Many children and adults have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) and trauma. It is important to understand how prevalent ACES are in our society and how often we may be working with children and parents that have experienced trauma. You can read more about ACES at https://www.ccsa.ca/adverse-childhood-experiences. Being trauma informed, simply means, that you are aware that as a society many individuals have been exposed to trauma and these experiences have been built into their brains and bodies.
Brain Development
The Brain Story has been developed by the Alberta Family Wellness Initiative and it uses 5 metaphors to talk about brain health and how early experiences (good or bad) get built into our brains and bodies. Most of the videos are short (2 to 5 minutes) and they give a good picture of the developing brain and the adverse effects of trauma. If you only have time to watch one video from Brain Story, check out this one on Resilience:
Learning Brain Versus Survival Brain:
This video talks about a brain stuck in "survival" mode because of toxic stress and how it is different from a learning brain.