In Season 3, Episode 5 of The Chosen, Jesus heals Veronica of her malady in a very moving scene where, in the end, he reaches out to touch her face and thank her for her deep faith. He genuinely sees, soothes and assures her of the Father’s love. While Jesus performs a miracle to heal her, it is apparent that his loving interaction with her is also transformative. Modern interpersonal neurobiology teaches us these loving elements of being safe, seen, soothed and secure (Siegel & Bryson, 2021) are essential in the neurodevelopment of children so that they can arrive to their young adulthood with a sense of wholeness. Much of this understanding has emerged from the Decade of the Brain (the 1990s) and from our understanding about how traumatic stress lives in the brain and body and is applicable to the development of the growing neurotypical child. This understanding is God’s grace to any of us raising children in what is essentially a fragmented world and a burgeoning childhood/adolescent mental health epidemic.
Although we like to think of childhood as a time of innocence, many children in today’s world grow up with chronic stress. Parental physical/mental illness, community violence, poverty, discrimination and other modern-day stressors such as overscheduling and excessive technology use can all negatively impact the growing brain. More stressors can include bullying, failing an assignment, struggling to fit in, relational conflicts or giving a presentation. Research has shown that the childhood brain is particularly sensitive to stress, and sustained levels of stress in childhood inhibit new learning and memory formation. Stress breaks down neuronal connection while an atmosphere of safety and security promotes brain development and consolidates all new learning. Current research indicates chronic and unpredictable stress, as opposed to intermittent and predictable, (Hambrick, Brawner, & Perry, 2019), results in a persistently activated stress response system. Educators are finding what underlies many behavior problems is an activated peripheral nervous system resulting in either an overactive (e.g., anxiety) or an underactive (e.g., inattentiveness) stress response. For a child to be receptive to higher cortical learning, they must be emotionally and behaviorally regulated, feel safe in their environment and relationships and have an engaged relationship with their teacher.
Self-regulation/management is foundational to the other four CASEL SEL core competencies of self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decisionmaking and relationship skills. These core competencies correspond to the Catholic moral virtues of temperance/balance, fortitude/resilience, prudence/insight and justice/empathy. Children who live with chronic adversity often have difficulty moving beyond the core competency of regulation and balance, displaying disruptive (e.g., hyperactivity) or disengaged (e.g., lack of motivation) behavior that subsequently impacts the entire classroom. Understanding the unseen impact of stress on student behavior/engagement and responding in ways that help to calm their nervous system helps students thrive. From a Catholic education standpoint, we are suggesting that the living of the grace of baptism (CCC, 1262-1274) and cultivating the theological (i.e., love, faith, hope) and moral virtues (i.e., temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice) creates a school culture where teachers and students can practice co-regulation together and optimize learning and development.
God designed a part of the human brain and body to be constantly at work assessing for threats to safety. While threats can include being attacked by a wild animal, the safety-detection system is strongly wired to assess for emotional and relational threats (i.e., threats to feelings of belonging). This detection system is largely sensorimotor and is constantly scanning the environment for potential indications of danger. The nonconscious system works at a highly rapid rate, while the conscious/cortical system works more slowly and is where cognition and learning operate. What’s important to know as a parent and educator is that all incoming information to a child’s brain first arrives to this threat detection system to assess for safety before allowing that information to travel to the attachment/relational area of the brain and then to the cortical reasoning areas of the brain. Brain development, as well as information processing, happen in a particular order, from regulation to relationship to reasoning, and is called the Neurosequential Model.
This system is state-dependent, meaning a student will process and store information differently depending on his or her current internal state. Teachers and clinicians know that a student who had a peaceful morning transition to school will learn differently that day than a child who arrived to school worn out from a dispute in the morning because the family was dealing with an unremitting stress such as poverty or family disintegration. When a child perceives a threat, their state of arousal increases and their brain focuses on survival, decreasing their ability to think rationally, causing distinct changes to their behavior. As the more primitive parts of the brain responsible for fear and threat-detection are engaged, a child’s behavior regresses (as if they are younger; the classic “you should know better”). A chronically activated stress response (i.e., faulty neuroception) lies below the surface of many learning and behavioral challenges in the classroom. Teachers practicing their “still point of grace” (i.e., moving through the sequence of regulating, relating and reasoning) when behavior emerges subsequently create in their students the prefrontal cortical access needed for learning.
Classroom and school culture activities that focus on the moral virtues of temperance and fortitude (e.g., teaching balance and resilience) can help children calm themselves, allowing greater cortical access to attention, information processing, memory and learning. It can calm a student’s active internal stress response when a teacher takes the time to give a short lesson on orderliness or having patience when others are not at their best. But teachers must also work at the relational level of brain processing where small interactions aimed at seeing a student and extending care or concern (e.g., virtues of affability, kindness and sincerity) go a great distance in gaining access to higher reasoning and receptivity to learning, as well as the “good stress” that is necessary in the learning process.
While it is ancient wisdom and our calling as Christians, modern neuroscience has discovered the fundamental importance of relational safety in all aspects of childhood development. Emotional co-regulation between adults and children is foundational to all brain development (Delahooke, 2019). As parents and teachers, we typically try to suppress/control problematic behaviors; however, recent understanding of stress sensitivity in childhood indicates that we need to determine whether behaviors are a sign of a child’s stress and social engagement system in need of relational help. Co-regulation is a neuro-relational phenomenon occurring when adult and child have a synchronous connection. Warm and responsive interactions from a well-regulated adult provide support, coaching and modeling for children so that they can understand, express and modulate their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors, allowing a sense of connection which translates to safety. This process further translates to a shared sense of purpose and ease, creating “grace at the still point of the turning world.”
A child in a tumultuous environment, with a weak foundation for emotional regulation, needs adult help to find their way back to a calm and engaged state. The neurosequential model provides a framework for achieving this state of attunement and grace by practicing the three R’s of regulate, relate and reason in moment-to-moment interactions. From a regulation standpoint, if children are hyper-aroused, or overactive, it can be helpful for a teacher to encourage deep breathing or reflective journaling. Alternatively, for hypo-aroused or underactive children, a teacher can increase arousal by playing music, stretching or leading some rhythmic/patterned movement. As the child calms down, a teacher can “connect and redirect” by using a caring tone of voice that validates the child’s feelings and reinforces that they are cared about, before directing them to alternative behaviors. Co-regulated interactions can also include a reasoned discussion about how emotions and stress feel in the body. This approach puts the teacher-student relationship at the center of the classroom, where teachers are attuned in real time, ensuring that student stress is manageable and good, and not chronically activated, interfering with receptivity to learning.
Teachers cannot extend this ongoing gift of self in the classroom if they, themselves, are dysregulated due to stress. We are advocating that administrators and teachers actively build a supportive working environment where self-care is valued and care is extended amongst staff. Teachers who are given the time to achieve their own state of calm can practice their faith in their school setting and, with needed support, can find the grace to be “the still point” for their students. Jesus’ encounter with Veronica is a visual image of attunement and seeing the dignity of the human person. The call to relate, heal, comfort and care for those entrusted to us is at the heart of Jesus’ teaching “… what you do to the least, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). You, as an educator, are the presence of Jesus to these precious children who are made for wholeness and deserve to be raised in grace.
Karen Villa, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Sister John Dominic Rasmussen, OP, is an educator and administrator and currently serves as the executive director of Openlight Media.
Karen Villa, Ph.D
Sister John Dominic Rasmussen, OPsjdr@sistersofmary.org