By Laura Adams

Look at the child in front of you.
Not their behavior. Not the disruption.

Look deeper.

Because what you’re often seeing is not defiance—it’s stress.

Many of our children—especially those impacted by adoption, foster care, and kinship care—carry invisible stories of loss, uncertainty, and change. Their bodies remember what their words often cannot express.

And then we ask them to walk into school each day—an environment filled with expectations, transitions, noise, and social pressure.

For some children, school is a place of learning.
For others, it can feel like a place of constant overwhelm.

When a child is already carrying stress, that environment can push them further into a state of dysregulation—making it harder to focus, connect, and succeed. What we often interpret as behavior is actually a nervous system trying to cope.

So when a child struggles, we have to ask a different question:
What is this child trying to communicate?

Not: What’s wrong with them?
But: What do they need right now?

As Bruce D. Perry reminds us in  Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and ‘Use-dependent’ Development of the Brain: How ‘States’ Become ‘Traits , children under stress don’t have consistent access to their thinking brain. A dysregulated child cannot reason, learn, or meet expectations—no matter how many times we ask.

Regulation is not a reward—it’s a prerequisite.

Our children don’t need more correction.
They need adults who help them feel safe—again and again.
Adults who stay steady when they cannot.

Healing doesn’t primarily happen in a one-hour therapy session. It happens in the rhythm of everyday life—through repeated, positive experiences.

On a team.
In a club.
Through music, movement, creativity, and connection.

These moments matter more than we realize. They build new pathways and new beliefs:
I am safe.
I belong.
I can try again.

Growth comes through encouragement, repetition, and activation. And the truth is, the more stress a child has experienced, the more repetition they need—not less.

We often say children are resilient. But children are not simply resilient—they are malleable. They adapt to what happens to them.

What looks like “fine” may actually be shutdown.
What looks like “no reaction” may be surrender.

If we misunderstand that, we miss the opportunity to respond in the way they need most.

This work isn’t about fixing children.

It’s about how we show up for them—with patience, curiosity, and connection.

Because these are not children to be fixed.
They are children to be understood, supported, and given new experiences of safety, hope, and belonging.

And when we do that—
we don’t just change behavior.

We change trajectories.