Childhood Trauma: Need to Know Strategies with Clinical Psychologist Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

"Our traumas can either be our greatest problem or our greatest superpower," (Dr. Robyn Koslowitz). Which do you believe it is? Reflect on childhood trauma with Dr. Koslowitz, a nationally recognized clinical psychologist, who dives deep into her personal journey and professional insights to help us understand how trauma can be hidden beneath a child's seemingly calm exterior. Dr. Koslowitz emphasizes the necessity for creating supportive environments for children who have faced significant hardships.

This episode offers valuable strategies to help traumatized students maintain a productive learning zone without crossing the threshold into overwhelm. Practical techniques such as allowing children to express their worries and teaching them how to compartmentalize their concerns are discussed. We also highlight the pivotal role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in aiding children to comprehend their stress responses and develop essential emotional regulation skills. Moreover, we provide guidance for teachers on recognizing when additional support is needed for students dealing with significant challenges.

Dr. Koslowitz shares insights from her upcoming book, "Post-Traumatic Parenting," to illustrate how trauma can manifest in everyday parenting scenarios. By examining the concept of secret ACEs and their influence on parenting, she offers  tools they need for success. Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges understanding and actionable advice, aimed at fostering resilience in both children and parents.
More:
Post-Traumatic Parenting podcast
Instagram: drkoslowtizpsychology

Chapters

• 0:09 Understanding Childhood Trauma
• 2:08 Dr. Robyn Koslowitz Introduction
• 5:21 Recognize Signs of Trauma
• 13:13 How Teacher Can Help Traumatized Students Stay Focused to Learn in Class
• 16:53 When to Include a Counselor
• 19:25 How to Regain Control of Class
• 21:43 Prevent a Stressful Situation From Becoming Traumatic
• 26:21 Managing Teacher Trauma
• 29:15 Post-Traumatic Parenting
• 32:50 Secret ACE's
• 34:27 Support

Transcript

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:09

Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources. I'm your host, dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? Today's focus is on childhood trauma and teacher support.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:38

Childhood trauma can occur when students witness or experience a frightening, dangerous, violent or life-threatening event between the ages of 0 and 18. However, not all overwhelming and life-threatening experiences are considered traumatic, as children interpret their unique experiences differently. A life event that is traumatic for one child might not be traumatic for another. Trauma can be better understood and defined through the three E's of trauma event, experience and effect. Another related term is adverse childhood experiences, aces. The ACE study is an ongoing research project exploring the relationship between childhood trauma and long-term medical, health and social consequences. Results show that approximately 65% of children experience at least one adverse event during their childhood and nearly 40% two or more ACEs. Now, the study found that the greater the number of ACEs a child is exposed to, the higher their risk of developing physical and mental health problems throughout their life. Trauma-informed teaching involves a set of classroom practices that teachers can use to mitigate the impact of trauma on student learning. Studies have found that students exposed to these strategies are better able to regulate their emotions, build resilience, achieve greater academic results and maintain better attention in class. It begins with understanding what trauma is and how it affects the student's emotions, behavior and learning, enabling teachers to respond to students' needs and create safe and supportive learning environments.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 2:08

Today, we are honored to welcome Dr Robin Koslowitz, a nationally recognized clinical psychologist and expert in childhood trauma and resilience. Dr Koslowitz has been a licensed school psychologist since 2002 and a licensed clinical psychologist since 2017. She holds a master's degree in school psychology and a PhD in school clinical child psychology from New York University. In addition to her clinical work, dr Koslowitz is a parenting educator and the host of the Post-Traumatic Parenting Podcast. She brings a wealth of experience from her previous roles as a third and fourth grade teacher. Robin joins us today to share her invaluable insights, personal journey and to discuss her forthcoming book, post-traumatic Parenting. Welcome, robin, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 2:55

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to talk about, I think, the two topics that I'm passionate about, which is post-traumatic parenting and trauma-informed education, because those are my absolute passions in life.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 3:09

Can you share your personal journey and how it led you to becoming an expert on childhood trauma and resilience?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 3:15

Yeah, so I was a kid having the regular trajectory of life. I had a very kind of chronically ill parent growing up and my father actually died under very traumatic circumstances when I was in high school and then fast forward to me being in graduate school and, unlike my classmates at NYU, where people were very focused and they really had their research interests and everything that they were doing kind of synchronized, I found myself studying so many different things. I was studying kids who were acting out In the clinic I was working with. I actually was working with kids who had encopresis and aneurysis, kids who couldn't control their bowels, and I was also at my research lab doing research in child temperament and I remember thinking why am I so all over the place Like everybody else is studying, like you know, cutting in 35 year olds or Piagetian cognitive development concepts in fourth graders, you know like everyone was like so consistent and I'm all over the map.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 4:17

And it suddenly hit me that what I'm really studying is the impact of trauma on child development and how it impacts parenting. Because as a young mom, I had this one major question, which is I know I have PTSD, I know that I have like the full blown condition. How is my PTSD going to impact my children? And, being a research geek, I went to the books, because that's what you do, and there was nothing, there was no research on this topic, wow. And it suddenly hit me like a bolt out of the blue like, oh, I'm studying the impact of trauma on child development and parenting. That's what I'm trying to do, because I'm trying to write the book that I would like to read.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 5:04

That's amazing, because it really takes such inward insight to reflect on your own patterns and interest, to see why something so broad and yet so narrow at the same time, because it's so very specific to you, and then how you're able to help others through that research. So what kind of signs, then, do children exhibit? What kind of warning signs should parents and teachers be noticing?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 5:29

So I think the first thing is, before we even go into signs because I think that's important. I think the first thing we have to do is demystify the fact that children do become traumatized, even children who seem to be fine on the surface, because a lot of times it's not about looking for the signs, it's about not looking for the signs. Like this child went through a traumatic experience. They are traumatized. The fact that they look fine on the surface is absolutely meaningless. I very often in my practice, because I treat a lot of traumatized kids, I call it being a duck. A duck, you know, looks so serene on the surface of the water and they're just sort of like floating there and then under the water their legs are pedaling furiously and we only look at the surface. So we have to know that if a child experienced a traumatic event and we're going to know that if the community experienced a traumatic event and the child was part of that community like there was a school shooting in the community, or even a child in the school, maybe a few grades away, you know, died of suddenly or died of cancer or there was something the assumption has to be that that experience was too big for the kid's brain to metabolize. Even if they seem fine, we don't want to assume that they're fine.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 6:47

Because if you looked at me when I was in high school, my way of handling trauma is I become more productive, I hyper focus on work because I'm good at work, I'm a geek, I'm good at research. So if you look at Freud's definition of success in life to live, love and work like I was working. I was getting straight A's. I was the captain of like the service team in my school. We had like a community service organization. I was the president of it and I was on the honor roll and I had friends on every level.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 7:17

I looked fine. I was so very not fine but no one thought to say, oh, but is she really fine? Because I looked fine. So I almost feel like when we look for the signs, if the signs aren't there, we think, oh, the child's fine. If we define trauma as an experience that's too big for the brain to metabolize which is how I like to look at trauma then if an experience happened that you would say that is too big for a brain to metabolize, then it's our job to sort of help them digest it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 7:48

Okay.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 7:49

And then there are also signs, obviously, when you see a sudden change in a child, when you see mysterious behavior, patterns that don't make sense. So to me, when a child is being defiant, when a child is, you know, has every indicator that they could be successful in school and yet they're not. To me, that's one of two things. There's either an invisible skill that's lacking. I was just in a school today consulting and there's a young man who has an IQ that's off the charts. It's literally untestable.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 8:18

I've tested a lot of kids. I have never tested a kid this bright, wow. And he wasn't even an evaluation case of me. I just wanted like to like satisfy my own curiosity. So like I pulled out the Stanford banana and I was trying one of the more challenging subtests. He's sealing out, meaning there were no more questions to ask him and he still was doing well, wow. But the very basics of how to read a situation he didn't have. This child is on the spectrum, so we have like a neurodiversity issue. So there we have a situation where it's like he lacks the skill to handle this. But if it wasn't that, if he was neurotypical, and yet we're seeing these baffling behaviors, that just doesn't make sense. We're going to assume that something is lacking that child's ability to be successful. If it isn't a skills deficit, then we're going to assume that something is lacking that child's ability to be successful. If it isn't a skills deficit, then we're looking at trauma.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 9:09

Okay, that makes sense.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 9:11

And that's what I'm always looking at. Do you get this Like seriously, looking at this boy and saying, like in the words of Dale Carnegie, do you know how to win friends and influence people? No, you do not. That's because we're dealing with a neuro-atypicalityity. Okay, we're going to teach you then how to win friends and influence people, because then you will do well in life. And if you can do that in a way that speaks to someone with that level of an iq, you can do that.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 9:33

But if not, if, if there's no neuro atypicality that's causing this, then and very often when that happens and I'm consulting in a school, I'll say something and the person will say, oh yeah, well, I mean, his grandma was his primary caregiver, like she was basically the parent in the home. She died two years ago, but he handled that fine. So one of two things either no, he didn't Right, and now you're starting to see it, or sometimes trauma actually happens in the future, not the past. So what happens is your brain has to hit the developmental stage to comprehend what happened to you, and then you first become traumatized. So maybe grandma died when he was six and he didn't understand the permanence of death, but now he's eight and a half and his brain can comprehend permanence and suddenly he's traumatized because it just happened. Grandma did not actually die two years ago. Grandma died yesterday because his brain finally caught up to what happened.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 10:32

I never thought about it that way. That makes so much sense.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 10:35

Right. And then we say they're being manipulative.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 10:37

Those things happen so often, you would wonder. Well, yes, this did happen, but it was a while ago, and so now it must be something new, something different, something current. I'd never thought about the brain catching up to that when it comes to developmentally being aware of a concept like death.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 10:55

It also sometimes is something new, in consonance with something that happened in the past. I consult in some high schools and I had a girl who had lost I feel like she lost her mother, maybe like in third grade. She came into ninth grade and suddenly she's saying things to teachers like, well, I couldn't do my paper because I was really sad because my mother died, and the teacher thinking like this happened last week, and then the school had this idea that she's being manipulative, like she's using her story to get away with something where I'm able to look at the teacher and say she's in a new situation, so it's new and unfamiliar, so she feels vulnerable and unsafe and unsure of her capacity to handle things. Maybe she's hearing friends say, yeah, so my mom and I sat down and we figured out a plan for this term paper together and it suddenly hit her that she doesn't have a mom to do that with. And now it's happening. Maybe her mother didn't die in third grade, maybe her mother died yesterday.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 11:53

Yeah.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 11:53

Right. So it's the new stressor coupled with the old fact together that now she's traumatized. And I actually, in that situation, sat down with a kid who I had never met before and I asked her. I said, like tell me about what's going on. And it's literally what she said. Like the principal is shocked that I like predicted it. She's like I'm in high school now and my friend's mothers are picking them up or they're going out, or there's like a one of the clubs in the school is having like a mother-daughter brunch and I have who to invite. Like I'll invite my aunt, but it's, I don't have a mother. It's hitting her now.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 12:30

It was something about the transition from elementary school to high school and maybe her brain maturing and becoming an adolescent that she was processing it now. So when the school understood that this is not an attempt at manipulation, this is something else entirely, their entire focus on her changed because the principal was going like I believe in tough love and accountability and we're not going to do her any favors if we let her go down this path. I said I believe in accountability, I believe in love, I believe in making people be responsible within the level that their brain is capable of handling. This is above that level.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 13:05

Yeah.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 13:05

Yeah and right. Trauma is too big for your brain to metabolize. This is too big.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 13:10

When those things happen, you do some target teaching with teachers. Let's say you have this child and they've had this trauma. I could only imagine how distracting and how difficult it is to be able to focus on learning when things like that are going through your brain and you're being brought into this trauma zone where maybe you're thinking about, like oh, they're talking about their mom and I'm sitting here and I'm supposed to be learning about addition and all I can think about is how I don't have my mom right now. How does a teacher cope with that when it comes to helping that child be able to learn and stay focused?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 13:45

It's such a good question. I find that kids actually do very well when you explain that to them. When you say to a child we want to stress you out to the point that you grow that analogy of how a muscle grows right, we mildly rip the muscle fiber so that more muscle fiber comes. Even third graders can get that, but high school kids can definitely get that. I want to stress you out a little bit. I want you to be in that zone of I'm trying, kind of failing, trying again Now I got it. I want you to be in that learning zone. But when you're in that stress zone where it's too much, I need you to be able to signal to me so that we can figure something out, so that we can come up with a plan and then, depending on the kid, we can individualize a plan of what we're going to do. So then the child has to know because if I help you with every little thing, then you never learn how to handle adversity. But when it's too big for you, you need to be able to tell me that when there is something on your brain. And I consult with a lot of schools and I had a school with a third grade class where the teacher was really having a hard time engaging them and there was just like the class was all over the place and there were a lot of kids coping with some serious adversity. The simplest thing that we switched was this idea that if anybody has something a little too big on their brain that's making it hard to learn During the first like 10 minutes of the day, like after the teacher did whatever she did to start the day. If you need to, you can go to the back of the room. There's an MP3 player you can talk into, like this recorder. You can talk your two big worry into it and then you can go down and then you can go back to your seat and the teacher is going to listen to it. At some point it became not even in the day, it became some point in the week and one we're two third grade classrooms. One teacher was like this, they're just going to be silly, they're going to whistle into it, they're going to this that. The other teacher was like we're going to try it. So she was willing to try and, yeah, you had one or two kids who blew off a little steam by making weird animal noises into the MP3 player and then sitting back down, great. So you got to play with the system. I don't mind Play with the system. This is what I want you to do, hey, if you make some weird farting sounds into the mp3 player and then you sit down, um, and then you're like ready to learn. Fabulous, right, right, like you got that out. Yeah, with farting glasses, I don't care.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 15:57

And then kids were saying their worries and we taught them this idea that you can sort of put your worries into a box, focus on what's going on in class, and then you tell that part of you like now I can check in with you later. And and then during social and emotional learning, we talked about the idea that whatever that worry was, that you said into the box do you have an adult that you can go to with that? Who are your adults in school? If it's a school-based issue, who are your adults at home? And here and there we figured out there were one or two kids who didn't have an adult at home. And then that meant now we know exactly how to refer them because like, oh, this kid needs much more support, we need to get the school counselor involved, because they're saying well, I would talk to my mom, but she's so stressed out about the divorce that, like if I tell her anything upsetting about the girl who's making fun of me, I won't sit next to me at recess. I'll stress her out too much.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:47

Yeah.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 16:48

So okay, that's why we have school counselors, like you just referred yourself.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:52

I think that sometimes teachers they're looking at an issue and they're wondering is this something that I can handle on my own? How do you know when it is too big for you and you need to go to the counselor or you need to bring in a professional into that situation to be able to help that traumatized child?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 17:09

So I think, the more we bring that social and emotional learning into the classroom, where the kids themselves are learning about their stress response, they're understanding the idea of zones of regulation, they're understanding how emotions function, they get all of that. They know how to lower an uncomfortable emotion if they need to, how to raise a positive emotion if they need to. Like they understand their own brains, like I call it the science of me, right, like that's what we're learning. I had this in a school where the principal's very into his fundamentals and he's like well, we teach. Like reading, writing, math, we teach. I was like psychology is a science. It's a soft science, but it's a science, trust me. I have a PhD from NYU. They teach stuff there. We don't flower a rage, right, like psychology is a science. This is psychology. We're going to learn how our brains work. The more we know how our brains work, the more we know how our bodies work, the more we can take ownership of that information.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 18:00

When a child says I get all of that and I still can't, that's when we say okay, you need a professional. So I try an intervention with a kid who's a perfectionist and I say you know what? What you're going to do is we all agree. So no one's going to be judging you. The teacher's giving out 10 math examples. You're only allowed to do eight of them and one of them has to be intentionally wrong and one of them has to be written in green crayon, right, whatever. And the kid's like I totally get it. The Mr Worry in my brain is bossing me around and I don't want to let Mr Worry that kid.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 18:29

Actually it was Professor Perfectionist. So like Professor Perfectionist is bossing me around, so I this was something I advised the teacher to do like, not as a therapist, as a school consultant. So you know, professor Perfectionist is bossing me around, I'm going to boss her around. I tried. I can't do it. All right, now we need a professional, because if it's too big for me to handle, then we need a professional. If that intervention like professor perfectionist and the teacher giving silly ideas of, like you're going to mess up, you're going to write it backwards and the kid can do it, great, then that's within the classroom setting, provided, of course, that we're freeing the teacher up to have an individual relationship with her students. If you have a teacher who's going from classroom to classroom with 60 kids in the class and she has 30 minutes to teach math, then we're not setting her or the kids up for success.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 19:13

No, you're not going to be able to have that connection or know your students well enough to be able to have those types of conversations and be aware of what is different for them when it comes to their behavior. I had a child whose father had died and every once in a while something would happen and he would get so angry and then you know, as you would approach him, he would go to the back of the room, sit in the corner and just cry and you couldn't even go near him. So at that point we would just allow him to have that space and calm down and he was able to rejoin the classroom when he knew he was calm again. But at that point, how does a teacher regain control of a class when something like that has happened? What kind of things would you recommend?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 19:58

So I think we make this mistake of thinking like kids don't notice things right. I like to talk about elephants in the room, so saying it looks like James's emotions got way too big for his body. We're going to give him time and what I like to do how I cue kids to get their attention back is show me without words that you're interested in what I have to say.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 20:16

Oh right, and then like, automatically shoulders go up, back and down, whatever. And then I say, now show me that you're interested in what I have to say on steroids and I teach them to like, sparkle their eyes at me. Oh, you know, I do that. I always do this idea where I want to give ownership to the kids. So I always say to them you think that your teacher teaches you, but you actually teach your teacher, because when you sit there and you look like you're ready to learn and you sparkle your eyes, then you're teaching me that you are a student that I want to engage with, that you want to learn.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 20:47

When a kid says to me my teacher plays favorites, I say okay, did you teach her that you're her favorite? Yet it's on you to teach her that. You can teach her that you sparkle your eyes at her. You sit there in class with a listening posture. Most teachers yeah, will there be some outliers who honestly went into teaching for all the wrong reasons. Of course I can't account for all of that, but on the whole, most teachers teach because they really like teaching kids. So you teach her to like you, she will like you.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 21:14

So I say that to the class. I say we're going to give him the space to contain his emotions. The rest of us you're going to show me without words that you're interested and you're going to do him the respect of giving him his space, and then I would have a conversation with him about everything he did right in that situation. You know, you were really mad. You're mad, got so big and instead of lashing out and hurting someone, you went to the back of the room. You made that really good choice. That's amazing. That's an amount of self-regulation that some grownups don't have.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 21:43

So how can social emotional learning then be a factor that prevents a stressful situation from becoming traumatic?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 21:52

So I like to really have kids understand their stress response and understand the idea that when something's stressful, it's not dangerous. Right, we have to get comfortable. Being uncomfortable when it's dangerous is when it feels too big, too much, too fast and I'm all alone in coping with it. If I have those factors, that means I need the help of someone else and there's no shame in that. That means like if I'm smart, I'm going to get help.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 22:18

When I'm dealing with something that's too big, too much, too fast, the first thing I do is outsource some of it. Right, I try to like recruit help. That's my go-to strategy. So when we teach them their brains and they get it, then they can say that back to us. Like they can say you know, I was feeling kind of overwhelmed so I pushed off starting this project and now I'm really behind. What should I do about it when they know that it doesn't lead to the level? This is too much and I just give up and I can't. And it's so noxious and I'm just running away because they have words to put on their experience, the idea of having like a mixed emotion, the idea of feeling you know less than or not good enough compared to the other kids, the more they have words for that, or even like the social skill of how do I resolve a problem with a friend.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 23:09

I have a technique of five ways you can answer back when people are starting relational aggression, where they're starting to mess with you, like, and you want to keep it at the level of a game before it becomes bullying, right? So I look at it as a game of tennis. You know, you serve the ball to me, I want to serve the ball right back to you, so there's a serve and return. So you threw that comment out at me and I immediately had a response to throw it back to you and we kept it at that playful level. So it never turned into the fist fight and the I'm being bullied and no one in the grade likes me and no one wants to sit next to me because we kept it at that level.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 23:41

The more they know this stuff, the less we have to deal with like power struggles, classroom dynamics. You know the undercurrent of tension in the room because there was some sort of a fight at recess and now we're sitting and like nobody's ready. You know when I notice an undercurrent of tension in a room. When I come in to do social, emotional learning in schools, I ask the kids like sounds like there's stuff on people's minds, what's going on? Like, yeah, let's you know, let's clear the air. And then I always have. We have two options. We can clear the air and put the worries away and focus. We can resolve this right now. Or we can make our bodies feel better to make our brains ready for learning. What do you guys want to do? Those are always your three options.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 24:18

How do you make your bodies feel better to be able to move on without talking about it?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 24:22

So movement right, like we're going to do jumping jacks until we're out of breath and then we're going to breathe in for four, hold for four and blow out as far in the ABC as I can get Right. We're going to do a lion face and then we're going to relax. We're going to do I'm Julia Cook has some cute ones in her books for like you do, push, pull, dangle. Like push down on your chair as hard as you can, pull up on your chair as hard as you can, and then you dangle. You know, and the idea is okay. Now my body feels calmer and better, so my brain is ready to work.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 24:49

The problem is still the problem, but it's a little distant. It's not quite as large. And then I asked him does it seem as large? You're all freaking out about this. You know this final that you just found out about, or this term paper, or this canceled trip, or whatever. Does it seem as big as before? We started. And then I just threw that in and then I go on with the lesson, like it's like a little nugget and then I go on with the lesson.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 25:16

I like that. I've not heard of those before in relation to being able to address tension in the room, to have that physical. I've done the brain gym activities when students get tired or disinterested or you've been sitting for too long, but I like connecting it to something that is causing them some tension within the room to handle it a little bit differently.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 25:35

Yeah, I like to really remind them that anger identifies a problem. Problems are things with solutions. Right, Every problem has a solution. Therefore, people can't be problems because people can't be solved. Oh, I like that. So the fight is not you versus me. Like you cheated, you didn't cheat. The problem becomes one of difference of opinions regarding the rules. I like that Right or difference of opinions regarding how we measure what constitutes out or not Nice.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:00

Yes, right.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 26:00

Well, that's really what we're arguing about, or like insufficient resources, right? One court, two classes that both want it. So this is not a class B is a terrible class and we're class A and we hate them. We only have one court that two classes want to use. What's an equitable way that we can figure this out for the future, so that we don't waste every single recess fighting over the court?

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:21

Right, nice. And then, when you think about teachers having trauma and being able to manage the stress and emotions that they are going through, how can teachers manage their own traumas and stresses so that it does not affect their teaching? So I think the first thing is going back to.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 26:40

Teachers are just grown up kids, right? Yeah, I think in the 80s we did a lot of like defining trauma out of existence, like, oh, I'm not traumatized, it wasn't that bad, I'm fine, and we thought that that was healthy and strong. That's not healthy and strong If you don't have emotions. Your emotions have you right. Yeah, if you're feeling traumatized and you're feeling stressed, I think as a responsible teacher who really wants to connect, you have to make yourself available to be present. If you're present with your trauma, you're not present with your students. And that means handling and addressing your trauma. That might mean going to therapy, that might mean journaling, that might mean talking it out with you know some sort of an advisor who isn't like a formal therapist. But the idea is, because trauma does happen in the future, you might suddenly become traumatized by something that happened years ago and now you're overwhelmed. Talking it through, sorting that through in your brain, taking that experience that's too big to metabolize and breaking it down and digesting it, means that experience doesn't have to keep knocking at the door.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 27:39

Something I show adults a lot is, you know, the beginning of the Harry Potter movie, when they're trying to deliver the letter from Hogwarts to Harry Potter. Yeah, so they're trying to deliver the letter and Harry has this evil uncle that doesn't want to let the letter get delivered. So the uncle, like, nails down the mailbox. So then it starts coming in through the chimney. So he nails shut the chimney, so it starts coming in through the window. Right, and because it's a magical letter, it can. It has you know many, many, many ways to come in. When you don't want to accept the letter, the letter is going to keep on coming. If you just open the door and take the letter, the letter stops coming. So if trauma is knocking at your door saying like, hi, I'm here, let it in, and be like, yeah, that was messed up, there are people who are right now becoming traumatized about COVID.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 28:22

Wow.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 28:23

Because we were in survival mode for a lot of families and it was just like weird, like my gosh, where's my next paycheck coming from? How am I working and having my kids home and managing their education and managing all of these stressors. And then, like the world went back to normal and now that their brains feel safe, they're saying like suddenly now they're feeling all this tension and stress that they didn't feel because now they're safe enough to feel it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 28:50

You just get into that survival mode like you're autopilot, you just get through, and then, when you're done with it, all of a sudden it's like now you're tired, now you're exhausted, now you're looking back, going how did I ever do that? And it is. It's that survival mode. And then that reflection, that moment when you get to kind of like, oh my gosh, I'm going to finally stop for a moment.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 29:14

Then it seems to catch up with you, yeah, and that's when you have to do something about it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 29:16

You have a book called Post-Traumatic Parenting and you teach parents how to handle their own life's trauma so they can model great resilience for their own children. And so can you talk about the concept of post-traumatic parenting and then your hopes for the future.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 29:30

Yeah.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 29:31

So Post-Traumatic Parenting is, like I said, the book that I wanted to read when I became a mom. I remember when I gave birth to my oldest daughter and right, I'm a clinical child psychologist and I remember the nurses in the hospital saying to me like, oh my gosh, wow, she's the luckiest kid in the world. She's being raised by someone who, like, literally at that point I was doing research on temperament based parenting and I remember having this thought of like poor kid she has me for a mom and my PTSD, like my damage, is definitely going to damage her. So I needed this book. So when I was working on the book, I started to realize that trauma does impact our parenting in certain specific and predictable ways. But when we acknowledge those ways and when we actively and mindfully say, oh, that's the trauma app in my brain that was born from my trauma. It's trying to make me feel safe again and therefore it's making me do these parenting behaviors that I know are inconsistent with my values. So I need to recognize the trauma app, recognize what it's doing and sort of shut off its permissions because I will make me feel safe again.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 30:46

Like to give a concrete example, I had this with a mom who herself was a literacy educator and her son was dyslexic and she became obsessed with teaching him how to read. So she was drilling and killing phonics and she knew that this is not how our brains learn, like there's a point where his brain has reached saturation. I've got to let him be a kid, I've got to let him play. But her trauma app in her brain was there's a problem, fix it, close the tab, make it better. This has to stop, because her trauma taught her that when there is a problem, you have to solve it immediately. So she was relating to her son as a problem instead of her son as a dyslexic child who will eventually learn how to read. But it's going to be a bumpy road because when you have this, I suppose particularly he had surface dyslexia, which meant phonics instruction anyway wasn't going to work, but that was a separate conversation.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 31:40

But her brain was like anytime she wasn't trying to actively teach him how to read, she felt panicky, like she could be making dinner, which is what a mom should be doing and she's feeling guilty because she's not drilling him reading right now. Yeah, because her trauma app was like if he can't read by the time he's a grown up, really bad things are going to happen, like he's in second grade. Children grow up slowly. You have time. There are many, many, many paths to reading. He will learn how to read, particularly if you don't make it noxious and you don't drill and kill and you work with him and you work with a reading specialist, you'll get there. But her trauma app couldn't let her let it go, and she knew this. She was so frustrated with herself and that's where we go. Oh, this is not you, it's your trauma, right, you're not parenting your kid right now. Your trauma is.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 32:34

You're not teaching your child, your trauma is. That's pretty profound. I look at ACEs and I think to myself it's life. We don't get out of life without events. When it comes down to death, possibly poverty, there's so many different parts that we at some point come to.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 32:49

Yeah, I think there's also in the book I have a chapter on something I call S ACEs, which is secret ACEs.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 32:56

So there's a lot of things that aren't on the ACE list that are just as traumatic you know having really critical and cold parents, having a parent who's a functional alcoholic so right, there's no poverty and in fact the family looks perfect on the surface. Right, but does that home feel safe? We think of the four S's of attachment. Right, we want our kids to feel safe, soothed, seen and secure. Does the child have any of those things in a home with a functional alcoholic for a parent? But it's secret because nobody's in prison and no one's in poverty and nobody's. You know, we haven't moved six times and nobody's beating anybody, maybe with words, maybe behind closed doors, but there's no safety in that home. Everybody's walking on eggshells, everybody's scurrying around being afraid to be seen. That child can also be traumatized. We can see the aces, right. Very often you look at a family and, like you know, you see a kid who comes to school with a bruise. You know there's trauma there.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 33:53

Right.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 33:53

You know, assuming it's not like a bruise from gymnastics, but that somebody was beating that kid and we can mobilize. Yeah, do you see? Those invisible bruises of my mom just subjected me to a tirade for an hour about, not, you know, washing the dishes?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 34:16

precisely the way she wanted them, watched and told me that I'm like a waste of oxygen and she wishes she never gave birth to me. And I'm in third grade. You're not going to see those bruises.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 34:21

No, you're not so silent, aces, there's a lot of good stuff in your book. It comes out next year.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 34:24

It comes out in 2025.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 34:26

Yeah, okay, all right, and there's an ebook right now.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 34:35

So now I have an ebook just to start people people off on managing your trauma, like just like a post-traumatic parent survival guide, like the way you start, because I think for a lot of people it's traumatic to acknowledge that they're traumatized. I would agree, right, yes.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 34:45

It's like oh yeah, that was so messed up. I've had this in so many parenting classes where someone will say, or even when I go to a school and I'm speaking about trauma and a teacher will come up to me and she'll say, yeah, let's say my mom telling me that I'm I'm a waste of space in third grade. Now that I teach third grade, third graders are really little. Yeah, like I wouldn't speak that way to a third grader. Does that mean I'm traumatized? And it's like you actually just became traumatized when you realized that that was very messed up and no, you're not a waste of space and your mom should not have said that to you. That's not okay. And now we can start the healing process.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 35:21

You have so many different things that you do to support and educate parents and teachers, your website. You have not only your therapy practice. You've got classes, target parenting, target teaching seminars that you offer. You've got your eBooks. You have to tell us how to get the eBook. You also have a podcast on post-traumatic parenting and you've got a YouTube channel. So how can people find it?

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 35:46

So the podcast and the YouTube channel are both Post-Traumatic Parenting, so there's a theme here. So they can just find it like that. My website is drrobincoslowitz. com. When you go to the website, I'm pretty sure there's a pop-up that says if you sign up for our newsletter, you get the free ebook. I'm also on Instagram at @Drk oslowitzp sychology, and that's really where the Post-Traumatic Parenting community hangs out.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 36:09

I have much more one-on-one interaction with people, like through the DMs, through the posts. It's also where I go to let people ask me questions and that generates what we're actually talking about, like how do I handle my five-year-old who's way too exuberant, so that we can give those answers from that post-traumatic parenting lens, because I find that post-traumatic parents really struggle with I don't want to be punitive like my parents. Traumatic parents really struggle with I don't want to be punitive like my parents, but on the other hand, I do have to teach my child skills on how to handle life. So how do I manage that? Because my trauma app is like oh no, no, no, no, you're heading into like abusive territory. Don't ever do that. So how do we balance that?

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 36:46

Right, I would like to end with your words Our traumas can either be our greatest problem or our greatest superpower. Knowing how to relate to our trauma can help us grow as people and as parents, and I found a lot of hope in those words. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about trauma and to give us all of your insights.

Dr. Robin Koslowitz: 37:07

Thank you so much for having me. I love the way your podcast really helps teachers who are just passionate about education and want to keep doing it better and better. Because I feel like the teachers want to be able to succeed. We just have to give them the tools and free them up to be able to do that.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 37:28

If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahassler. com, or visit my website at www. drlisahassler. com and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.