Pathways Youth & Family Services offers TBRI training to anyone interested in understanding how past traumas contribute to fear-based behaviors, and how connection plays a role in building a child/caregiver relationship and provides strategies for correcting behaviors of a child with complex needs.
If you welcomed a child into your home through foster or kinship care, there is a chance you understand the level of patience needed to interact with a child who has experienced some form of trauma. Just the fact that they are no longer in their home with a parent is traumatic in itself, and then there is the reason or event that caused them to come into care in the first place.
Through TBRI training you will learn three basic principles. Principle one focuses on connecting to the child. Every person born is wired to have attachment needs as their brain develops in the first year of life. Sadly, not all children have had the opportunity to develop and experience attachment properly. For example, a crying baby is nonverbally telling their caregiver they need to be held or nurtured. A secure attachment is created when a child’s needs are met repetitively. When that need is not met consistently, the ability to attach and trust is damaged.
The behavior manifesting from this attachment-style may, in the long term, look like bullying, oppositional behaviors, clinginess, or bursts of anger. TBRI touches on attachment strategies that will require time, effort, and investment on the caregiver’s part. Finding a way to connect to your child builds a foundation on which to create understanding and positively influence behavior. The four attachment styles are discussed more in depth during this training.
Principle two focuses on empowering your child through self-regulation. This part of the training discusses physical and internal needs like hydration and nutrition. Kids can become dysregulated when these physical needs are not met properly, which in turn affects brain development and behavior. It might seem like a topic that does not need addressing because the assumption is that we are all in tune with what our bodies need. That is not the case for children who have gone through trauma, adversity, and have not experienced optimal development. Imagine you and your child spent the afternoon at the zoo, and they become unruly and combative in the car. Someone who has learned to self-regulate might ask for a snack and a drink without resorting to destructive behaviors. A child who has not developed these skills will not. Principle two helps us understand where our children are coming from, addresses sensory concerns, teaches the adult to empower the child to think about what they need, and then teaches the child to self-regulate.
After gaining insight into the impact of trauma on brain development and understanding the role of self-regulation in behavior problems, principle three then focuses on correcting. If you are a foster parent and cannot understand why the correcting strategies you use with your biological children do not work with your foster child, there is a reason. TBRI teaches us that we cannot successfully correct someone until there is trust. This principle continues the discussion of how to disarm fear-based behaviors and offers suggestions for IDEAL—Immediate, Direct, Efficient, Action-based, and Leveled— responses directed towards the behavior. Parents will also learn about the power of “re-do’s”, giving choices, compromises, and mindfulness of red flag behaviors.
TBRI is designed to meet the needs of vulnerable children and youth with complex developmental trauma through an attachment-based, trauma-informed lens. This training will provide an understanding of the biological effects of trauma and provides caregivers a road map on how to build trust and correct behavior. Thanks to the research conducted by the Karyn Purvis Institute, caregivers will learn connecting principles for attachment, empowering principles to address self-regulation, and correcting principles to disarm fear-based behaviors.
This training is open to caregivers and anyone who interacts with children or has a need to understand why children with trauma display certain behaviors. If you are interested in learning more, you can contact Pathways’ TBRI practitioner by emailing mhipsher@mosaic-consult.com.
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