One of the first lessons in training to work with troubled children is all children have an intense need to be listened to and to be heard. However, few trainings provide workers with the essential tools to really hear difficult children. As important as fundamental active listening skills are with most individuals, troubled young people pose a greater challenge. We know that when there are a variety of components of communicating a message—words used, emphasis placed on the words, cadence, volume and intonation. The very same words can have opposite meanings depending on how they are expressed. As complicate as the verbal component of a message is, there is also the all-important non-verbal communication. This includes facial expression, body stance, hand gestures to name a few. In everyday life most people chose words to communicate what they mean. But this is often not the case with children who have emotional and behavioral disorders. For these children being truly heard is not often a matter of understanding their verbal message. It may be helpful to consider the analogy of an iceberg when translating a troubled child’s message – what you see on the surface is only a small part of the message that is hidden beneath.
Understanding the Young Person
The goal in all communication is understanding the message. When our goal is to understand troubled children, it can be more complex than in other situations. It is seldom helpful with troubled children to focus solely on the words they use. Sophisticated computer have been programmed to understand verbal language. However, it has been a very difficult task to program a computer to understand words used as sarcasm, irony or to express humor. Troubled children use words as tools to send a variety of messages such as: leave me alone, threatening people, intent to self-harm, confusing adults and manipulation to get something. Our job as staff is to take the words and combine all the other forms of communication to come up with what the true message from the young person is.
Understanding young people also involves translating behavior as well as words. Many troubled children send messages through behavior rather than words. The principles of translating behavior are basically the same as with words. To translate behavior accurately you will need to drill down below the surface behavior and ask, ‘What is the meaning of this behavior?’ It is best to consider several possibilities and when you arrive at a theory, then test it out but be ready to adjust your translation. All behavior has meaning, your job is to find the meaning of this behavior with this child—in other words effectively translating the child’s message.
Speaking in Opposites
A good place to start is one of the most common themes of young people suffering from trauma—they often verbally say the opposite of what they mean. Adults have a bad habit with children of tuning in more to the words than the meaning of the message. This is especially true with young people damaged by trauma. This is also a frequent dynamic with normal teenagers. For example, what teen has not said something like, “I wish my parents would back off and let me live my life.” However, the presence and the structure from good parents is not only necessary but quietly appreciated by most teenagers. Traumatized children take this theme to the extreme, “I hate you!” may mean “I am starting to care about you and that makes me vulnerable.” “I don’t want to be a part of this family” can often mean “I hope you will accept someone like me.” When these children say one thing and mean quite the opposite, it is the job of the adult to hear the true message or the child will go on feeling alone and anxious. It is never the fault of a child when he or she is traumatized, and the child deserves to be truly heard, and their pain and needs acknowledged. You will only be able to do this if you understand the secret code they use—consider the opposite of what is being said to help understand the true message.
Speaking in opposites is not the only illogical theme troubled children have. They also have a range of behaviors that seem to be the opposite of what they truly want. Examples include: acting violently to elicit caring from adults, pushing others away to get closer to them, creating chaos when they want stability, engaging in self-harm when they want safety, and trying to ruin their lives when what they really want is to be saved from a negative spiral. More on these issues can be found at the following link.
Getting to the Problem
A reasonable person would agree that the first step in solving a problem is to know what the problem is. However, adults often skip this step when they address issues with troubled children. Understanding that troubled children often speak in opposites is only one of many tools to use when considering the message of these children. It is always a good idea to pause a moment and ask what the child is really telling you, not necessarily with words but with their energy and their non-verbal messages. When adults do this, they may be able to translate the following verbal messages into real issue:
Verbal statement Actual message
I hate being around you I am starting to like you and it makes me vulnerable
I am a bad person Please help me see the good person inside
I don’t want to live here This is the safest place I have ever lived
You want too much from me I am not used to adults believing in me
You don’t really care about me I’m lost if you give up on me
All staff at Jasper Mountain learn how to understand the words and the behaviors of our population. We go through this process when we do the Neurological Reparative Therapy Protocol to develop individualized interventions for children. We start with considering what symptom we want to work on. Then we consider what the child may be saying to us with problem symptom behavior. It is our job to address serious problem behavior but we must first ask what the true problem is. Violent behavior that results in containment holds may actually mean the child needs more positive touch. Sexual acting out may mean the child does not know how to make healthy contact with other children. Attempts at self-harm may be a message the child needs to feel more protected against harm.
In the NRT protocol we also discuss whether during stress the child speaks in opposites, which is often the case with our population. Next we review the child’s background and what brought the child to our program. Combining the translating of what the child is actually telling us, along with whether the child is speaking in opposites with words and reviewing the early trauma experiences often helps us to see that illogical behavior can make perfect sense to the child. Our job is to listen not just to the verbal message but the deeper message of problem behavior. It is then that we can take the step of interventions that address the real problem.
How You are Being Perceived is Important
It is not always easy to know how a Jasper child is perceiving you because when they follow your directions this may be a bad sign that they are fearful of you and if they challenge you, this may be a positive sign that they don’t believe you will hurt them. So like everything working with this population it takes some work to understand what you are dealing with. In general trouble children view adults either with suspicion or anxiety. This makes sense with a history of trauma. How the child is perceiving you may have a major influence how they feel and act toward you. There are some themes that can be helpful in figuring this out. Generally troubled children put adults who come into their lives into four categories. All four are basically negative due to the child’s past experience with adults. Although all four are negative, only three are perceptions you need to be concerned about and work to change. Here are the four:
Safety Threat – Being perceived as a threat may gain compliance but no treatment will take place if the child is on alert due to safety. Some signs the child is viewing you as a threat may be overly compliant, hypervigilant, signs of fear and keep their distance from you. You must present as a safe person or you cannot help the child.
Interpersonal Threat – Although negative, this is the only category where you can help the child. What the child thinks is you are a barrier to what they want with your rules and directions. What you want is for the child to realize that getting what they want goes through you and some form of a relationship will be required. When children are hostile, challenging, irritable and phony sweet and caring, these are all signs you are actually on the right track.
Easy Mark – If this is the way the child views you, there will be a constant battle because they neither respect you or take you seriously. What they will do is see if they can control you. Some signs you are being viewed as a easy mark include: unrelenting demands, constant resistance, frequent testing, expressing disrespect or even disgust. The best way to not be seen as an easy mark is to be firm and sure of yourself.
Irrelevant – It is easy to know if you are being viewed as irrelevant. The child simply does not take you seriously by ignoring you, being unresponsive, and showing apathy. You cannot make an impact on the child and be viewed as irrelevant.
Understanding the Impacts of Trauma Assist in Translating
You can spend years working with individuals who have experienced trauma and there will always be more to learn. But a few highlights can help in effectively translating emotions and behaviors. Trauma negatively impacts not only how a child perceived you, but also him or herself, and the world in general. Knowing this can be very helpful in understanding what is behind the child’s real message.
Emotional impacts include:
- Dysregulated – overemotional
- Defensive – ‘Why is everyone out to get me?’
- Depressed – things are going badly or they soon will be
- Irritable – anger is just waiting to come out
- Reactive – always ready for trouble
- Impulsive – act first think later
- Defeatist – why try I will only lose again
Behavioral impacts include:
- Aggression – if its fight or flight, then I choose fight
- Selfish – its everyone for yourself in this world
- Lying, cheating and stealing – the end always justifies the means
- Demanding – I will wear you out until you give in like all adults I have known
- Sexualized – this can be able connection, stress, or control but seldom about sex
- Covert – I don’t want anyone knowing who I am or what I am about
- Avoidance – the safest way to avoid being hurt is to avoid everyone
Translating is not an Intervention, it is a Method of Assessment to Inform Interventions
Accurately hearing the child is helpful in itself and gives the message to the child that you know what he or she is going through and you can enough to look for the real issue. Although our children often feel vulnerable and exposed when their truth is known by an adult, the child also learns that every child needs supportive adults to be safe and meet their needs. The therapeutic trade off that cannot be avoided is the child learns that getting their needs met requires vulnerability to adults. For the program to get to this point with every child will require not only that the child experiences safety but also acceptance, belonging and at least primitive trust (which is the experience of striking out at an adult in words or behavior and not having the adult retaliate). Seldom is Jasper Mountain the first step on the path to getting help for the children we work with. Typically many adults have tried to help and it has not been enough and at times has even made the true problem worse. Most of the time this is because they were trying to solve the wrong problem. Our job as professionals is to truly understand the child, hear their real message they are sending us with their words and behavior and provide them so hope through effective interventions.
The translation process can be viewed as the assessment phase of the process because it will inform the interventions. Even when the child experiences vulnerability with being truly heard, translation is a step toward connection and trust. But translating is essential to inform interventions to work on the underlying and true problem.
Translating is Only One Component of Being an Effective Staff Person
Understanding the Jasper Mountain child is only the beginning of the help we want to provide. Objective research has consistently shown that it is not the technique you use when helping a child but more importantly who you are and how you connect with the child. One of the great advantages of working with troubled children is the opportunity for personal growth—your personal growth. Here is a list of characteristics that will help you be successful in your role: safe, consistent, clear, unruffled, firm, smart and confident in yourself. But here are a few more personal traits of a successful staff.
- Able to be firm in a loving way
- Able to admit mistakes to model for the child both taking responsibility and an making an apology
- Able to meet the child more than half-way
- Modeling always working on yourself
- Don’t lose your energy, your humor or your excitement of helping others while growing as an individual
Test
- With the goal of hearing the message of Jasper children you neither want to ignore their words entirely or overly rely on the content of the words. T or F (T)
- What is not one of the child’s goals in verbal messages to adults? (d)
- Keeping adults distant
- Confusing adults
- Controlling adults
- Showing vulnerability
- You show disrespect to a Jasper child if you do not take their words at face value. T or F (F)
- Which one of the following is not likely a cause of violent behavior in our children? (c)
- I have learned that the most aggressive person usually comes out on top
- I need more physical contact particularly touch
- I am acting violently so you will seriously injure me
- I need negative attention and you can’t ignore violent behavior
- What is a potential translation of a child saying, “I hope you get this virus and die a horrible death?” (d)
- I am anxious that this virus will make one or both of us sick.
- I am feeling close to you and being vulnerable scares me.
- I look forward to you being on the shift but I don’t want you to know this.
- All of the above
- In what order does the Neurological Reparative Therapy protocol happen: (b)
- Target symptom, history, translations, Intervention and statements under stress
- Target symptom, translations, statements under stress, history, interventions
- History, target symptom, translation and interventions
- Determine the problem, develop interventions and use translating to see if the plan works
- Your goal with a troubled child is to be viewed as an interpersonal threat and when the child is hostile and challenging you, these are often positive signs. T or F (T)
- What are common results of trauma? (a)
- Aggression, fear, non-compliance, hopelessness
- Empathy, non-discriminant trust, excessive attachment
- Excessive personal confidence, fixation on the future, being overly honest
- Compulsively positive, unable to express negative emotions, superficially happy
- Translating the words and behavior of troubled child can best be described as: [c]
- A highly effective intervention producing positive change in troubled children
- A process of finding a common language so troubled children can understand expectations
- A type of assessment to inform a plan to help a troubled child
- Something adults have to do because troubled children are not very expressive
- Avoid any form of an apology to a troubled child or you could lose some very important respect. T or F (F)