Understanding, Nurturing and Working Effectively with Vulnerable Children in Schools: ‘Why Can’t You Hear Me?’

361 Pages·2019·26.331 MB·English

by  Angela Greenwood

Understanding, Nurturing
and Working Effectively with
Vulnerable Children in Schools
In times of increasing pressure on schools and teachers, it is essential that teachers are
equipped to understand the emotional and relational factors in learning and teaching.
Vulnerable and disaffected children need understanding and nurturing rather than reac-
tive management, which can easily exacerbate their difficulties, leaving them unheard and
defensive, and even undermine teacher confidence and effectiveness.
Understanding, Nurturing and Working Effectively with Vulnerable Children in Schools offers
a comprehensive and accessible exploration of the difficulties faced by teachers and schools
from at-risk and disaffected children, including repeated trauma and insecure attachment
patterns. The book describes how a thoughtful ‘relationship-based’ approach can both alle-
viate such difficulties and offer a second-chance attachment experience, enabling students
to discover that it might be safe to let down their all-consuming defences a little; thus free-
ing them to begin to learn. It offers:
• practical suggestions in note form – making them easy to use, refer to and assimilate;
• numerous case examples and teacher-friendly theoretical background material;
• a wealth of ideas for ways forward, including differentiated responses to children in the
light of their particular patterns, developmental stages and unmet needs.
Written from extensive professional experience, this is an essential handbook and resource
book for trainers, schools, teachers and school staff, and also for educational psycholo-
gists and those in children’s services working with vulnerable children in pre- and primary
schools, as well as those in special schools and units.
Angela Greenwood is an educational psychotherapist with many years’ experience train-
ing and supervising staff and working therapeutically with children in domestic abuse,
pupil referral units, mainstream settings and in private practice. She co-facilitated the local
Nurture Network, and the Safe to Learn course for school staff.
‘This book is timely! Positive relationships are at the heart of all good teaching and learning;
they allow us to reach out to our learners, to understand them, form strong connections
and create the learning environment they need to flourish. Angela draws on her profes-
sional expertise and extensive experience to give clear explanations, examples and pertinent
case studies, all grounded in relevant theory, which enlighten those who have important
work to do in supporting our most vulnerable learners; children who require especially fine
and considered attunement from the adults who work with them. As a teacher educator I
consider this to be an important book to deepen understanding of the issues in relation to
attachment while providing a wealth of material to use with our student teachers.’
– Rosie Moore, senior lecturer, School of Education, University of Brighton
‘In light of the ongoing debate around exclusions and the increase in mental health issues,
the release of this book is extremely timely. It will help professionals to reframe their
understanding of behaviour and what children and young people might be communicating
through it. The book is grounded in accessible theory with illustrative examples showing
how these relate to practice. In addition, Angela Greenwood provides readers with realis-
tic and effective strategies to help them engage with and support the children and young
people in their care.’
– Michael Surr, education development officer and editor of nasen Connect,
nasen (National Association of Special Educational Needs)
‘Angela Greenwood has captured here, in one volume, all the most compelling and sali-
ent psycho-dynamically informed approaches and strategies for supporting children and
young people in education settings. This work is replete with examples of how attachment
theory and associated perspectives may inform how teachers, learning support assistants
and other educational professionals can provide the optimal conditions for children to feel
safe to learn, and to flourish. This book will, no doubt, make a significant impact on school
staff, school systems, organisational structures within education, and, most vitally, on the
children and families they serve.’
– Nicole Schnackenberg, educational psychologist and author of False Bodies, True
Selves: Moving Beyond Appearance-Focused Identity Struggles and Returning to the True Self
‘This book is a summary of what all teachers should understand and practice if we are to
help all children to learn. It describes the implications of early social and emotional child-
hood experience for later behaviour and responses in the classroom and relates this to
teaching practice and delivery. An essential read for all education staff.’
– Heather Geddes, educational psychotherapist and author of
Attachment in the Classroom
Understanding, Nurturing
and Working Effectively
with Vulnerable Children
in Schools
‘Why Can’t You Hear Me?’
ANGELA GREENWOOD
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2020 Angela Greenwood
The right of Angela Greenwood to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. The purchase of this copyright material confers
the right on the purchasing institution to photocopy pages which
bear the photocopy icon and copyright line at the bottom of the
page. No other part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-02544-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-02546-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02525-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Dante and Avenir
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9780367025465
I would like to dedicate this book to all the children I have worked with over the years
and from whom I have learnt such a lot and gained such valuable experience.
Thank you.
More than 20 years have passed now and I have lost touch with you all; but as the
years go on I realise more and more what you have given me – including the memories
enclosed in your anonymised stories and artwork, some of which I have included in these
pages to bring the text alive and ‘ground the thinking’. If I haven’t been able to contact
you about this I thank you now, and wish you well.
I will always remember you.
Angela

Contents
List of boxes ix
List of case studies xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Foreword xv
Preface xvii
Part I 1
1 Introduction to attachment theory 3
2 Useful neuroscience: a simple introduction for school staff and
child workers 8
3 The effects of unsupported trauma 19
4 Understanding unconscious processes 43
5 Emotional containment 57
Part II 85
6 Insecure attachment categories: understanding and
responding helpfully 89
7 Children stuck in early developmental stages 121
8 The importance of a secure base 144
9 Behaviour as unconscious communication 156
10 Learning inhibitions as possible unconscious communications 172
viii Contents
11 Relating and relationships: using relationships as a healing vehicle 183
12 Coping with change 221
13 Working through the metaphor 246
14 Enhancing our own and children’s personal capacities 272
15 Working with vulnerable parents: some thoughts 287
16 A nurturing school: some thoughts from an assistant head 297
Conclusion 315
Appendix 1 Nurturing school checklist 317
Appendix 2 Self-assessment of skills in emotional holding, containing
and strengthening 321
Appendix 3 Possible unconscious meanings and causes of common behaviours 323
Appendix 4 Possible unconscious meanings of learning difficulties and
behaviours and what they might be communicating 329
Appendix 5 Safe to Learn: an eight-session PowerPoint training course 333
Index 335
Boxes
Exercise 1 Understanding shame from the inside 25
Exercise 2 The links between our own emotional growth and the
emotional growth of children we work with 54
Box 1 Containing ways of being with children 63
Box 2 Symbolic containers 64
Box 3 Containing actions and ways of managing 66
Box 4 Examples of emotionally containing statements 68
Box 5 Examples of ego-supportive statements 70
Box 6 Some indicators a child may need emotional containment –
rather than ego support 72
Exercise 3 Emotionally containing or ego-supportive statements? 74
Box 7 Calm box 95
Box 8 Holding-in-mind comments and gestures 102
Box 9 Generalised empathic sentence stems 113
Box 10 Nurturing ‘you’ statements 133
Box 11 E xamples of signs of ‘progress’ (in approximate
developmental order) 140
Exercise 4 The link between feeling ‘safe’ and being able to reflect 146
Exercise 5 Attunement experience 147
Exercise 6 Reflection on a particular incident 159
Box 12 Examples of empathic responses to children’s behaviours 163
Box 13 E xamples of ways you might express curiosity about a child’s
puzzling behaviour 165
Exercise 7 Reflection on repeated patterns of behaviour or repeated
reactions from a child/young person 167
Exercise 8 Realise, resist, reflect, remember, rethink, revise,
respond, rework 171
Exercise 9 Reparation exercise 191