Schools

I've just finished reading 'No Matter What' by Sally Donovan. Sally's books have been recommended wherever the topic of adoption has come up, which says something in itself.

This book is her story - what led her and her partner to look at adoption and the challenges that they experienced in the years that followed. 

One of the topics covered at a later part of the book is schooling. Interestingly, her experiences seem quite aligned with what Adoption Adventures described - sadly in both cases a child ended up having to move school because the initial school did not have an understanding of the effects of early trauma and that they might have to think about their strategies to help their behaviour. They also noted that it's not unusual for the behaviours to lead to a misdiagnosis of ADHD.

Both mentioned that when the children had experienced that lack of safety then changes in the room that they couldn't see could leave them really unsettled. One thing advised there was seating them somewhere that they could see the door and close to the teacher as a safe adult. Being at the front of the room was also mentioned. (It's explained a bit better in the Adoption Adventures school podcast, which i linked in my first post ).

Another thing they *both* mentioned was the challenge that could come from unstructured time. At one point in No Matter What, one of the children has gone from exhibiting really good behaviour, to becoming more wild and the suggestion is made to keep a track of when this is happening to see if there's a pattern to it - a good technique, which i hope i'll remember if ever the time comes - in this case they worked out the difference was when the children could pick what they wanted to do in any order for some more unstructured lessons. The solution was for them to be provided with a bit more support and guidance at those times to help them still feel that safety of increased certainty. 

Schools can get "Attachment Aware" certified, showing their commitment to promote practitioner awareness attachment in relation to child behaviours and learning - there's a 6minute video here, and/or a flyer about attachment difficulties here.

I found the site to Find my Local Attachment Lead  (attachmentleadnetwork.net) but disappointingly, I can't see any attachment aware schools in my area at the moment. The site itself does have a lot of resources for schools and details of what it is and why it is important though. 

If you are in a school, one other article I looked at that might be of interest is Attachment-aware schools (sec-ed.co.uk).

If you find any good tips or links, please feel free to add them! I know i don't need them *yet*, but it seems a pretty critical one to think about.

Later addition - Home - The Thrive Approach to social and emotional wellbeing appears to be much more widespread than the 'Attachment Aware' certification. I'll put a separate post with a bit more on that.