Free Resources and Tools for Social Workers, Counselors, Teachers and Professionals Who Work with Challenging Children and Adolescents

Stop Blaming Kids! And Start Understanding When a Child's Stress Response Goes Awry In this article John Micsak shares stages of the Stress (or threat) Response System. Since trauma is often experienced in the body as a physiological arousal, adults who work with children need to understand that these body sensations and emotions are overwhelming for children and are generally out of their conscious control.

Sunshine Sheets This valuable resource helps children who are moving into dysregulation (overwhelming stress) to have a tool to center themelves and keep their body and mind system in balanced. Sunshine sheets are also important as it helps the child understand that their history of negative life events does not define who they are and there are other aspects of their life and about them that were positive.

Time In Time out is a behavioral strategy based on a belief that kids act out for attention. Time in is a relational strategy based on fulfilling a biological imperative and is based on the belief that kids act out because they need attention. When a child is acting out, she has gone through her window of tolerance; therefore she needs an adult presence to assist bringing her back into regulation.