Prevention and Solutions

We are the product of our childhoods. The health and creativity of a community is renewed each generation through its children. The family, community, or society that understands and values its children thrives; the society that does not is destined to fail. To truly help our children meet their potential, we must adapt and change our world. Some ways to do this follow.

1. Promote education about brain and child development

We must as a society provide enriching cognitive, emotional, social, and physical experiences for children. The challenge is how best to do this. Understanding fundamental principles of healthy development will move us beyond good intentions to help shape sensitive caregiving in homes, early childhood settings, and schools. Research is key. Public education must be informed by good research and by the implementation and testing of educational and intervention programs. An important component of public understanding must be awareness of the power of the media over children.

What to do? Integrate key principles of brain development, child development and caregiving into public education. We presently require more formal education and training to drive a car than to be a parent. More research in child development and basic neurobiology is needed to guide sensible changes in policy, programs and practice.

2. Respect the gifts of early childhood

Enriching environments do exist. Many homes and high-quality, early childhood educational settings provide the safe, predictable, and nurturing experiences needed by young children. Unfortunately, we often squander the wonderful opportunity of early childhood.

At a time when the brain is most easily shaped — infancy and early childhood — we spend the fewest public dollars to influence brain development. However, expenditures on programs designed to change the brain dramatically increase for later stages of development (e.g., mental health, substance abuse or juvenile justice interventions).

Investing in high-quality early childhood programs could avoid the expensive, often inefficient or ineffective, interventions required later. Unfortunately, these expensive interventions can be reactive, fragmented, chaotic, disrespectful and, sadly, sometimes traumatic. Our public systems may recreate the mess that many abused and neglected children find in their families.

What to do? Innovative and effective early intervention and enrichment models exist. Integrate them into the policy and practices in your community. Help the most isolated, at-risk young parents connect with community resources, both pre-natally and post-partum. Demand and support high standards for child care, foster care, education, and child protective service.

3. Address the relational poverty in our modern world

We are designed for a different world than we have created for ourselves. Humankind has spent 99 percent of its history living in small, intergenerational groups. A child's day brought many opportunities to interact with the variety of caregivers available to protect, nurture, enrich, and educate. But, the relational landscape is changing.

Today, with our smaller families, we have less connection with extended families and fewer opportunities to interact with neighbours. Children spend a great deal of time watching television. While we in the western world are materially wealthy, we are relationally impoverished. Far too many children grow up without the number and quality of relational opportunities needed to organize fully the neural networks to mediate important socio-emotional characteristics such as empathy.

What to do? Increase opportunities for children to interact with others, especially those who are good role models. Simple changes at home and school can help: limiting television use, having family meals, playing games together, including neighbours, extended family and the elderly in the lives of children, and bringing retired volunteers into schools to create multi-age educational activities.

4. Foster healthy developmental strengths

Certain skills and attitudes help children meet the inevitable challenges of life. They may even inoculate children against the adverse effects of violence. A child who develops six core strengths (see below) will be resourceful, successful in social situations, resilient, and may recover quickly from stressors and traumatic incidents.

When one or more core strengths does not develop normally, the child may be vulnerable (for example, to bullying and/or being a bully) and may cope less well with stressors. These strengths develop sequentially during the child's life, so every year brings opportunities for their expansion and modification.

What to do? The major providers of early childhood experiences are parents. Supporting and strengthening the family will increase the likelihood of optimal childhood experiences. Also important will be peer and teacher interactions. Specific ways to foster strengths at home and at school are suggested on The ChildTrauma Academy's website (www.ChildTrauma.org).

Dr. Bruce Perry's Six Core Strengths for Children: A Vaccine Against Violence