Research links toxic levels of stress and the related chronic stress responses to negative impacts on every aspect of a child’s life; from their physical health, to the development of their brains and social and emotional skills, to their academic performance. The good news is that children can learn resilience and the impact of ACES can be mitigated allowing children to have better health and educational outcomes. At the heart of the resiliency research (upheld by the research findings) is the belief that many students, despite traumatic and toxic stressors in their lives, are able to adapt and thrive. Research shows how we can help traumatized children learn by teaching them resilience, fostering trauma-informed/sensitive learning environments, showing them compassion, providing them with protective relationships, and giving them social and emotional learning skills (SEL).  We are showing the film Resilience to help make the public aware of ACEs and how we can all work together to promote resilience in our schools, families, and communities.

Creating trauma-sensitive/trauma-informed school environments is key to cultivating healthy social emotional development (resiliency) in children and their families. This includes both intrapersonal skills by self-regulation, self-reflection, nurturing a sense of self and confidence and interpersonal skills like having safe, stable and nurturing relationships especially within the school setting.

There are many ways to address childhood adverse experiences and provide appropriate social and emotional learning (SEL) programs in an academic setting and they all require providing schools (educators) with the resources and support they need to help traumatized children learn. Despite the enormous barriers cause by traumatic experiences, educators can use trauma-sensitive approaches and help these children become competent leaners. A trauma-sensitive movement requires trained helping professionals, school social workers, school counselors and psychologists, and school nurses, in appropriate numbers at every school. These helping professionals are needed to train all educators on how they can create school cultures that teach resilience and to provide direct services to children including SEL training. In turn, every educator in the school building can help children build resilience moderating the impacts of ACEs giving students a better of graduating school and having a healthy and productive future.