Thoughts from an over-worked social worker

I am no expert on children.  I don't have them, I don't want them (biological ones that is), and I practically still am one.  However, working year after year with children who are victims of trauma has led me to consider that our typical, go to punishments for children may not be what they really need.  Especially those children who have a high number of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's).

Children who have experienced trauma act out and misbehave as a reaction to that trauma, as a reaction to being hurt and confused and angry, and more scientifically as the outcome of negatively affected brain development in the frontal lobe (the decision-making part of the brain).  Sitting them in time-out and never addressing the foundational issue of their behavior does absolutely no good, and in fact, it simply makes the child even more angry and more prone to act out in the future.

However....I have no idea what the right thing is to do.  I feel like a broken record.  I have had conversation after conversation with child after child regarding what it is that they are so angry and hurt about and healthy ways to express that anger, and the child continues making poor choices.  I don't know the answer.  I don't have one.  I sure as hell would like a guidebook to this because right now I am lost.  I feel angry and hurt and sad and scared, yet I am well aware that the depth of my own feelings in no way comes close to comparing to the depth of the feelings of the children I am working with.  I am well aware of the privilege involved in the light load that I carry. 

Yet I am breaking inside watching these children struggle- watching a little boy cry and say he wants to go home knowing full well that the home he so deeply desires to go to is not the shelter, knowing full well that his concept of home is forever ruined.   I hold back tears seeing a child's medication make him one person in the morning and a stranger in the afternoon, I weep to see the mother- so hurt and confused and more than anything bound down by the systems that placed her in this shelter and provide for her and her family this less than acceptable healthcare.  I cringe at the sound of children being called "fucking assholes" and "worthless pieces of shit", all while understanding that the parents speaking those words, were, as children, taught and told those exact lies.  I am frustrated at the reality, yet I understand the causes.  I am perplexed as to how I should work within cultural boundaries to slowly chip away at the foundation of these issues and empower individuals to change.

I am sad and I am scared and I am sickened by the systems that perpetuate the causes of these issues...And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.