What every teacher needs to know about the impact of trauma

“Children do make choices to misbehave,” states professor Essi Viding, “but the tools they bring to make the choices are different. Someone who has very stable developmental history is making a particular choice with a completely different toolkit than a child who has an unpredictable developmental history.”Viding is professor of Developmental Psychopathology at University College London (UCL) and, together with Eamon McCrory, professor of developmental neuroscience and psychopathology at UCL, she studies the effects of trauma on a child’s behaviour, at the Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit. Speaking on this week’s Podagogy podcast, they explain how trauma affects development, how this affects behaviour and what teachers can and should  do about it.“The impact of trauma and early adversity we want to understand how those experiences develop the brain,” explains McCrory.