Teacher Training Seminar, Baghdad

This is an outline of a teacher enrichment seminar I wrote and presented in Baghdad, Iraq in September 2003. These notes were deliberately written at about a 6th grade reading level, to assure accurate translation, as well as simplification of a very challenging topic—trauma and the affects war has on the most vulnerable ones of society, the children.


Children, Trauma and a Loving Teacher: Helping Children Who Have Experienced Traumatic Life Events

I. Introduction

a. Example of a traumatic life event

A boy named Peter was eight years old when his mother was tragically killed in a car accident. The family was devastated, as any family would be, particularly Peter’s father and the three children. Many people gave their love and comfort during the days surrounding the funeral and after; however, it simply wasn’t enough. The children never learned how to properly cope with the loss of their mother.

Life continued as usual, and all three children quietly carried the pain, suffering and emptiness of the loss of their mother in their hearts. It was a traumatic experience that none of them fully understood until, as adults, they each individually visited a counselor who helped them talk about the loss of their mother and explore how it had negatively affected their lives and life choices.

Peter realized during his counseling sessions that as a young boy he had learned how to cope with the death of his mother by ignoring his emotions. The counselor gave him an illustration of a “gunny sack” (a large burlap bag used to carry potatoes or onions). She said that people learn to hide, cover up or push away their emotions (feelings) because they do not know how to handle them. Many people carry around with them a gunny sack filled with emotions they have never learned to overcome.

The counselor helped Peter realize that when his mother died, he learned that the only way to give himself temporary freedom from the pain was to push it away deep into the hidden places of his heart, such as pushing it away deep into the bottom of a dark gunny sack. As he eventually convinced his heart and mind that everything was OK, he found relief, but only temporarily. As other difficult life events completely unrelated to his mother’s death occurred he pushed them away and ignored them. With these too, he learned to put them away into the hidden places of his heart where no one, not even himself had access. He learned, instead, to be a comedian and to convince the world that he was happy and doing well. This, however, was not true. Deep inside his heart, he felt depressed and thought of taking his life.

The counselor helped Peter talk about present problems. As they talked, each event was pulled from his gunny sack and examined. One event led to an earlier event in his life, which led to an earlier event, until he came to the bottom of his gunny sack. There he rediscovered the death of his mother. With great care, the counselor helped Peter talk about his mother. She helped him to understand that all of his present distress – his depression and suicidal thoughts – began when he learned to push away his feelings and ignore them.

Because Peter and his siblings did not as children learn how to properly cope with the death of their mother, they spent their adolescent and early adult years struggling through life. Fortunately, as adults they have all found freedom from their pain, first through the love of God which comforts them, and secondly, through acquiring skills to help them cope and properly handle difficult life situations.

It is very important for parents, teachers and adults who work with young children and adolescents to realize their significant role in helping children overcome traumatic life events. Children can and do experience trauma.

II. Personal Reflection Time

a. Take a few moments to think about your life experiences. Have you had a happy life? Have you experienced difficult things – the loss of a loved one, the loss of a home, the pain of war?

b. Next, think about your heart? Are you happy and at peace today? Do you have anxiety about the future? Do you have anxious thoughts about the recent events in your country? Do you feel angry? Do you feel discouraged or depressed?

c. As you think about these things, briefly write on a piece of paper one very difficult event from your life. When finished, carefully fold this piece of paper and place it inside your bag. Continue to do this with additional life events and feelings – past and present. You will have 10-15 minutes.

d. (Once the 10-15 minutes has finished) Now, having carefully and privately considered your life and looked into your hearts for a few moments, here are a few questions to discuss with your group:

i. Would you feel comfortable sharing the information you have written on the papers with another person? Is it acceptable in the Iraqi culture to discuss matters of the heart with others?

ii. If so, who would you feel comfortable sharing your troubles with? Would you share all the details, or would you only share a small portion of them? Would you talk about your troubles directly, giving specific details or would you talk about them indirectly?

iii. Would you feel safe sharing your feelings, especially the feeling of anger, with people in your neighborhood or school?

iv. What about fellow teachers? Would you ever consider speaking openly about personal matters of the heart? Why or why not? Do you feel you could trust other teachers? What characteristics would you look for in a fellow teacher to demonstrate trustworthiness?

v. A child comes to your classroom after months of being out of school because of the war. Do you know this child? Do you ask questions and learn about his experiences over the past number of months? Do you dare ask him/her to share with you sensitive issues, or do you protect yourself by only teaching the lessons? Is it your role as a teacher, a loving adult, to discuss personal matters with your students?

vi. Will the children in your classroom know people who will help them talk about the trauma they have faced? Will adults in their lives have the skills needed to help the children?

vii. When children in your classroom have behavior problems, will you consider that the problems could be related to trauma experienced over the last number of months due to the war? Will you correct the behavior problem, or will you search to learn the cause of the behavior problem?

e. The life events written about in your bag are for you. It would be unfair of me to ask you to share such personal information with strangers. The point of the exercise is to first challenge each of you to think about the condition of your heart, and specifically how the events of the past and present (war) are affecting you personal. Secondly, it is to encourage you to find someone you trust with whom you can talk. It is very important for you to come to a place of inner peace with the traumatic events in your personal life before you will be able to help the children in your classroom who are in need of adult comfort, guidance, support and love. The teacher creates the environment of the classroom and is the one through which children can be comforted and healed.


III. What is trauma?

a. When children are exposed to traumatic life events, their reactions to these events have the potential to interfere substantially with their day-to-day functioning. Their reactions can also cause them and their families significant distress.

b. According to the dictionary, trauma has several meanings and different levels of severity.

c. First, trauma is an emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person.

d. Second, it is an event or situation that causes great distress and disruption.

e. Third, it is a life event or situation that causes imbalance in a person’s life.


IV. How can trauma affect a person?

a. It can cause great pain and suffering that affects the body or the mind.

b. It can cause people to feel they are in a state of desperate need.

c. It can cause people to feel they are in a state of being in great trouble.

d. It can cause great unhappiness, especially when a person is living with sickness, poverty, or loss.

e. It can cause bodily and mental pain that is often too intense to be borne.


V. Stress is a by-product of trauma

a. Stress is created by life events that cause imbalance or abnormality in a child’s life. When children respond in unhealthy ways to stress, there is a strong indication they do not have the emotional or mental ability to properly cope with the situation.

b. Stress shows itself in children in complaints about stomach aches, nervousness, trouble sleeping, anger and infections.

c. Reactions to stress vary with the child’s stage of development, ability to cope, the length of time the stress continues, intensity of the stress, and the degree of support from family and friends.

d. The two most frequent indicators that children are stressed are:

i. Change in behaviors

ii. Regression of behaviors (doing things they would have done at an earlier stage of development but not at their present stage or age)

e. Children under stress change their behavior and react by doing things that are not in keeping with their usual behavior.


VI. Responses of children of various age groups to stress

a. Children are unique individuals and respond to stress in many different ways. They also learn to cope with stress in different ways. Some children manage stress through tears or tantrums or by retreating from unpleasant situations. Usually a child’s thinking is not fully developed enough to think of options or think about the results of possible actions.


b. Ages 1-3

i. May regress to infant behaviors

ii. May feel angry and not understand their feelings

iii. May fear being alone or without their parent

iv. May withdrawal from others

v. May bite

vi. May be sensitive to sudden or loud noises


c. Ages 4-5

i. May be irritable

ii. May have anxiety

iii. May cry uncontrollably

iv. May tremble with fright

v. May have eating or sleeping problems

vi. May become sad, angry or aggressive

vii. May have nightmares

viii. May be accident prone


d. Ages 6-12

i. May complain and whine

ii. May withdraw from others

iii. May feel unloved

iv. May be distrustful

v. May not do their school work

vi. May have difficulty naming their feelings

vii. May worry about the future

viii. May complain of head or stomach aches

ix. May have trouble sleeping

x. May have a loss of appetite

xi. May need to urinate frequently


e. Ages 13-18

i. May feel angry longer than younger children

ii. May feel cynical or critical about life

iii. May lack self-esteem (may think bad thoughts about themselves)

iv. May generally distrust everything (friends, parents, family, government)

v. May show extreme behaviors such as doing everything they are asked (expect perfection from themselves) to rebelling against authority and breaking all the rules

vi. May participate in high-risk behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, stealing, not going to school)

vii. May feel depressed and have suicidal thoughts


f. Children who live in supportive environments and develop a range of coping strategies become more resilient or able to return to their normal happy selves after a stressful experience or crisis. Many children, however, do not have a supportive environment and do not learn to cope with stress. Not having the skills needed to cope with stress has the potential to create even more stressful events in the future for the child, his family and ultimately the stability of a nation if enough children are left without help.



VII. Example of a distressed child and a loving teacher: “Lilies of the Valley”

When I was seven, my grandma died. I cried at her funeral because my older cousins were crying, not because I was grieving. I was too young to fully understand my loss at that time. But four years later, when I was eleven, one of my best friends died, and I could not stop grieving.

Linda was a beautiful girl with long, brown hair that curled softly on her shoulders. She had a warm, friendly smile for everyone and a heart full of kindness. We had slumber parties together, practiced cheerleading, went biking and met at the movies. We loved to sing and to dance. Pretending we were famous ballerinas, we would twirl and glide and leap through the air until we fell to the ground, laughing and exhausted.

When Linda’s appendix burst, no donor could be found in our small town to match her rare blood type. She died in an airplane on the way to a Chicago hospital.

I was overcome with an emptiness that was nearly unbearable. I couldn’t stop crying. Mom came to my room several times throughout the first night, but nothing she said could console me. The next few days were no better. I cried incessantly, still feeling that hollow loneliness.

On the day of the funeral, Mom took me to church to say a last good-bye to my friend. Linda looked as angelic in death as she was in life. Fragrant lilies of the valley, with tiny, delicate bells, surrounded her casket. They reminded me of a song that Linda and I sang whenever Mom took us to pick wildflowers in the wood:

White silent bells upon a slender stalk
Lilies of the valley deck my garden walk
Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ring
That will happen only when the angels sing.

The bells will never ring, I thought bitterly, because the angels won’t sing. Who could sing now? Not even angels.

We left before the service began. Mom was afraid I might cry uncontrollably. Perhaps she was right.

The next day at school, when the others went outside for recess, I sat at my desk staring numbly at the windows. I could hear the loud taunts and joking from the playground. How could the others even think of playing when Linda wasn’t there with them? How could they be laughing and having fun? How could life ever be the same? I would never, never smile again. That wouldn’t be fair to my friend.

I was alone in my own little world of anger, guilt and heartache when our teacher, Mrs. Zink, walked over to gaze out the window near me. She stood there for several minutes and then did the strangest thing. She plopped herself up onto the desktop across from mine, just like one of the kids!

“Linda was pretty great, wasn’t she?” she asked. “What did you like most about her?”

Mrs. Zink asked me question after question and gently guided the conversation to focus on my feelings. The more I talked, the better I felt. My teacher, in a patient, caring way, helped me understand that I shouldn’t feel guilty because I was alive and my friend was dead; that Linda would not want me to be sad or to stop playing and having fun. She assured me that my precious friend was in paradise.

In a moment of certainty I examined, “And the angels are singing to welcome her!” I pictured Linda in heaven – her head flung back with her long hair blowing in the breeze and her arms outstretched and swayed, dancing in a massive field filled with lilies of the valley. Then, for the first time in days, I smiled. And in my heart I knew the bells were ringing.

That day in our fifth-grade classroom, with my teacher casually perched on top of a small student desk, my grieving passed and healing began.”


VIII. How to create a safe and supportive environment for children

a. Spend time developing a trustful relationship with the child.

b. Demonstrate to the child that you support him through listening and being willing to help whenever possible.

c. Show caring and warmth.

d. Have high and clear expectations of the child without being overly strict

e. Provide ways for the child to positively contribute to the classroom (and his own family) in meaningful ways by including him in discussions and jobs.

f. Be sensitive to the beliefs and practices of the family

g. Build on the strengths of the family by creating a family environment in the classroom – an environment where children are completely accepted, loved and appreciated for their unique qualities and abilities.


IX. Things that help children feel supported and safe

a. A healthy relationship with at least one parent or close adult.

b. Well-developed social skills – has the ability to get along well with other children.

c. Well-developed problem-solving skills.

d. Ability to act independently

e. Has at least one coping strategy (see information below)

f. Has a positive self-esteem and knows how to take personal responsibilities for his behaviors.

g. Has the ability to focus his attention when learning or involved in a conversation.

h. Has special interests and hobbies, such as playing sports, a musical instrument, art, dance, etc.


X. How to help children develop strong coping strategies to manage their stress which comes as a result of traumatic experiences in life.

a. A key element to reducing stress is to create a low-stress environment. Such an environment is based on social support, having the ability to cope by thinking through situations, and being able to anticipate stress and learn new ways to avoid it.

b. Social support means having people to depend on during difficult times. Parents who listen, friends to talk to, hugs and help in thinking through solutions are ways children feel support.

c. As adults, we can make sure we don’t add to children’s stress by expecting them to act in adult ways. We can praise, be positive, seek positive solutions, help children name their feelings, teach fairness, help children learn to like themselves, be patient, teach honesty and give lots of love and encouragement, particularly during difficult times.

d. Notice them. Well-developed observation skills are essential. Observe children for increased quarrels with playmates, poor concentration, or bed-wetting.

e. Praise them. Encourage children and show you care. Be positive.

f. Acknowledge feelings. Let children know it is OK to feel angry, alone, scared or lonely. Give children the names for their feelings and words to express how they are feeling.

g. Have children view the situation more positively. Some stressors make the child feel ashamed. Shaming affects self-esteem.

h. Structure activities for cooperation, not competition. This allows individuals to go at their own pace and increases the learning of social skills.

i. Involve parents, family members and friends. They can read books together, encouraging openness and listening. They also can ensure good nutrition and proper rest.

j. Host regular, safe talks. Members of the classroom or others who feel comfortable can share experiences, fears, and feelings. Adults can recognize the steps a child uses to cope and help others learn from these experiences. Hold regular meetings in the classroom to plan activities or to suggest solutions.


XI. How to teach children to think situations through clearly, rather than respond negatively to a situation because of stress.

a. Show children how they can cope with their stress in a healthy way. Keep calm, control anger, think through a plan and share the plan with the family.

b. Be proactive. Plan plenty of playtime, inform children about changes, and plan activities where children can play out their feelings through books, art, and writing. This helps children think through their emotions and name their feelings.

c. Develop thinking skills. Help children think through the consequences of actions. Create hypothetical (real situations that could happen but are not presently happening) situations where children are able to think through what their reactions to the situations would be. Ask questions with no exact answer about the solutions to the problems, such as “What could we do about this?”

d. Help children tell reality from fantasy. A child’s behavior, for example, did not cause his or her parents to problem with others in the neighborhood.

e. As an adult, focus on the stressor. Model how thinking though options for dealing with difficult people, situations or problems helps you find solutions.

f. Find individual talking time. Talk with your students about stressful events and everyday events.

g. Use stories and books. Stories can help the child identify with the feelings of the character and identify his own feelings. This is a gentle way to discuss feelings and coping strategies for real events through the lives of fictional characters.

h. Use are for expressing feelings. Paint, clay, sand and water all allow for active expression.

i. Encourage children to act out coping skills. Playing with dolls, boxes, toy telephones, puppets, blocks, cars and similar items provides another way to bring feelings out for discussion.

j. Give the child some degree of control. Children should be allowed to choose within the framework of what is expected. Allow them to make some manageable decisions, such as how to arrange their desks, to voice their opinions in some discussions, etc.


XII. How to help children foresee stressful situations and avoid them in the future.

a. Identify what could cause stress and plan ways to avoid it or deal with it.

b. Encourage children to be proud of themselves in some way. Developing a special interest or skill can serve as a source of pride and self-esteem.

c. Use gentle humor or read a silly cook to create laughter and to reframe negative thought into opportunities.

d. Offer personal space. Modify the environment. Quiet space and time alone should be allowed.

e. Teach relaxation and deep breathing techniques. Ask children to close their eyes and imagine a quiet and happy place (a gentle river, a birthday party, a cup of sweet tea).

f. Teach conflict resolution strategies. Teach children to think through alternative ways to solve problems. Who else can help solve given problems? What additional information do they need?


XIII. Final example of a distressed child and a loving teacher: “Once upon a time…”

Some parents just don’t want to hear any bad news about their children. Mr. Reardon seemed to be one of them. Though I needed his help, I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. I’d spent my entire lunch period trying to convince him that his ten-year-old daughter was in serious emotional pain. I didn’t succeed; talking to him was like talking to a prosecutor.

After twelve years of teaching, I consider myself a “pro”. (read the remainder of the story on page 3 of Chicken Soup for the Soul).