As a child in school, I remember doing air raid drills when I was in elementary school but they faded away. We crawled under our desks and covered our heads but never really understood why we did the drill. Do our children understand why we have to do active shooter drills?

When can we move past the idea that a child is just naughty or behaving badly to understand trauma may have impacted this child’s learning and behavior? I have worked with many children who were constantly in fight or flight mode.

When a significant event occurs such as divorce, the death of a parent, or physical and/or mental abuse we tell ourselves that the “children are resilient and will pull through.” Children are resilient, but they still need tools that will help them cope with the trauma. Often what we believe are children being resilient is really a child packing away what happened and not addressing their feelings.