169 – Dr. Jodi Quas: Communicating with Child Victims of Trauma

This episode is brought to you by Vanguard University and the Global Center for Women and Justice, who offer an incredible anti-human trafficking certificate. Whether you're a frontline responder, a social worker, in the ministry, a healthcare provider, or simply a community member who wants to help, this program is built for you. Head over to gcwj.org/ahtc to take the next step and apply today. ---Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak talk to Dr. Jodi Quas about children dealing with chronic stress. When helping children who are under chronic stress, we need to realize that many of their behavioral problems are symptoms of the stress, not just because they are poorly disciplined. Key Points Acute stress is normal, and humans can deal with it and recover quickly. Chronic stress leads to long-term health and behavioral issues. Chronic stress causes many problems in children, and can manifest itself in apparent behavioral issues like inattention. Some of the stress responses that cause problems outside of the home are actually beneficial to surviving in a high-stress home. Children who suffer trauma are more likely to interpret people’s expressions as anger. Resources Jodi Quas – UCI Faculty Site UCI Center for Psychology and Law Email: [email protected] Are you enjoying the show? If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe or rate the podcast on iTunes by clicking here. Click here for FAQs about podcasts and how to subscribe. Haven’t been receiving our newsletter? Visit our homepage to join today. Contact us with questions, comments, or suggestions at [email protected]. Transcript Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 169, Dr. Jodi Quas: Communicating with Child Victims of Trauma. Production Credits: [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Dave: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak. Sandie: [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan. Dave: [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, one of the things I’m most grateful for over the years of knowing you, is just the wonderful lessons you bring in connecting me and us with so many experts out there. And as I mentioned in the introduction, studying the issues is a huge mission of the Global Center for Women and Justice and particularly around the issue. And today we have an expert from her own backyard, here at the University of California Irvine, that I know is going to really challenge us with some new thinking. And I’m so excited for our conversation today. Sandie: [00:01:18] I’m looking forward to it. Dave: [00:01:21] We’re glad to welcome Dr. Jodi Quas to the show today. She is a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California Irvine. Her work focuses on children’s eyewitness capabilities, consequences of legal involvement on child victims, witnesses, and defendants, and children’s and adolescents coping with stress maltreatment and trauma. She teaches and conducts training for academic and professional audiences worldwide on these topics. She has received numerous awards for her research and student training, including the scientific early career contributions in developmental psychology from the APA, and the outstanding mentoring award from the American Psychology and Law Society. Dr. Quas, we’re so glad to welcome you to the show today. Jodi: [00:02:05] Thank you so much. I’m absolutely delighted to be able to speak with you and to hopefully learn from you, while also sharing some of my thoughts. Sandie: [00:02:13] Well Jodi, you and I have known each other for a few years. I think Judge Maria Hernandez introduced us, and every year I grow to appreciate more the expertise that you bring on how we can use your knowledge, your expertise, your research when we work with youth who are at risk for trafficking or have been trafficked, because communicating with victims of trauma has some minefields in it. For those of us who just want to go in, we want to help you and we’ve got stuff for you, and then we’re really disappointed when they don’t respond well. Because we think our motivation is fantastic and they should appreciate that, right? Jodi: [00:03:02] Well, I mean for first of all I guess our motivation is fantastic, and I would hate to stop anybody from working hard thinking that their motivation isn’t anything but amazing. So, yes it is. But when you work with highly vulnerable populations including maltreated children, children exposed to chronic violence, children who grow up under conditions of extreme poverty or uncertainty that is all of the children who are at risk for becoming involved in trafficking. It’s really important to take into account the broader lives of these children. And so, when you’re interacting with them, perhaps you’re interacting with them because of a particular trafficking incident or set of experiences related to trafficking. But children come with these entire histories of experiences that have shaped in really profound and long-lasting ways how they respond to the world, how they interpret the world, and how they interact and communicate with others. Sandie: [00:04:18] So, at Ensure Justice we were looking at the intersection of substance abuse and drug addiction and Andrea Darr, was a guest on our show the last episode. And this kind of helps us drill down from what she talked to us about, with Handle with Care, that when we see these kids we need to understand some of the backstories. So, when you talk about the difference between acute and chronic family stress that really speaks to the environment that they’re in and they don’t have control. So, what do we need to know about that? Jodi: [00:04:58] It is true that we need to kind of differentiate or at least heuristically acute vs. chronic stress acute stress we all experience. We have bad days, we give a really bad presentation, and these are usually single incidents. In children maybe witnessing a fight, even a violent fight between parent, and these are the kinds of events that we think about when we talk about stressors. And our bodies and our minds, we’re actually fairly well programmed to respond to those acute stressors, even if they’re predictable or unpredictable we mount a response, we attend, we figure out and strategize about how to solve whatever challenge is in front of us. And then afterward we recover or regulate. That’s really different than the kinds of chronic, repeated stressors that really define the lives of many of the children who eventually end up in situations where they are exposed to when involved in trafficking. So, these chronic stressors can be things like extreme poverty, neglect, exposure to physical abuse. Sometimes they’re predictable sometimes they’re not. But what happens when you’re exposed to these chronic stressors is we need to mount a response. And we do, when we have these stress systems that are developed to mount these responses. The problem is that we can’t keep mounting these responses. Over time...