Name: 【TEDx】Violence - a family tradition: Robbyn Peters Bennett at TEDxBellingham
Uploaded: 2016-02-22T22:00:00.000Z
Duration: 13 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

how important it is that we never hit our children,

My granddaughter just started kindergarten,

and she loves school--I mean, she loves everything about school,

except for this one thing:  reminder sticks.

She tells me that if you don't do what the teacher tells you to do,

But the trouble is you only have three, and if you give up

all three reminder sticks,  you have to sit out recess,

She's really worried that one day she's going to lose all three sticks.

She says, "Jack--he loses all three sticks every day, grandma."

I'm aware of how stressful this is, because she begins to play this game

with me, where she's the teacher taking away reminder sticks,

I believe that children do well when they can,

and the trouble is,  with some kids like Jack,

and points out all of her friends, she points to the boy over there

and she says,  "That's Jack. He's annoying."

so I'm interested in Jack, and I watch as the teacher says,

"Now, boys and girls, get out your crayons,

we're going to make a portrait of your neighbor."

And all the children are coloring,  and what's Jack doing?

Oh, he's humming and he's picking  the paper off the crayons,

He takes this little nub of a black crayon and starts making this big fat scribble.

Now, the rule is you don't have to  keep the portrait if you don't like it--

Jack's scribble portrait goes right into the trash can.

Then it's activity time, and you have to get an activity out of the cabinet.

So Jack's rifling through the cabinet but can't find

anything of interest, so he snatches the pieces

from the boy next to him, and sits on them.

"You only love these kids because you know what to do with them,"

Isn't that the truth, but I didn't always know what to do with them.

My son was one of those  wiggle worms/squeaky noise-makers,

that always had to sit  right next to the teacher.

Those of us that work with young children who struggle know that often

they're from homes where the relationship to their parents is stressed.

I read a study that asked little children what worries them most.

Do you know what the most common response was?

Little children are worried about being hit by their parents.

And I'm worried, too, because spanking is a huge neurobiological stressor

that can have long-term negative consequences.

when I was studying the effects of trauma on brain development.

Now, there's this monumental study that studies early stress, called

and what they're looking at, is that there's a dose-rate relationship

where the more early stress you have  in childhood, family dysfunction,

the greater your risk for all sorts  of health problems.

and let's just say that your dad could be kind of mean

and sometimes physical  when he was drinking,

and that your mother divorced him because of it.

So your ACE score would be probably a four or more.

If you have an ACE score of four or more,

you're two and a half times more likely to have cardiac disease,

you're four and a half times more likely to be chronically depressed,

you are five times more likely to struggle with alcoholism,

twelve times more likely to attempt suicide when you're a teenager,

and thirteen times more likely to be an IV drug user.

One in six middle-class Americans have an ACE score of four or more.

And if your ACE score is 6 or more,  your life expectancy is 20 years less.

The findings of this study are that adverse childhood experiences

are the leading cause of illness, death, and poor quality of life

So, what is at the root of this family dysfunction?

I worry: "Is Jack worried about being hit?"

After all, statistically speaking, either you or the person sitting next to you

on either side, has been physically abused by their parents as children.

Domestic violence against children is over twice the rate of spousal abuse.

And in this country several children will die today

from physical abuse at the hands of their own parents.

And we know that physical child abuse, usually begins with physical punishment.

Now you might be wondering, "How does early violence lead

Well, it's because  the impact of early adversity,

especially in the first five years of life,

is more like a brain injury,  than a psychological one.

So Jack, he's not just making poor choices,

Self-regulation is a neurobiological capability

to manage arousal,  both physical and emotional.