Adoption, Trauma and Education
Many adopted and fostered children can display complex behaviour due to the trauma they experience at key times in their childhood development. Consequently, their new environment of an adopted or fostered home can appear threatening and unsafe. When children feel unsafe it can disrupt their learning and stop them from achieving their potential.
Adoptive children can struggle more than their peers with:
Controlling emotions
Self-esteem and confidence
Concentration in Lessons
Sitting still, especially in a chair.
Learning – especially with basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics
Accessing the curriculum
Forming positive friendships
Social skills
Not achieving their potential
Not all adopted children need additional help or support in school but some students do. We know that children that come into the care system may have experienced distress and trauma which can affect their behaviour, especially in group settings such as school. If strategies are not in place to enable them to cope then learning opportunities are lost and children are often labelled as behaviour issues or school refusals.
At the Learning Specialists, we look at how we can support students with adoption and trauma.
We check their Primitive Retained Reflexes, Auditory Processing, and Vision Perception skills.
We then work with them taking into consideration the trauma and stress that they are coping with daily, we apply therapy in a bespoke manner.
Strategies for home and school are often offered to support the teacher and parents. Most importantly we aim to support the child to gain access to the curriculum and reach their potential to thrive in an educational setting.
Watch the videos and read the testimonials to see how life changing it can be for students
