ACEs

The discussion covers the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on child development, specifically in the context of CASA training. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing trauma behaviors versus misbehaviors in children, understanding their developmental stage and trauma triggers, and advocating appropriately. The training highlights how experiences like abuse and neglect can lead to children parentifying their siblings, impacting their creative and emotional development. It stresses the need to view children's behaviors through a trauma-informed lens to provide effective support. The first point we'd like to start off by is making the connection between ACEs in CLAAS and CASA and how early experiences shape development. ACEs are things such as abuse, neglect, household instability that disrupt brain development, stress regulation, attachment, and social learning skills. In CASA, we emphasize recognizing trauma behaviors versus misbehaviors. For example, when you see a child showing signs of possibly going AWOL, somebody thinks this is business special or that the child wants attention. But after being trained in CASA, we actually learned that this often happens due to things going on in the home that people cannot see within quick visits. Yeah, that is what really stood out to me too during our CASA training. It was like trauma versus misbehaviors. It put ACEs in real life. It's not just a checklist of negative experiences. It's the emotional and behavioral impact of those experiences leave behind. And once you understand that, you don't see kids the same way. Right, I agree. The other thing we learned is how CASA encourages understanding a child's developmental stage and trauma triggers to advocate appropriately. An example we saw was that we learned that a child not accepting a gift given by the foster parent at first may be seen as unappreciative. But really, this is a trigger to the child due to previous trauma within their biological family. To add on to that, especially when kids have brothers and sisters, a lot of times they feel like they have to advocate not for them to develop for their brothers and sisters. And when these brother and sister families end up getting broken up with, they end up getting broken up with for personal development and then get unified. For example, we watched a video where a little girl, she ends up having a troubled childhood experience where her father is a raging alcoholic or on certain substances and the mom is getting abused and also looking like she's on substances. And this little girl has to basically parent her brother while also not being able to be a kid. And when she gets taken away from her brother and the family in general, she ends up being very locked off and closed off. And until she gets more comfortable, she starts opening more up to the thoughts of her parents. And it shows her creativity and her determination as a child. I think that also really stood out to me because in that video we all had the mentality and brain thought of when she was calling and the child came out to see, oh, she's going to get rid of me like everyone else did. And then it was finally the happy moment at the end of the video where the brother comes into the home and we realized, oh wait, she wasn't calling to get rid of the child. She was calling to get the brother because the foster mother really understood how much she missed her brother and how that would help her progress in her mental state. So I think that was a really good ending to see with all the hard times that we learned in CASA. I agree. And throughout that, it highlighted how parentifying children adds to their easing. When you parentify a child to take care of their younger sibling, they're no longer allowed to be a child. So it takes away that creativity and that spark that they naturally have.