1. Attachment and School: What
Counts as Success?
Lessons from a trauma-focused RTC
Robert Burroughs, PhD, Research Fellow, Calo
ATTACh conference, September 25, 2015, Minneapolis, MN

2. Learning Objectives
1) Identify the problems that school poses for
students with trauma and attachment issues.
2) Discuss the limitations in conventional school
approaches with traumatized children.
3) Describe a process for determining definitions of
“school success” for traumatized children.
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3. The Road Map
• The problems that school poses for
children with trauma and attachment
• Why conventional school interventions are
less likely to work with traumatized
children
• How relationship-based instruction can
help traumatized children in school
• How parents and teachers can negotiate
school success
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4. How do we learn?
•All learning is based in
social interaction
•Social interaction is
based on relationship
•Learning is based upon
relationship
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5. Classroom Learning Requires:
•Safety
•Trust
•Community
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6. Our students’ core beliefs
• Because of our students’ core beliefs, they
struggle with safety, trust, and community.
– “I won’t try, because then I can’t fail”
– “I don’t trust teachers”
– “Once I get close to teachers, I push them away”
– “If I‘m having success, that makes me anxious”
– “I’m stupid”
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7. How Trauma Affects Attention
• Students are hyper-vigilant in school, since the
world is unsafe to them.
• Hyper-vigilance creates anxiety, which
compromises students’ abilities to:
–Concentrate on tasks
–Mentally process information
–Have relationships with peers and teachers
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8. Shame + Anxiety = ?
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9. The Road Map
• The problems that school poses for
children with trauma and attachment
• Why conventional school interventions are
less likely to work with traumatized
children
• How relationship-based instruction can
help traumatized children in school
• How parents and teachers can negotiate
school success
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10. The Difficulties of
School Organization (Smith, 2010)
• External vs Internal
• School organized around schedules, curriculum, rules
• Child’s internal need for control to feel safe
• Group Activities
• Most activities of school are group-based
• Child has to deal with multiple people as once, stimulating anxiety
• Delayed Gratification
• Approval, achievement, report cards = delayed gratification
• Child focuses on gratification in the moment to stay safe
• Dual Role of teachers
• Teachers are dispensers of resources + limit-setters
• Child sees limits as arbitrary and unworthy of respect
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11. The Difficulties with Conventional
School Inventions (Smith, 2010)
• Behavioral Evaluations
• The either/or nature of evaluating behavior: eg, good/bad
• From child’s POV: child’s behavior has a strategic purpose
• Conventional Behavior Plans
• Behavior plans are based on consistency
• Child’s POV: plan is “worked” for child’s goals
• Rewards and incentives often have little impact
• Zero Tolerance
• Runs the risk of an escalating cycle of consequences
• From child’s POV: school becomes a power struggle
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12. How “Core Beliefs” Receive…
• Correction/Criticism
• Irrelevance to student’s goal of safety
• Confirmation of negative self image
• Praise
• Challenges core belief, which causes anxiety
• Confirmation that teacher can’t be trusted
• Success
• Challenges core belief, which causes anxiety
• Triggers “sabotage” to restore core belief
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13. The Road Map
• The problems that school poses for
children with trauma and attachment
• Why conventional school interventions are
less likely to work with traumatized
children
• How relationship-based instruction can
help traumatized children in school
• How parents and teachers can negotiate
school success
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14. Relationship-based Learning
• Current socio-cognitive theories of
learning (e.g., Bruner, 1990) stress the
importance of learning in the context of
others.
• At CALO, relationship is at the center of
everything we do.
• Because developmental trauma is
created in relationship (abuse,
neglect, inconsistency), it can be
healed only in relationship.
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15. CALO’s clinical model
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16. Commitment
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•We begin with Commitment on the
care-giver’s part.
•For CALO, that is the parent,
guardian, or primary attachment
figure that commits to sending their
child to us and commits to working
with us in the goal of reuniting at
treatment’s end.
•It begins also with our commitment
as caregivers to treat the child, to
“go the distance,” as we say here.

17. Acceptance
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•Commitment leads to needs to
Acceptance.
• Acceptance by the parent and
by CALO can be a complicated
process, but at its fundamental
level it is a recognition that
developmental trauma and
attachment is driving the child’s
behavior, not attitudes, laziness,
or narcissism.
•We have to accept that it is not a
matter of “trying harder” for our
kids, but of learning how to trust
others and ultimately themselves.

18. Security
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•Once our kids feel accepted, they
can begin to feel secure, or safe, both
physically and emotionally.
•With that feeling of safety, they can
begin to form relationships with
therapists, teachers, coaches—even
our canines.

19. Attunement
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•When students begin to form
relationships, then there is the
possibility of attunement.
•With attunement comes the
ability to co-regulate emotions,
which is crucial for our students.
•This is not a linear process, of
course, but is recursive, with fits
and starts, which the dotted line
is meant to indicate.

20. Trusting Relationships
• Because the focus of our
treatment is trusting
relationship, school provides
another venue in which
students can experience
relationships.
• Our first priority is establishing
that relationship. As I tell my
teachers: it is not about the
content of the curriculum, but
the content of our
relationships.
• But because our students often
have had such deep difficultly
with school, our model is
effective but not efficient. And
it’s messy, as students struggle
to connect with each other and
with teachers.
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21. The Henry Method
• Long history of school difficulties and learning
disabilities
• Spent time at several different residential programs
before CALO.
• Arrived at CALO in a wheelchair, but was so school
phobic that we couldn’t get him into a classroom.
• So, we
• Had him work with a trusted coach 1:1
• Let him attend just one class to start--science
• Used his interest and proficiency in PowerPoint to
assess
• Built on his success to move him into other
courses
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22. The Progress of Henry
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Course Attendance Missing Work Grades
Language Arts 22% 4 79
Algebra 1 16% 2 77
Biology 50% 0 78
US History 0% 7 47
Fall 2013

23. The Progress of Henry
Course Attendance Missing Work Grade
Language Arts 78% 4 93
Algebra 1 75% 2 80
Biology 92% 1 82
US History 60% 5 71
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Spring, 2014

24. The Progress of Henry
Course Attendance Missing Work Grade
Film Studies 76% 2 95
Psychology 58% 2 80
Science Experiments 100% 0 100
Sports Math 85% 1 92
Study Skills 80% 2 86
US History (CR) 75% 3 95
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Summer, 2014

25. Effective, but not efficient
• Committed to helping Henry
become more comfortable with
school, even when he didn’t want to
have anything to do with it.
• Accepted his fear and anxiety about
school.
• Made it secure for him by shrinking
down the task and giving him a safe
relationship to work within.
• Attuned with him and guided him
into other experiences when he was
ready for them.
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26. Tips for Teachers (Smith, 2010)
• Truth vs Belief
• Just explaining the difference can be helpful
• Can become basis for suggesting child’s erroneous beliefs
• Challenging Beliefs
• Direct challenge rarely works
• Suggest that child flip the belief
• When met with resistance, be curious
• Accountability for Beliefs
• Before praise, ask if child would believe it
• If yes, give praise; if no, withhold
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27. The Road Map
• The problems that school poses for
children with trauma and attachment
• Why conventional school interventions are
less likely to work with traumatized
children
• How relationship-based instruction can
help traumatized children in school
• How parents and teachers can negotiate
school success
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28. The Importance of Regulation
 Responsive
 Engaged
 Focused
 Calm
Dysregulation Regulation Dysregulation
Hypo-arousal
 Defiance
 Resistance
 Depression
 Withdrawal
Hyper-arousal
 Anger
 Hyperactivity
 Fidgetiness
 Vigilance
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Forbes & Post (2006), citing Perry (2003) identify dysregulation in
traumatized children as either stemming from hypo-arousal or hyper-
arousal.

29. Why regulation matters in
school classrooms
• In a review of research literature, Duckworth &
Carlson (2013) note:
self-regulation is often a better predictor of
academic outcomes than is IQ or grades. With
school achievement levels controlled, children
who were rated one standard deviation above the
mean on [a measure of] attention
span/persistence at age 4 years had 39% greater
odds of completing college by age 25. (p. 215)
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30. Calo School Approach
Emotional Regulation
Classroom Conventions
Executive Functioning
Academic Content
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31. Fairness Is Getting What You Need
• Fairness = Treating all the same?
• Fair treatment = everyone is treated according to what they need
• The relevance of comparing children
• When traumatized children raise fairness, usually code for:
• “Things aren’t going my way”
• “I don’t want to be held accountable”
• So what do traumatized children need in school?
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32. Controlling Classroom Anxiety
•Safety
•Trust
•Community
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33. Resources for Teachers
• Forbes, Heather. (2012). Help for Billy: A beyond consequences
approach to helping challenging children in the classroom. Boulder,
CO: Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC.
• Geddes, Heather. (2006). Attachment in the Classroom. London:
Worth Publishing
• Smith, Lawrence (2010). Oil and water: The attachment disordered
child and school. http://Attachmentdisordermaryland.com
• Helping Traumatized Children Learn: 5 Core Ideas
http://traumasensitiveschools.org/tlpi-publications
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34. References
• Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning: Four lectures on mind and culture.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Duckworth, A. L., & Carlson, S. M. (2013). Self-regulation and school
success. In B. W. Sokol, F. M. E. Grouzet, & U. Müller (Eds.), Self-
regulation and autonomy: Social and developmental dimensions of human
conduct (pp. 208-230). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Forbes, H.T & Post, B.B. (2006). Beyond consequences and logic
and control: A love-based approach to helping children with severe
behaviors. Orlando, FL: Beyond Consequences Institute.
• Perry, B.D. (2003) Keynote Address. Neurons to Neighborhood 2003
Conference. Los Angeles, CA
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35. Questions & Comments?
•Copies of presentation?
Bburroughs@ca-lo.com
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