s body is essentially in a chronic state of readiness.  Look at our list of behavior examples. How many of them seem to require high levels of energy? Notice ways in which the need for energy may be apparent and

• ther times when it may be less so.

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Discuss

 Repeated danger responses lead children and teens to experience chronic hyper arousal, or high levels of energy in their bodies.  Using the depicted car as an example, discuss the chronic trauma response as involving:

• chronic revving of the motor, or high baseline levels of energy
• inability to “brake,” or difficulty slowing down or stopping the energy
• difficulty “managing the pedals,” or rapid shifts in energy level that seem

disconnected from the situation the child or teen is in.

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Teach

 Some children and teens experience chronic hyper arousal. This may become so

• verwhelming that over time, they learn to shut it off, or numb their feelings and

emotions.  These children and teens may seem disconnected or shut down, or may appear to be doing fine, but suddenly explode when the disconnection becomes too challenging for them.

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Teach

 Children and teens need to make sure they are safe. They also need to make sure their basic and developmental needs are met. Often, these children’s needs have not been met by the adults in their lives. They may have experienced chronic neglect or physical, relational or emotional losses — or some combination.  As a result, children and teens may adapt their behavior in service of getting their needs met. Just like survival-oriented behaviors, these needs-focused behaviors can be very difficult to change and may persist even when a child or teen is in a situation where needs are being met now.

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Ask

 Have you heard any of the following words used about a child or teen in your home?

Teach

 Even though these behaviors may be undesirable (in the same way that fighting or running away are not always desirable), it is important that we understand why these behaviors are occurring.  If you have used words like this, or have heard them used to describe a child or teen you know, can you think about the behavior from the child’s or teen’s perspective? Why do you think the child or teen engaged in these behaviors?  Reframing the function of these behaviors can help us to be more empathic to them, even when they feel challenging.

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45 Teach  For most of us, intense feelings are followed by attempts to manage those

• feelings. We try to use our internal resources (our coping strategies) or our

external resources (such as our support system). This requires us to recognize that we are upset, believe we can manage our experience, have resources and be motivated to use them. Children and teens who have been affected by trauma often lack both internal resources, such as being able to manage hard feelings, and external resources, such as feeling they can trust other people.  As a result, many children or teens who have experienced chronic trauma may get stuck in that high-intensity feeling. Their ability to recover is impaired. It is hard for them to move on.

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Ask

 To respond successfully and effectively to trauma-related behaviors you have to first understand where these behaviors are coming from. This includes being curious about:  The trigger: What led to the behavior?  The need: What is the function of the child’s or teen’s current behavior?  Your immediate response: How can you ensure safety in this situation?  Your regulation strategy: How can you help a child or teen return to a more regulated state?  In future sessions, we will talk about many tools and skills you can use to support yourself when responding to trauma-related behaviors, as well as ways to respond to and support the children and teens in your home.

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Teach/Ask

 A time this week when someone made you angry What set you off? What was the situation?  Lens: What meaning did you make of the situation? Do you think the other person saw it the same way?  Function: What did you do? Why? What were you trying to accomplish? Resources: How did you get yourself back on track? What resources (internal or external) did you use?

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