WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. We've got lots of people in tonight. Um, I'm really excited about this webinar tonight and, um, it was one of the highlights of my lockdown actually getting to chat with Jane a bit, human contact in the middle. Um, but I think it's just a complete perfect time for us to speak about anxiety and childhood trauma. 'cause I think with COVID and the year that we've had, I think there needs to be such a huge focus on children's social emotional health right now. And I think it's a time of anxiety for a lot of families and children. So we've kind of all getting used to the new normal. So I'm really, really pleased to have Jane here speaking with us tonight. Um, so just a little bit more about Jane, if I click over. So, um, Jane has, uh, she's an international parenting coach, um, and a childhood trauma and media expert. And she's gonna be talking lots about that tonight. Um, and she talks a lot actually about the fact that children and families, um, work as her kind of greatest teachers. And I think as teachers that work in school, we can all resonate with that. But also, Jane's work isn't just about that. It's really kind of backed by science and research. And she's gonna be talking about some of that information tonight too, which I think is great for us to all know. Um, but she's led Ted Talks, she's spoken worldwide to both live audiences on tv, on radio. Um, she's author of four children's books. Um, been interviewed by Pierce Morgan, so, which is probably a big experience, but, but yeah. Lots of fantastic experience. Um, and I think it's gonna be a really good talk tonight to kind of really think about how children have been affected this year and the things that we can do to support them. So I'm gonna hand over to Jane in a minute, but I have got paper and pen. So while Jane's speaking, I'm gonna be making lots of notes. So if you have questions, things that you want to ask, then I'll be noting all of that down so that Jane can have some questions at the end and chat through things with you. So we welcome Jane. Thank you Kate, so much. I feel, I feel, oh, I'm like, oh, who is this? Jane Evans. Yeah. No, it's, it's so lovely to be here with you and I, we had a great time, didn't we? Catching up and it's, we did. It's so important. It's so important that there's just a wider understanding of what we even mean by childhood trauma Yes. And anxiety, because I think it's got a bit muddled along the way, shall say. Yes. Yes. That's it. Yeah. And also, this year's kind of thrown another lot of things into the mix really, isn't it? Yeah, it really has. Um, and it, it's, I think it's just so important as well that we don't catastrophize what's happened Mm-Hmm. To your children. Yes. Because for many children being at home with their, whoever they're at home with a, a lot of the parents I have on my Facebook page and I just generally, you know, work with or chat with. Yes. They're telling me actually many of their children are doing better. Yes. Because they are at home and they don't have to cope with so much. And so it's a mixed bag. And I think it's really important. And also a lot of the parents have been saying to me that they, the children have enjoyed school. Yes. 'cause they're in small bubbles. Mm-Hmm. There's less going on. So, you know, it's, there's some lovely things going on because of the hard work that earliest professionals and education professionals have put in. Yes. So, you know, this is really important to hold onto as well. That's it. Yeah. 'cause we've had a lot of feedback this year, um, and a lot more parents getting involved and becoming more interested in Health's toolkit and doing lots more storytelling with their children at home. And for us, that's been a really nice part of this year, seeing that family engagement coming through. Yeah. It's wonderful. Yes. I mean, you know, I was talking to a parent somewhere, I've, I've clients all over the world, so I can't, anyway, a parent doesn't really matter where they were, does it? Yes. Um, and I was saying to them, you know, you can, you can do a whole, a whole learning experience by just having a story. And then Yes. The bear hunt. What, how, what can you not do with the bear hunt? We're going on a bear hunt. And then you can go outside and you can do your own version of a bear, hun. And you can gather stuff up to take back to the bear cave. And Yes. You know, for me, there's, there's learning in everything. When you have a story at the heart of it, then you can do math, you can do science, you can do geography. Yes. You can do history, obviously, language. That's it. Creativity, drama. If you want, you can come and act. Yeah. You know, it's like, that's it. Story. Mm-Hmm. It's, you can do so much with story. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. It's what, it's what we run our business on. Well, I, no, I love what you do. I love what you do. That's it. So, so yeah. Lovely. Um, let me put your PowerPoint up for you, Jane. Thank you. Lovely. So here we are. Let's, uh, I think this morning, this morning, this evening, even somewhere it's morning. Um, it's really about let's ack ourselves into this space because I know, especially on social media now, there's a, there's an awful lot being shared about trauma and trauma being this, and trauma being that anxiety being this, that and the other. And I wonder sometimes if people feel a bit overwhelmed by all the information there is out there, and, and maybe even, I know some of the practitioners I'm training at the moment on the Healing Together program, uh, they feel that, that, oh, I can't really work with trauma. I can't really. But in reality, you know, if you, if you work with children and you work with young people, we are all working with trauma. You know, I was a practitioner, uh, family support worker, um, a child protection social work assistant. I worked in family centers. I worked in domestic violence, child to parent violence. I've been a foster carer, uh, a lot of the time, actually, I hadn't even heard the word trauma, but ironically was always working with it. And how trauma often presents is as high anxiety. And of course, you, you'll see it in behaviors. That's how it will show up. A child can't tell us, oh, this has happened. And I have trauma. Of course they can't, even a teenager wouldn't, wouldn't necessarily have any notion or the language to share any of these things. But of course, we will see it in their behavior. And it's, it's, as the adults around the children, our job is to just be curious. Always be in that, that state of curiosity. Not necessarily to say, oh, they have this, or they have that. But, you know, being curious about why would a child keep doing something that means that, you know, adults get upset with them. Um, if it doesn't make sense, then be curious. That's always gonna be your best friend. So why does early trauma matter so much? Well, there are many reasons that, you know, we could be here until two o'clock in the morning. But it matters so much because it's so common. Number one, it's really, really, really co common. Trauma isn't necessarily a big one-off traumatic event trauma can be created for a baby, even in the womb. Um, certainly during the birthing process, post the birthing process, because it's, it's the small moments of complete overwhelm that aren't able to be relieved for any moment that get trapped in a child's system. So they get layered on each other, you know, more and more and more. And children and babies can't get rid of it. They can't get rid of the terror of even something as simple as, um, so when my child was young, my son, he's now a grown man of 29, about to give me a grand baby. Woo-hoo. Um, you know, when he was young, when he was a baby, I was told, oh, you need to leave your baby to cry for a while. Don't run in and pick them up all the time. Don't, you know, don't, don't, don't. Lots of things that didn't feel right. But, um, I was very naive and I listened to the professional and some family advice I got. So I, against every fiber in my being would leave my son to cry for a while. And then I'd go in and my instincts were to pick him up and hold him. And, you know, poor little crying baby. But I got, you know, I was told that was the wrong thing to do. So was that trauma? Well, on a low level, yes, it was trauma because small baby gets very overwhelmed for whatever reason. Waking up, cold, hungry, just lonely. Babies wake up because they are lonely. They don't know they're lonely, but that's the fear. Um, and of course, they immediately get overwhelmed because they can't comfort themselves. They really can't. So, you know, when you hear people talking about you have to leave a baby or a child to learn to soothe itself, it's, it's an impossibility. So something like that done. Often enough, what happens is the baby's system, you know, they have a big physical and emotional need. It doesn't get met for whatever reason. So there's big emotions, big feelings for this tiny being, and they aren't met. So they're left trapped inside. And there's a, there's, um, a memory inside of this horrible fear and overwhelm and sadness and all the rest of it. And eventually the, the sheer fear of it all might knock the child, the baby out. 'cause there's so many stress chemicals involved, but it's stored in them as a very uncomfortable, distressing memory. So these small things that none of us in intend, we love our babies, uh, they can accumulate and just bring in a level of trauma. Now, before we all panic, those of us who have done many things to children we've cared for and raised ourselves, there's plenty that can be done to improve, alleviate the anxiety that's attached to early traumas like this. There really, really are. But one of the most important things is that, is that really we all need to move into this space of, it's very easy for a child, a baby to experience droplets of trauma, and they have an impact. Now, what offsets trauma like this is connection with calm, caring, soothing, emotionally, physically able adults, which is where you all come in. This makes a huge difference to a child's onward journey. Really huge. So none of this is catastrophic end of everything, but it is really, really important that those of us who have the privilege to be present in the lives of children are really clear that often what we are seeing, I wouldn't, in fact, I wouldn't say often, I would always say what we are seeing are children who, for whatever reason, they're in a state of overwhelm and they need us to bring them back to feeling safe inside and safe outside again. So if we all step into that space and we become just more comfortable really with, with the fact that it's really hard to get through to adulthood without some brush of trauma, of course there can be very big traumas as well, like, you know, bereavements and, um, hospital hospitalizations. And, you know, it's, it's quite normal for babies to preserve their lives, to have to have, um, cannulas put in them and maybe medical interventions. And again, this is all great because it's preserving their lives, but their system will store the memory of everything that they've lived through. So it's, it's kind of to, to make us all just feel more comfortable. It's, it's, of course, it's not, it's not preferable and we don't want it for the children, but it is a lot more normal than I think people are really aware of. And what this feeling of overwhelm causes in a child is, uh, it wires in the end, particularly the systems in their body to be more about life in general, more reactive, more sensitive, more stressed. And that's what these early experiences are wiring into the body system, which is connected with the survival brain. So what we experience as babies is wiring in not just our brains, but also our regulating internal body system that's either going to put us into calmness, I'm calm and I'm ready to be playful and curious and connect with other human beings. Or, I'm in fight flight and everything feels panicky, and I'm gonna be fidgety and I'm gonna jump from one thing to another. And I might get very upset, or I might even hit out, or, you know, there'll be a big something going on whether I do it towards myself or someone else, uh, or the low energy and the lower part of, so I'm talking about the nervous system at the moment, which is the ugh energy. You know, when everybody's saying, come on, come on, we need to do this, we need to do that. You have those children who just boom, they just shut down and they don't react and they don't do whatever it is they're being asked to do. And often people get very upset with them. So having early experiences just mean that these two, the fight flight system, which is here in our bodies, or the lower system, the shut down withdrawal, low energy, they become very sensitive, very reactive. And you see children just going between the two a lot of the time. And that reduces, really reduces their capacity to engage in daily life. Because to engage in daily life, they need to feel safe. So they have a good balance of the high energy here and the low energy in the lower part of the body, a good, good healthy mix of these two, which means then they can feel comfortable themselves, and then they're open to learning, taking information, um, sharing, you know, all those kind of things. But with trauma, that gets massively reduced the ability to do that because there's a lot, a lot of other stuff going on in the background. So if we look at this from a, a, a neuroscientific and a neurophysiology, so body and brain perspective, what we know is the, the brain. So his here's a brain which is attached to the, the body as is mind handily, his one I prepared earlier. Um, so what we've got developing first is this lower brain, which for me is what I call the me cap brain, which is attached to our body. So this is why we are very fortunate, especially, you know, working with children that attach to our heads and our brains, is this ginormous resource called our body, which we're gonna look at in a minute. And this is where the regulating system sits. It's not in the intelligent brain. It's really the body and the lower parts of the brain that are so useful to us and can really, really help bring the children back to feeling safer and calmer and connected again. So in the womb, the part of the brain that's developing first is this survival, life preserving parts. So it's deep in the lower part of the brain connected to the body. And it's only really interested in literally anything that's gonna keep our, uh, us alive. So it's our regulation of our breathing, of our heart rate, our temperature control, our digestion, um, bowel movements, just, just the absolute nuts and bolts of being a human being. And it's wonderful and it works brilliantly, but it's not a thinking part of the brain. It's just very automatic. And this is the part that, you know, the trauma really sits in. And this very, if you think of a mere cat, panic, panic, panic, danger, danger, danger, I'm either gonna fight it or I'm gonna run away from it, or I'm gonna freeze, and then I'm gonna fight it or run away from it. You know, if you, if you look at the children, uh, when you are in your setting tomorrow, look for the children who are very, and they might move around and they're, they're, they're quite tight and they sit down and everything's very tight, and their movements are quite jerky. And, uh, you know, that that's an indication of children who, who are holding a lot of stress and anxiety and basically are scared little mere cats. So this part of the brain is really going to store sensory experiences of fear and threat, because it wants to be able to jump in to protect us at the tiniest sensation of anything that felt life-threatening before it will go into a complete state of, um, protect, protect, protect. Now, on top of this part of the brain is the next part. So this is pretty much just developing in the womb because we need it to be alive. And then the yellow part, you can see here, this starts developing in the womb and carries on afterwards. And this is very much our relationship, emotional memory, part of the brain. So like a little elephant, it does not forget. It's really, really good at keeping a saliva as well. It works with the mere cat. So these two are the primitive areas of the brain. So it's the reptilian brain and the limbic brain. It's, it's, uh, those other common names or the mammalian brain and yeah, brilliant at keeping us alive. It's really important that we have a strong memory of anything that we have strong emotional reaction to. So, you know, if we have fun when we're learning things, we remember them so much better because there's a strong emotion, a you know, a joyful emotion attached. You know, if we could all, maybe this would've helped me with my mass, if I could have learned mass by singing and dancing and clapping, and I might have some mathematical ability, which I definitely do not right now. Um, whereas scaring me when I was learning math, you know, I got my poor dad was trying to teach me, and he used to get very frustrated with me. So he would scare me by, you know, venting his frustration on me. So now I've ended up with a very strong emotional memory every time, anything mathematical, even, even the time, you know, I can literally tell the time. But if I have to work out what's happening in 40, if it's, you know, 11 now, and, and I need to do something in 40 minutes, logically I can work it out. But I always have a mere cat panic if I have to tell somebody. So this has not gone away. And this was in my childhood. Big emotional memory particularly took place in a close relationship, triggers my mere cat as a fully fledged grownup who, you know, has managed to get through the whole of their life with no mathematical ability. But if I have to give somebody change or, you know, I still get in a panic. So this is how lasting this stuff is. Now along comes eventually the very clever brain that we're, we're all kind of obsessed with. This is not much use to us for trauma. This is not where trauma sits. Trauma is about surviving the unsurvivable or what feels like the unsurvivable. So we need to have a strong emotional memory. Um, the things that happen within our key relationships are the really powerful memories. And then we just go straight to the mere cat. Trauma has no interest in going to the intelligent, reflective, thoughtful monkey brain. Uh, so if we smell something that smells the same as something that happened when we were six months old, that felt like a life threat, then it doesn't go via the monkey. It just goes straight into terror, panic mode. So, you know, some of the things that you might, you might see the children doing, uh, that make no sense, they were fine and then suddenly they lost it. Suddenly it all kicked off and nobody could see any rhyme nor reason. Well, that's because there is no rhyme nor reason in this present moment. But something from the past flicked in something happened. There was a movement around them, a sound, a sight, a touch even. And boom, the previous experience that felt like a life threat has collided with the present moment and they've lost it for, you know, what, whatever reason. So it's, it's very hard. I, you know, I feel particularly when you're working with children, it's really hard to, if you're trying to make sense of stuff, you, you are always kind of in trouble. And even as parents, you know, a lot of the parents I work with, they, they want to be able to make sense of their children's behavior. And sometimes we can unpick stuff, but a lot of the time we just don't know. And making sense actually isn't, isn't the answer. Um, the answer is how we are going to and how we choose to respond to the child in the moment. It's not the, we need to figure this out to prevent this 'cause, 'cause we can't, nobody can can very often figure out the cause of a child becoming overwhelmed in this moment and having a massive reaction or point blank refusing to do something. Or, you know, getting highly emotional, way beyond crying 'cause they're a bit sad or it, it's just not possible. So what is important is you, it's really, really, really important. However you are present in the life of the child, you are always their potential safety. So what happens when there's any level of trauma, anxiety, what happens inside the child is that they is that they permanently just don't feel safe. And it's not a logical, intellectual safe, it's just a sense of, you know, all of life feels threatening and, and overwhelming. So if they can connect with a calm, grounded, safe adult, it helps them begin to come out of midcap brain fight flight, and begin to feel a bit more comfortable Now, depending on how little that's happened for them. So, so basically you are talking about their nervous system. Um, if they've had quite a lot of overwhelm and stress in their, in their young lives, then it's used to, to moving very quickly into fight, flight, light, panic, overwhelm, reactivity, uh, and then often falling down into low energy exhaustion, shutdown withdrawal. It knows how to do that really, really well. Um, what it's less able to do is have a good balance of the two and come into this state of, ooh, feeling overwhelmed. But then I was okay again, the then I was okay again, comes from connection with a healthy, balanced, adult nervous system. So being able to be around that and connect with it on some level enables their little nervous systems or big nervous systems to start to feel a bit safer, safer, safer. So it's less about words and talking. And because when you're in meca mode and you're very overwhelmed and very stressed, being talked at is, is just going to become more stressful. So if you think of, um, you know, if you were driving a car and you went to park your car in a space and you, you, you know, got distracted as you were reversing in, uh, and then you bashed the back of it, would you want somebody to come up to the door, open the door and say, look what you've done. Why did you do that? Didn't you see that post behind you? You know, you shoulda have parked this way. If you parked in frontwards, you would never have done that. And, and start doing a big explanation and talking at you a lot. You would want someone with the calm energy and the calm nervous system to come and say, wow, are are you okay? Are you okay? Would you like me just to, just to sit here for a minute? Let's just, whoa, let's just take a breath, wow. And say less. And just be there as that calm, safe energy. And that's exactly what children really, really need. So whether it's, you know, whatever we choose to call that's going on for them and is wired into them, they're always going to need the same thing. Calm, safe, balanced energy in a calm, safe, balanced, nervous system. So a very simple, now simple and easy are not the same word. Simple thing that, you know, if we can get in the habit of doing this, and not just when something's happened, but throughout the day, then we can bring ourselves back because we all move in and out all the time of being calm and feeling good and then getting a bit stressed and then getting a bit overwhelmed. And that's just called being a human being. And particularly, you know, in these testing times for sure. And certain, uh, it's probably pulling a lot of people more into overwhelm or feeling really low and really miserable, uh, than life as it was before. So it's, it is very important that we are really regularly checking in with ourselves. Oh, how am I feeling right now? Oh, actually I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Okay, so it's, it's really important that we know how we are actually physically and emotionally feeling very regularly throughout the day, because then we can literally take breath, have a big sigh, whatever it is we need to do. Now, my, my body knows and really likes a hand, a hand on my heart. My body has learned and actually got a hand on my stomach as well that, that feels safe for it. So once my body feels safe, it then sends information up to my brain, oh, we are fine. You could relax me a cat. Don't, you don't need to get worked up. Little elephant. Because actually I'm getting a really powerful signal from the body, from my body, wake down in my feet, hand on my body. Oh, we're fine. It's okay, relax. And so then my intelligent brain can come back online again. You know, if I was feeling very agitated now, I, I wouldn't be able to think about what I'm saying. I'd just be probably talking at you at a thousand miles an hour. Um, you know, but because I'm feeling really calm, I'm able to, yeah, just construct kind of what's what I'm saying and how it's flowing out of me. So this is, these simple things are really, really, really powerful. We often think, oh, we have to do, we have to work hard, um, to bring ourselves into feeling a bit safer and a bit calmer. But to be honest, the more you do it, it's not in the moment, in the moment is going to be the biggest challenge for us. When a child has done something yelled in our face or refuse point blank to do something, by then the mere cat's up. Wow. We, we've got, you know, um, whatever's happened, it's triggered in us something. So we are going to struggle more then to kind of stroke the mere cat and get it back where it needs to be. But even then, hand on heart belly, take your time. As long as everyone's safe, take your time. 'cause you'll do a much, much better connection with the child than if you go in when you are, you know, we, we kind of have this thing about I have to stop the child doing it. No, you have to be there, safe energy rather than stop anything. You are not in a state right at that moment to stop anything. So we need to always be calm and safe if we're going to be there and support our children at all. So a simple little thing, you know, that, that we can just get in the habit of, if you can remember B os you could stick it up somewhere on a post-it or however you do it. And even if you only remember a tiny bit of this, but you do it regularly, you know, you do it. If you go to make a cup of tea, breathe, just take a breath while I'm making a cup of tea. Even when you're often say, making a cup of tea or having a, we, but I mean, I literally do mean it. It's, it's these moments that we just get in the habit and it has to be a habit of checking ourselves, checking ourselves. So, um, this is a lovely breathing technique where you can just put one hand and always go really carefully when you're gonna do stuff like this, because you won't know the whole journey of your body through the birthing and what happened afterwards. So it's always good to go really slowly when you put your hands on your body and breathing into this gap here, trying to send the air down to your belly and out, and then gently moving your hand down your body. So now you've got a gap this hand, a lower hand, and then breathing into that space. That's a very simple grounding technique. But you can also just, you know, I mean, my habit is literally put my hand on my heart, put my hand on my belly, and, And I do that just so many times a day. You know, if you film me going about my, uh, my grand estate, which is, uh, my very small house, you'd see me doing that. You know, sometimes I do this, I just put my hands on my head, but I know that it, if I don't give the signal to my body that I'm safe, my brain will go haywire. And then I'm no use to anybody. I'm no use to anybody. We can't think ourselves calm, but we can reassure our bodies. So any kind of breathing that works for you, do it as often, often, often as you can. And then it's always important to just check, not to be clear how you're feeling, but just to be curious. So, you know, tuning in and just checking your heart, well, how am I feeling right now? Oh, actually I'm feeling whatever it is. Because if you don't know how you are feeling, then your feelings are mounting up through the day. And then when your child, or the child that you are working with or caring for, does that one thing, if you were gradually getting more and more overwhelmed because of something that happened first thing in the morning, or something that happened before you came to work or whatever it is, that's just gonna pile up and pile up and pile up until boom, someone someone's gonna do say, or not do or not say or whatever, uh, one thing. And then you are going to, in some way, shape or form, maybe potentially lose, lose your, your, you know, lose yourself at them. And of course we know that's not okay. So breathing, just checking again, it, it, this is all things we just have to get a little habit for and get curious about it. It's amazing how much this changes your life. Just checking how you are feeling, because again, we've moved in and out of our feelings really quickly. And if we're going to be this amazing resource, we have to do this stuff. And grounding anything where you are actually having connection with the ground. Now I'm standing up. I often stand up because I have connection with the ground, which means I'm a lot calmer. Um, yeah, it's, it's done very pur purposefully that I, that I mostly stand when I'm doing any kind of stuff online. Um, but if I notice, you know, when I'm driving the car and I can feel I've gone quite me cat, then I will put weight down my back and I'll purposely drop some weight down into my lower back, down into my bottom, down into my legs and, uh, bring myself back into the moment. And again, you know, if you're dealing with children, if you're having to walk across the room to a child, ground yourself on the way by just putting a bit more weight down into your feet means when you get to them, you'll just be calmer and kinder. And then very, very, very powerful. Is, um, oh, I'll recap on Big Os in a minute, Kate. Um, very powerful is your heart energy. Uh, some people, you know, are very aware of this, but I certainly wasn't a few years ago, I had no idea. So you can see here, the heart is a hundred thousand times stronger electrical energy than, um, than the brain. Five, 5,000 times stronger magnetically than the brain. So we rely a lot on our brains. But if you really want to connect with somebody in a, in a peaceful, loving way, then your heart is the connector, not your head, because it's, it just radiates a powerful energy out. I I use it all the time in my coaching. You know, I connect with whoever I'm gonna work with before, before I start working with them. So, you know, 10, 15 minutes or even earlier than that, I'll start thinking about them. And then I'll just really imagine opening my heart to them. So by the time we're sitting together and doing the work, we've already got this powerful connection. And, you know, particularly if you are a professional, but also if you're a parent or a carer and you are struggling in some way, shape or form with a child, if you ground yourself and you choose to just let the other stuff go and just to, you know, just say to yourself, I, I truly open my heart to whoever it is, then A, it settles you. And b it creates this, this really powerful safe energy for them, which particularly children with anxiety and trauma, they desperately need. Every, everyone does actually, but particularly, uh, children who are very overwhelmed and then smiling. Now, the magical thing about smiling, uh, so I'm not talking about, oh, we'll just smile, you know, because then the world's a better place. And well, it kind of could be, actually I'm a fan of a smile personally, but there's also a whole science behind smiling. So you can see from this diagram here, there's all these, uh, these muscles, rated muscles which go all around the face. Look at them, they're all around the eye area. Um, they actually go into the ear and then they join into something called the vagus nerve, which goes down into our body, which is like the communication highway between our body and our brain. So when we smile, we're actually moving these, these muscles in our face and our inner ear, our middle ear. And that is a signal down to our body that I'm safe, I'm safe. So, you know, if I ever get, which I don't think I ever do anymore, but in the olden days when I would maybe get really stressed and I couldn't bring myself out of it, even with my breath, I would sometimes just obviously on my own, uh, just do this for a while. Not because I was trying to be happy, but I was literally trying to switch the muscles on in my face because I knew if I could get my vagus nerve to convince my body that I was okay, it would, everything would relax a bit and then my brain would also relax. So there's a big science behind all of this. And the aim of it is, is purely to just bring you back to calm safety, not only for the children, but for yourselves. You know, all of us have got some level of trauma in us, and whether we are parents or we're carers or we're professionals, children pull us outta shape. So unless we are regularly bringing ourselves back to calm safety, then we are gonna get sick. And we are definitely, we can't by be this great resource for the children. So B os stands for breathe emotions. So an emotional check-in grounding, open your heart and smile to activate your vagus nerve. And if you just go about your daily life, even I say even if you can't remember bgo, and you just remember, okay, breathe, ground, smile, even that, that's going to make a massive difference. But without it, you know, you are relying on your intelligent brain all the time. And you know, any of you who've seen my ted talk, I in there, I say, you cannot intellectualize anxiety. You can't, you can't think a child calm and you can't think yourself calm and anxiety and trauma do not respond at all to intelligent reflection, intellectualizing, working stuff out. It, it doesn't help. Whereas you are this amazing living, breathing resource for the children. And, uh, it's a lot less exhausting to use this rather than to use this. So there we go. I hope that's helpful and um, I'm very happy to answer any questions or look at any comments anyone's got. There you go. Uh, Hello. No, that was brilliant, Jane. That was really good. Um, it's particularly interesting for me 'cause I'm about to give birth, so I know we, I'm aware of that. I was like, Ooh. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there that I was like, oh, I'm making notes here. So it's been great. But, uh, there was a couple of really interesting questions. So Helen was asking, is there a point that you would help children to label their emotions? Um, yes, I would. Mm-Hmm, yes. Um, so not, yeah. So what, so how I tend to talk about it is, it's, it's really, it's such a brilliant question. Yes. That's very good. Yes. It's really important that children get connected with how their emotions show up as sensations in their bodies. Yes. So What happens, what tends to happen a lot with a lot of the things that people call emotional intelligence and emotional is it's all external stuff. It'll be like, oh, look at this picture of this thing. Is this how you feel? Yes. Or, you know, this is this, this is this. Which is again, all intellectual Mm-Hmm. But yes, brilliant. We absolutely do. But when they are calm, what often happens is we go from a top down, oh, okay, well what's going on? Why are you doing that? You don't, you need to stop doing that now, don't you? Because we remember we weren't going to do that. Remember we said we weren't going to do blah, blah, blah, blah. And okay, so let's take a breath. And, um, so, you know, how are you feeling now? And how's so and so feeling, blah, blah, blah. And that's all very down. They're still in their mere cat emotional, barely in their emotional stay. Yes. So we do all the grounding, settling, and then if they seem calm enough, then we get curious. Wow. I wonder, I mean, obviously if they're older, you wouldn't speak like this, but this is the crux of it. Yes. You know? Ooh. Just look like you had so many big feelings. Yeah. Oh gosh. I wonder if we check. Let's just check. I wonder what feelings there were and and what you are inviting them to do is really to connect with their bodies, not for them to know, but we bring them into the habit of, oh, I checked my body. Hmm. Yeah. I did have a kind of jumpy feeling in my tummy before I smashed the whatever over the room. Or, yes. Because that's real emotional intelligence is Mm-Hmm. Oh, I have a sensation in my body. It's a feeling I eventually can learn the name for the feeling. Yes. And then I can either begin over many years to track it coming. So I take a breath. 'cause I know I'm feeling pretty frustrated right now. Mm-Hmm. And I may or may not explain it, you know, share it with someone else, but I know how I feel and, you know, go find me the adult who's good at doing that. 'cause I've not met one yet, apart from I'm now really good at it, but I didn't use it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's really good, really good practice. That really good practice to kind of get children thinking back about what was going on for them. That's, yeah. I think that's great. Yeah. And it's not, it's, it's really about feeling, it's not about thinking. People ask children to think, so tell me what my No, no, no. We, we were asking how, how did it feel? What, I wonder what, what was going on? I wonder Yes. What feelings you had before, blah, blah, blah happened. Yes. Not tell me how you, you know, that's what we do. We do the top down. Yes. Yes. But we, that's it from the bottom up. Mm-Hmm. That's it. That's good. Um, there was a question from a lady called Catherine. Um, and she's asked what happens, which actually fits in really well with what you've just been saying. What happens after the moment has passed for that child and there needs to be some repair. How do we do that? So if we are doing the repair, I hope Mm-Hmm. I'm assuming we mean we're repairing. That's It. We're repairing. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, when everything feels calm again, that's when we have the genuine conversation. Yeah. About how they, how, how are you? I mean, I know myself, if I, if I had a big meltdown, I would want somebody, once I was calm, to come to me really kindly and say, whoa, Jane, are you okay? Yeah. Even if my behavior had been pretty disgusting. Yeah. I would still want someone to check with me first. Are you okay? Are you Mm-Hmm. Are you alright? Do you, you know, talk less, be with me more. Um, and then, you know, I might be able to say, yeah, do you know what I'm, I'm really, I am, God, I'm so sorry. I dunno what was, I think I just got really blah, blah, blah. But I don't feel ashamed. 'cause you've been kind to me. Mm-Hmm. But I haven't figured it out now. Yes. Yeah. That's good. And often as adults, like we think about the way we treat our friends or we treat our work colleagues and that's how we should be working with the children sometimes too. 'cause there's a, there's a lot more sympathy sometimes going on within like, friendships and things like that, that, that Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Our friends can behave in ways that, you know, if our child did a smidge of it, we'd be all over them like a rash. And that's it. It's the same. I was having a conversation with a parent I was working with today and she said, oh, well what about natural consequences? And I said, but would you really let your friends struggle in that way? Yes. That's it. And you wouldn't watch your friend cry and hope they can self-soothe, or, you know, there's no, Let them find out that that's gonna be a disaster. And then they'll learn. That's it. Yeah. That's it. You off the Christmas card list. That's it. Yeah. It's because I think I, I guess we just believe they have to learn. Yeah. You do have to learn with kindness. Yes. That's it. That's true. And there's a second part to what Catherine was asking. She was saying, some, some children reject that calm, safe presence of the adult being there and want to be on their own. How do you deal with this? Yeah. So children only learn to reject the calm presence of the adult because they are experiencing it as overwhelming. Yes. It, they still need it. They still need it. But it, but possibly in the past they've experienced adults. So starting off like that and then getting, getting very shaming or lecturing. So it takes a lot of coaxing and they, they still need you to go, if they rush to their bedroom and shut the door, then you just take a moment, you calm yourself down and you go however many steps up the stairs you can. And I, you know, I can remember doing this with my son and just sitting on the stairs and breathing and grounding myself. And then eventually saying, are you okay? Are you all right? Yes, we, I'm fine. We all right. I'm just, I'm just gonna sit here if that's okay. Mm-Hmm. You want the one that has to go and and show them? I'm still here. I'm still here. Yes. Yes. And say there as long as it takes. And then over time, because it's, it's much healthier for their mental health in the long run. Mm-Hmm. To know that when I feel ashamed, when I feel overwhelmed, I actually reach out for somebody. Not I take myself away. That's, that's, you know, very long term for all of us. It's not good for our mental health. So it's for us to slowly, slowly, slowly Mm-Hmm. Assure them. Yeah. That's it. And there's some really important stuff in there about like, taking that time to be calm first. 'cause I think sometimes as parents and as teachers, you can get quite like, like in a situation where you're struggling to kind of work out what to do. So, oh, Always. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just calm down is the first thing is nothing's gonna come out of your mouth until you have calmed your me and just check how you are feeling and it's, you are allowed to feel disappointed, disrespect you, you can feel, you know, but then you need to let that go. Yes. And go be that calm, safe energy. Yeah. That's it. Um, Kathy was asking, how do you help a child recover from the trauma of bullying? Mm. Big question. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to give a specific answer for a specific child. 'cause I'd have to have so much information. Yes. But generally speaking, it's, it's going at the, at the, the pace of the child. So we're not trying to fix them. We are just being there when they have a moment, when they feel sad, when they feel scared, really hearing how they're feeling, but kind of letting go the agenda of oh, I have to get them over this. Yes. Um, teaching them however they feel comfortable accessing some ways to Yes. Just feel a bit safer. You know, if they're scared about going into a classroom or a lesson or a, you know, maybe working with the school around how can they be allowed to access some safety or a safe person or it's, it is a long, long piece of work. Yeah. Um, but yeah, really honoring the child's feelings. Holding a very strong belief that they will be fine. But it's a, it's a complex, it's a complex journey and a complex piece of work that is doable. Yeah. I can imagine as well as a parents that there would be a real deep desire to want to fix things for your child and not for them to have to go through that. So, yeah. Well, Yeah. It's important that they are, we are not trying to let them suffer. Obviously we wouldn't be. Yeah. But you can't rush a child through the pain of what they've experienced. Yes. The very physical memories of Mm-Hmm. You know, um, yeah. Go at their pace. You know, sometimes people say, oh, we make a child do this, or they get over it, or No, you need to go at their pace. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. And, Um, advice and support for yourself. 'cause it's a big journey if you are the parent or the professional involved. That's it. Um, Helen was asking, uh, one of the children that she works is, um, expressing loud sort of sexualized behavior when they become dissociated, which is really hard to deal with in class. Have you got any advice on this? Um, I'd be looking at a safeguarding concern, yes. Immediately. Yes. Yeah. Not that, not, I'm not saying it is, but I, that would be the first thing that would come into my mind is, I don't know what age the child is. I don't need to know. But yeah, I would not jump on anything. But for me that would be the beginnings of, uh, needing to know more. Yes. Not, not from the child, obviously you wouldn't, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Def definitely safeguarding to check in with. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, Brian was asking, do you think that residential childcare settings provide a space for children and young people to deal with and recover from ACEs? Uh, what's, I dunno what a residential childcare setting is, Um, That Mean, I'm guessing sort of like, like where the child, like a children's home where they live. Oh, I can see. Yeah. Um, I have, I'm just wondering, no idea what they do. I can't imagine There's a lot of, uh, as far as I know, but I don't know. I mean, I can't, I can't speak 'cause I, I don't, I haven't worked in or with residential childcare settings. Yeah. Um, but I'm not aware of any settings specifically supporting children, um, to feel safer. And I, I, I wouldn't say you can recover from a, I mean Yeah. But to, to be supportive. It Depends on the setting. Yeah. I, I don't think I can really answer that one. I don't really understand the question massively. That and the idea of recovering from ACEs, I'm not a Big ACEs fan, so I may not be the best. That's alright. Um, okay. Let's have a look. Uh, Helen was asking more of a question about how to handle behavior within the classroom and then deal with it afterwards. So what's your advice sort of with working with children within the classroom? And it's probably been touched on, on some of the questions that you've already had, but is there any, any tips in terms of for teachers? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't ever go down well, what I'm about to say. So I'll just say it anyway because I, I just feel like, you know, we, we, not we as in us, but society, we, we don't equip teachers at all. Well, yeah. For the reality of how children are. Yes. And we demand that our teaching professionals support profess, you know, do things with children that stress children out. Yes. So, you know, the perfect answer is that children, every 10 to 15 minutes should be invited to stand and breathe and ground themselves and then settle back to their learning. And then we can just do that whenever we need to. And then of course our intelligent brain comes back online more. Um, you know, and then there would be less behavioral challenges for a start. But when one happens in the classroom, it's always got to be about everyone feeling safe and okay. Again, so I, you know, as long as everyone is physically safe, I would never address the child's behavior. I would just be bringing everybody back to feeling soothed. So put everything down. It's okay. Everyone. Let's, let's all just take a breath. Yes. All, just take a breath. We've, we've all had a bit of a scan. Now let's just take a breath because, you know, if the one child's done the one thing everyone else's meal cats have gone up. Yes. And the more you settle everyone in and then, and then having a check in a chat with the child afterwards. But that hard because, because you know, in reality, I mean, from what people tell me about schools now, there's just everything's rush, rush, rush and pressure, pressure, pressure. So, but you know what? Nothing else works. No, no. It's true. And it's very difficult. 'cause I know like we talk to schools a lot and there is that real tightness of timetable. Oh yeah. It's Awful. And managing like staff ratios and, you know, you haven't always got that time to sit with children and, but it is taking that moment. 'cause sometimes be something that's really powerful and make all the difference the rest of the day. Always. So, well, any of us, you know, if I get overwhelmed, you know, you plowing on and, and just telling me to shut up and sit. I mean, I know teachers would never do this, but, you know, shut up and sit down isn't gonna take away all the big feelings and fears and anxieties I have inside of me. In fact, it's gonna make worse and I'm gonna get more jittery and more jiggly and Yes, Yes. That's it. You know, being, pausing, soothing, all the merca, settling again, off we go. In the end, you get a lot more done. Yes. But it takes a lot of courage. You need leaders who say, yes, this is how we're gonna go forward with this, and I support you a million percent. If I walk past your classroom and everyone's standing up Mm-Hmm. Then I'm, I'm a million percent got your back. And I'm completely good with that. Yeah, it's true. A lot of it's about good leadership and then having that kind of faith in it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Um, I've got a question from Kerry who said, for children who are anxious about making mistakes, um, and those who get really distressed about struggling, so for example, like maybe a math then or getting something Right. Um, is that a trauma based reaction too? Um, I would, I would say it's, yeah. I mean, I'm always careful about labeling or anything. Yes. But certainly they're certainly very anxious and scared, aren't they? Yes. So, you know, a child who doesn't feel very secure and safe inside themselves is Mm-Hmm. Always gonna get e easily overwhelmed in a, in a heartbeat. And, um, what you see with children who are very anxious is that they often just won't try. They won't try. Yes. Um, particularly if they've been criticized a lot. You know, even when they were little, if they were, oh no, not like that. Or, oh, don't be silly, this is how we do it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In the end it's like, okay, now I'm just scared to try anything. I've picked up the messages, but I get everything wrong. I don't do it Exactly right. And the more anxious the child is, they're either dive into everything or they won't try. Yes. Which makes sense. Again, you know, if somebody gave me some maths now, I'd just laugh in your face if they said, kids my hands, if you can do this whatever equation. And I'd just say, oh, cool. But I'm definitely not gonna have a go. I'm not that fussed about having a thousand pounds and 'cause it's gonna stress me out much, I'll just keep pounds. Literally. I would say that. Yeah. That's it. It's How did you get interested in childhood trauma and anxiety, Jane? Yeah, I got interested in it. Uh, I was always trying to figure stuff out, you know, when I was a practitioner, so I worked for the N-S-P-C-C for a long time in a really deprived community. So I kept seeing families in terrible states, sitting in lots of child protection meetings. And this went on for my career for a long time. You know, the family saying, you know, being the parents being told you, if you do this again, we are gonna take your children away. If you do this again, your child's gonna be adopted. And lo and behold, they would do the same thing again. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. And I think, Whoa, I I could tell those people really love their children. Yeah. Oh, who knew? And then when I was becoming a foster carer Mm-Hmm. I was a respite foster carer when I was a child minder. And I got in instruct, well told by the assessing social worker to start at really under understanding the trauma of the children I was gonna be caring for. And she directed me towards several books to start reading and, you know, and it led me to all the science. And of course, once you start looking at the science of trauma, Whew. Mm-Hmm. You see it everywhere for a start. And particularly in yourself, Imagine. Yeah. It's the most fascinating journey I've ever been on. I mean, I've been studying it now for probably about 17 years. Um, yes. It's so incredibly makes sense of literally everyone, you know, if you wanna make sense of people's behavior in Covid, the ones who are just really calm, didn't rush to buy no toilet paper or whatever, and the people who were terrified and would stop piling and the go study neurophysiology and interpersonal neurobiology and polyvagal theory, and you'll totally understand it. Mm-Hmm. So we, we've got a big stock of toilet roll in my mom's cupboard. We do. No, it's, yeah, you are right. Actually, I mean, this past year has kind of probably brought out some of those patterns in people, isn't it? Oh Yeah. The more stressed and anxious you are on the inside, the less safe you feel on the inside, the more you Yes. Do stuff on the outside, you know, I mean, I've done a lot of work on myself now, and I just, I don't, I literally don't worry about anything. Nothing. Yeah. That's good. It's a good place to be. Yeah. It started with trying to really make sense of patterns I kept seeing Mm-Hmm. And, and not being able to figure it out. And then it's led me Yes. You know, to where I am now of, oh, now I so get it. I get it on such a deep level and I know how preventable it is. Massively preventable. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. That's good. Um, one last question from Isabel, 'cause I know everyone wants to go off and have an evening now. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's it. Um, so Isabel said, what I find tricky in the classroom is when a child does hit out or is in that may cap brain feeling angry and trying to put some, calm them while also trying not to demi dismiss the needs of the other children and making them feel safe again. So any advice on that to kind of finish the evening off? Yeah, sure. Thanks for a nice, easy one, Isabel. Yeah. I mean, none of this stuff is, the approaches are simple, but it's not easy what you Yes. You all do. I, you know, I dunno how any of you do what you do. Yeah. Um, okay. So if we go, if we always see children's behavior, we suspend good or bad. Okay. Just get rid of that. They are not your friends. So if we see behavior as fear based, scared mere cat Mm-Hmm. Then we need to go and create some safety with and for the mere cat and of course the other meca. So we are not endorsing or not endorsing our primary purpose as adults in the lives of children is to enable the children to feel safe. Yes. And of course, you know, the, the system unfortunately we've set up in society, schools, preschools, families, everywhere is a child does something. It's bad. They have to be told off. Yes. So the other children in the class are waiting for the, the, the bad thing to happen and the telling, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, it's possible to move from a place of, actually in this classroom everyone is safe. And when things happen because somebody's really scared, we help the scared child to feel safe again and to learn how to be calmer because we know that hurting someone else is not okay. Yes. So we give clear messages, but that's all we say. We, we know because they do know if they're past three or four, they've got it down. It's like, oh, you don't do this, you do do that. I can't do it 'cause I'm a young child. Mm-Hmm. Um, so yeah, it, it just, it always comes from this place of kindness. And initially the other children will not be very happy about this 'cause it's not fair. But once they realize they're all going to be treated with kindness and compassion, you know? Mm-Hmm. Obviously the child that's been hurt, but the child that was scared and lashed out as well, then oh my goodness, you established this beautiful place of safety and acceptance. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. That's a really good note to kind of end on. 'cause we have, um, we have a lot of stories with tell's toolkit where it's really interesting 'cause I think with the children, they're often way more harsh than the teacher would be. Like, you'll say, what should we do about this? And they're like, chop off his head and cupboard for six hours. Yeah. If you're child, what, what do you think you should do? They will come up with the most horrible punishment. Yeah. Awful things. I know. It's really sad. You know, they've kind of along the way that if you step outta line, you have to have a horrible retribution, A horrible punishment. Yeah. You know, it's true. Be able to take a breath and have someone be kind to me actually. Yeah. That's it. But it's quite interesting for us because over time we've seen the, the more they're creating those stories together and doing those kind of problem solving that the, a lot of their solutions are now becoming a lot more pro-social. Oh. So that, that's been really nice for us to see that kind of difference made. So, but that's beautiful. But yeah. No, it's good stuff. So, but yeah, a big, a big thank you Jane for tonight. Thank. Yeah. I know there's a lot of very happy people here that have been really kind of pleased to hear you speak and got a lot up here in you talk today. So, so yeah. And big thank you for spending your evening with us and thank you to everyone for coming us along as well. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So, so that's, I think that's it for tonight. Everyone go off, watch a bit of telly, have a Yeah. Relax for a bit. Relax for a bit. Ready for tomorrow. Take care everyone. Yeah. Take care everybody. Bye.