By Ben Chandler

Traumatic events in children’s lives can create toxic stress that has a long-term impact on their health. Toxic stress—for example, strong, frequent and prolonged adversity such as abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, or exposure to violence—is not something children just “get over” without support.

Two decades of research show that kids who experience what are now termed Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, are much more likely to experience chronic illness in adulthood—lung cancer, COPD and diabetes, for example—and even to die prematurely.

Adults Can Help Build Resilience

A groundbreaking grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky to the Bounce Coalition based in Louisville, Kentucky, however, shows that exposure to ACEs don’t have to define a child’s future.

Moreover, results of the six-year grant show that adults don’t have to be child health professionals to help kids build the kind of resilience that can mitigate long-term health impacts.

The Foundation grant funded Bounce training and resilience support strategies and interventions at three Jefferson County elementary schools and for 1,000 YMCA of Greater Louisville staff members who provide before and after-school care.

The success of the program led Jefferson County Public Schools to incorporate Bounce training for district-wide professional development. And Louisville Metro now requires the training for youth care worker certification and externally funded agency executives.

Shift in Thinking

Abuse, neglect, bullying, witnessing violence and parental drug use or incarceration can cause toxic stress that literally rewires a child’s developing brain. This can lead children to adopt risky behaviors, such as drinking, overeating and smoking to manage their emotions.

Recognizing that—understanding that the disruptive behaviors may emanate from trauma—can lead adults to approach youth from a new perspective of “what happened to you?” rather than “what’s wrong with you?” This achieves better results and prevents re-traumatization that could deepen the child’s trauma.

What does this look like in real life? Caring adults who offer a physically and emotionally safe place for the child to play, learn and express what’s going on in their lives. Caring adults who focus on children’s strengths and work to build their confidence. Caring adults who help struggling kids make decisions about better ways to express sadness, frustration and anger. And caring adults who hear children out and give them choices, whenever possible, to help them feel empowered.

That doesn’t mean that kids with a history of trauma should be allowed to misbehave or hurt themselves or others. Clear, consistent and fair expectations are essential. But those expectations must be established and communicated with compassion. Bounce training teaches de-escalation strategies that make everyone feel safer. And the program teaches adults in all kinds of caring professions the importance of self-care to address secondary trauma that often results from on-going exposure to the trauma of others.

Just One Person

Bounce co-leader B.J. Adkins is often heard quoting research demonstrating that every child needs the consistent presence of just one caring adult, the single most effective resilience-building factor.

Now that Bounce has established a successful ACEs program in the urban area of Louisville, the Foundation is funding implementation of the program in rural Kentucky—in the Lake Cumberland region through the district health department and in Russell County Schools.

In addition, training on ACEs is expanding to hospitals, faith communities and businesses—all the places where people who’ve experienced adversity can be better supported through a healing-centered, trauma-informed approach.

Together, these demonstration projects are providing strategies and tools to help children experiencing ACEs to thrive, and giving them an opportunity to live healthier lives. As parents, neighbors, educators and friends, we can build on that work by being one more caring adult for every child we encounter and love in our lives.

-Ben Chandler is president and CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

Adverse Childhood Experiences are common, are associated with health problems as an adult