8 May 2023

Brains in Pain

By Alison Scott, Executive Principal of Bellavista School

The challenges of the new world have been tough for many children to adapt to. Their ever-changing world is home to a range of challenges that many of us never needed to navigate during our youth. Mental health challenges are not experienced in isolation, they are all encompassing and effect all areas of one’s life and a ‘brain in pain’ cannot learn.

When a child experiences trauma, loss, sadness, fear or anxiety, the brain’s greatest priority is survival. It simply cannot put risk-taking and new learning ahead of this objective. A learner in a classroom comes with his or her whole world – memories, attachments, families and circumstances. Subconsciously, the child’s brain is calibrating towards equilibrium, keeping all the stressors in check in order to survive. If one aspect of a child’s life is under duress, then the child is anxious and learning may not be likely, no matter how cleverly designed the lesson plan or how kind and experienced the teacher. Likewise, if the child is stressed and traumatised at school, the fight/flight response will spill over into the home. Parents know something’s wrong when they have an anxious child in meltdown. Teacher’s know the same.

Trauma is not just an accident, neglect or abusive experiences in crime situations and relationships. A traumatized brain can also be a fatigued, over-medicated, malnourished, worried brain that is feeling isolation, worry, anger, poor attachment and fear. All negative experiences can render the brain in pain. Neurobiological changes that are a natural bodily response heighten the fear response and charge the body with cortisol and adrenaline. The brain does not distinguish one negative experience from another. All incoming negatives invoke the same response. Our heart, blood pressure and respiration rates increase with the excess secretion of neuro hormones. When this becomes a chronic state of being, instead of a temporary one, our brains are in in pain over time and our learning slows or stops entirely. We present as anxious or depressed, flighty or aggressive and irritable.

Train the Brain

While not the entire solution, it might be helpful for parents or teachers to assist the child in reaching a calm and safe brain state instead of an activated fear response when there is no present danger. There are strategies to self-regulate or modulate the system and ‘nurse’ the brain in pain.

• Deep breathing. Breathing focusses our attention and prepares the brain for attention. It can facilitate the ‘get on task’ step before staying on task. Mindfulness strategies that include focusing on a stimulus like a sound or visualisation could have a valid place in our classrooms 2 -3 times a day to increase oxygenated blood flow to the brain. A brain well fed can regulate, attend and solve problems.
• Brain breaks. Take a brain break often! Movement calms the stress response. Physical activities like chair push up’s, jumping jacks, squats or yoga calm the limbic brain and allow the child to put his or her focus back on the learning task at hand. Movement breaks are good for all learners (young and old) and doing these at regular intervals benefits everyone without isolating the child who needs these most in front of his or her peers.
• Understanding the brain. This should have a place in every school curriculum. Carol Dweck’s research on a Growth Mindset provides evidence that children who learn about their brain achieve their potential better. Teach the learners about the biological structure of the brain, the fight-flight response in their bodies, and the associated reactions which are natural and to be expected. The amygdala is the emotionally-driven structure in the brain that responds to the experiences in our lives. We cannot control the experiences, but we can do much to regulate the response over time, saving the fight-flight for when we really need it. Metacognition, or thinking about my thinking, will assist the brain in pain to regulate the response. Teach the child to stop-think-go or self-regulate.

The incorporation of the strategies above is not the solution to the problem, but it will assist in managing the child in reaching a calm state. When we have reached this place, any situation the child may be navigating will be just a little easier.

About Bellavista SHARE

Bellavista S.H.A.R.E. is the Education Resource Centre of Bellavista School, an independent school in Johannesburg that is widely regarded as a centre of excellence in the field of remedial education. With the Bellavista S.H.A.R.E initiative, the school harnesses the collective capacity it holds within its own staff to improve the quality of educational delivery in Southern Africa by sharing its wealth of professional knowledge, experience, and collective expertise with the community of educators and health professionals working with children in the region.