In South Hampton Roads, VA, we have 21,000 children living in extreme poverty. Education is the way out of poverty. And poverty is the enemy of education. Our initiative, United for Children, is a public-private partnership focused on driving educational success for our poorest children to break the cycle of poverty. Our goal is to get them to graduate high school on time, ready for college or career and ultimately a successful, self-sufficient life.

In light of this we partnered with America’s Promise Alliance and Dr. Bruce D. Perry, a world-renowned expert in child trauma, the brain and its impact on learning, to hold a GradNation Community Summit focused on issues of early childhood development and providing children with what they need to enter school ready to learn.

Now in our third year of the United for Children initiative, we’ve established the program in our first middle school and discovered half of the children are three years behind in reading and math when they enter sixth grade. We see the same pattern in elementary school.  While funding and educational programs may help, high poverty children usually start school behind and rarely catch up -- increasing our dropout rate.

We focused our summit on children from birth to three years of age using it to educate the community on what our children need to be successful, as well as kicking-off the regional launch of Ages & Stages, a developmental screening tool for birth to 66 months.

Youth Brain Development

The more you understand about how the brain works, the more you can be intentional and successful about education, according to Dr. Perry.  The following points in this section stem from the information he shared at the summit.

The brain is most responsive when you are young. Yet we provide the fewest resources early in a child’s life. It’s well documented that the biggest return is when parents and communities put resources in place during the stages of early childhood development. 

Did you know preschool children are kicked out of school at three times the rate of an elementary school child? Teachers often believe behavior is planned or intentional, when it’s not. It can come from a very basic, instinctual place in the brain. 

Children showing symptoms related to trauma often end up in the juvenile justice system. For example, a traumatized child may feel overwhelmed and doesn’t go to school. It’s “Fight or Flight” for them and they are choosing Flight. The system decides to teach them a lesson, so they are labeled a truant and are put in a highly structured, highly restrictive class. So Flight turns to Fight. Then the child is charged with assault and ends up in the juvenile justice system.  We don’t understand their trauma and end up doing the wrong thing which in turn makes their situation worse.

So how can we make it better?

Human beings are relational creatures. Our brain is wired for relationships. We are so relational that we absorb the emotions of people around us.

A child’s brain wires to what something represents.  If a mom represents someone warm, supportive, nurturing, the child will transfer those feelings to other adults. But if a mom represents stress, then the child will assume other adults will create additional stress.

Strong supportive relationships can mitigate other developmental risks and trauma. You never know where those supportive and nurturing relationships will come from. We need to create a community of healers, teachers, and caregivers that can provide a therapeutic web around a traumatized child. It’s about having caring adults and peers surrounding them who can be present in the moment. No advice. No judgment. Just listening.

However, when children live in relational poverty and there isn’t anyone emotionally stable and available to allow you to get these doses of healing, problems can arise, challenges fester and many families and children often times end up suffering alone.  The culture of privacy that we’ve invented in society pulls us a part from the very relationships needed to help us thrive.  

The impact of modern life in the 21st century on the development of a child -- changing family dynamics, increase use of technology and challenging school expectations -- has yet to be fully understood. Children have fewer emotional, social and cognitive interactions with even fewer people. To help, we must continue to put into place the resources and relationships early in development so that all children have the right supports in place to meet their full potential.  Be in the moment. Be intentional. 

Where do we go from here?  

Now that the summit is complete, we have three next steps in place: 

• The reaction from the community was so powerful that we plan to bring Dr. Perry back to help us accelerate our pre-natal to pre-K program.
• We plan to complete our Ages & Stages pilot program and ramp up its rollout to each of our agencies and ultimately to the entire community.
• Use data gathered from Ages & Stages to continue, add, or shift our program funding to ensure we are reaching the right communities.

Learn more about the United for Children initiative or volunteer and join the cause.