Storm, Stress and Algorithms: Youth in the time of Covid

I don’t have that many pictures of myself when I was 16. This is because I didn’t like posing for cameras. I wasn’t that sure about the way I looked; my life was a series of experiments. This is one of the rare pictures that does exist, and it is a cut out from a larger shot. Even though I appear to be looking at the camera, I wasn’t actually aware at the time that it was being taken. I was on my way to becoming what would be known at the time as a ‘New Waver’, not quite punk, and not quite Goth, but somewhere in between. I also wasn’t at all sure what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up going to college and taking a course that I did manage to pass in the end; but I realised halfway through that I didn’t want to spend my life doing the job for which it was training me. It wasn’t all bad though- a lot of the social experiences were fun, and I grew up a lot during that time.

My parents, who had previously gone through the days in which my older brother had grown his hair longer… and longer… and longer just sighed and generally let me get on with it. My father had been sailing on Merchant Navy convoys when he was 17, being shot at by U-boats, whilst my mother had been dodging doodlebugs in London’s Dockland. They were happy to let us have our very different, and from their perspective, far more tranquil youth.

In the end, I didn’t decide what I wanted to do with my professional life until I was in my late twenties, by which time I had three small children. It was then that I started my studies in Psychology that would eventually lead me all the way to a PhD. As my children grew past the early years stage I became a teacher, and worked with many sixteen to eighteen year olds who had very similar concerns to the ones I had at the same age.

Even in those days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, a culture had already begun in education that communicated to young people of that age that if they didn’t find what they wanted to do at this very early stage in their lives and quickly knuckle down to it, they would somehow be a failure. It greatly concerned me that this generation seemed far more pressured by societal expectation than I had been at the same age.

This became of even greater concern to me as the 2000s turned into the 2010s and neurobiology began to reveal that full neuronal adulthood did not actually begin until sometime around the twenty-fifth year, in particular that a considerable amount of ‘rewiring’ takes place in the pre-frontal cortex over the period of adolescence, creating heightened social and emotional vulnerability. Concerns about Exam Factory schools were increasingly expressed over the 20-teens, particularly when teenage suicide and self-harm statistics were considered.

Then as the first year of the 2020s unfolded, an entirely unexpected event intervened to greatly increase anxiety among the whole human race: COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown, in order to reduce contact between people to reduce infection rates. Reduced social contact comes down extremely hard upon adolescents, programmed as they are to build their fledgling personalities in interaction with their peer group (be that hippy, new wave, goth or hip hop).

And then, education ministers gave them something else entirely to deal with. As sixteen and eighteen-year-olds were unable to take their end of programme exams, the government decided to apply an algorithm based on previous cohort attainment to teacher grade predictions. This has resulted in some baffling results, with some students, particularly those studying in large city-based institutions receiving significant downgrading, thus losing the conditional offers they had received from universities, making them feel ‘really useless and incapable.’

While this is not an uncommon feeling for young people to experience in what earlier generations described as the ‘storm and stress’ of adolescence, as they begin to chart a course for the as yet unmapped journey of their lives, it is not a feeling that we would expect an ethical education system to actually foster in the inherent ways that it operates. As such it seems baffling that ministers have not now acted to stop this speeding juggernaut, which is now on track to smash the dreams of the nation’s sixteen year olds in the middle of next week, when it is predicted that two million sixteen-year-olds will have their GCSE results downgraded.

Why would a nation choose to treat its young people in this way? When and why did we start treating our children in such a harsh and unyielding fashion? These are all questions that we need to deeply reflect upon as we start to build a Post-COVID-19 society. But in the meantime, why can ministers not prevent the downgrading of these young people who are not even yet old enough to leave education, and allow them to proceed onto their post-16 choices on the basis of the predicted grades that their teachers have provided? Do they value propping up a seventy-year-old exam system, which has widely been slated, even by members of their own government, as unfit for purpose above protecting the mental health and well-being of all the sixteen-year-olds in the nation? If this really is the case, we urgently need to look to what a dysfunctional society we have now become.

Every Child Really Does Matter: in search of developmental recognition

Having recently retired from frontline teaching to give my full focus to several writing and research projects, I have had time to reflect on over thirty years of engagement with early years education and care, beginning in the mid-1980s as a parent-helper in my own children’s pre-school playgroup. This underpinned my decision to enrol for a BSc (Hons) in Psychology with a specialism in child development, which in turn set me on the pathway I eventually followed into a PhD focused on play-based learning in children aged four to six.

When I first began my studies, strange as it may seem nowadays, there was no early years framework. In fact at that time, the ink was only just drying on the very first iteration of the National Curriculum. And when I started teaching child development across community, further and higher education in the mid-1990s, every child-care and education programme routinely explored what was then dubbed ‘theory and practice in child development.’ Students were introduced to the ‘grand theorists’ of developmental psychology, for example Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner, alongside the pioneers of early years education such as Froebel, Montessori, Steiner, McMillan, Isaacs and Malaguzzi.

As time went by, it became clear that the incorporation of the youngest children in the National Curriculum was not working as well as the government had hoped; Reception teachers were experiencing difficulty in embedding the principles of early childhood education into their pedagogy. This heralded the development of the Desirable Learning Outcomes in 1996, followed by the removal of Reception from the National Curriculum and its reallocation to a discrete Foundation Stage, with the launch of the Curriculum Guide for the Foundation Stage in 2000. The Birth to Three Matters framework was subsequently inaugurated in 2003, underpinned by a comprehensive literature review which summarised key elements of child development theory. Salient points from this document were also helpfully summarised onto theory into practice cards.

In 2008 the first iteration of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) for children from birth to five was introduced, up-dating and combining the material in The Curriculum Guide for the Foundation Stage and The Birth to Three Matters. The Birth to Three Matters cards were retained and other resources added, which made for a substantial set of documents.

Although the materials that had been used to create the EYFS had been thoroughly tried and tested in their previous incarnations, I was concerned that this policy change had the emergent effect of creating an overly long key stage that spanned five years of extensive physical and psychological development. And the equally dramatic changes of adolescence were allocated to two discrete Key Stages: Key Stage 3 for children between eleven and fourteen, and Key Stage 4 for children between fourteen and sixteen.

Given that National Curriculum outcomes, with their associated accountability implications inevitably create a top-down process, my principal concern was that the youngest children would be forgotten within what had effectively become one vast EYFS Key Stage. This fear was gradually realised as the EYFS was slimmed down in successive updates over the following twelve years. The most recent iteration was issued for ‘early adopters’ in July 2020. Very little remains within it that is directly relevant for children under three; it is focused upon a set of academic targets for children at the end of the Reception year, with a view to entering a highly didactic state education system. These require that children are trained to listen attentively to adults and obey them, to control impulses and closely follow instructions, to learn to sound letters and digraphs, to write simple words and phrases and to demonstrate a ‘deep understanding’ of number.

The document explicitly comments that its principal focus is to promote teaching and learning that will ensure children’s ‘school readiness.’ As such then, the elements of the framework relating to children under three, and to all aspects of early years development unrelated to formal schooling have been steadily removed from the documentation. However, over the same period, advances in neuropsychology have increasingly indicated the vital importance of social and emotional development, in particular during the first three years of life, a development I have detailed in a recent review of the relevant literature.

We therefore now need to urgently consider the reasons why children in most other nations of the world do not begin formal schooling until they are six or even seven. In fact, within our own history, the age at which children were traditionally proposed to be ‘school ready’ was at the so-called ‘age of reason’ which began on the seventh birthday. This was reflected in the school starting age for upper class boys in medieval England, and in the ancient English Common Law. It is also enshrined in Piagetian theory in the transition to the ‘concrete operational’ stage between six and seven, and in Montessori’s framework in which the child enters the ‘conscious imagination stage’ at six. Biopsychology has also begun to discover significant developmental changes at six due to the neuronal pruning process; for example in an emergent ability to process visual information at a deeper conceptual level. A school starting age of five is an echo from the Victorian industrial period, when it was determined in order to 'enable an early school leaving age to be established, so that children could enter the workforce’

The clear implication is that the current EYFS should be re-ordered into two discrete key stages, the first for children between birth and three (infants) and the second for children between three and six (pre-school). This would resolve the now twenty-year argument about the place of the Reception year, firmly assigning it to pre-school where an overwhelming amount of evidence from practice, psychology and biopsychology indicates that it should be. It would also create a key stage for infants in which their specific developmental needs are front and centre, rather than being overwhelmed by a school readiness focus which is grossly inappropriate for such young children.

Early childhood is not simply a journey to school, in the same sense that the years after the sixtieth birthday are not simply a journey to the grave. Human beings should have the natural right to fully experience each stage of life as it unfolds. We are not offering this level of respect to our youngest citizens at the moment, and this should be addressed forthwith, as a matter of urgency. 

Please sign the online petition to revoke the new EYFS here: https://www.change.org/p/department-for-education-revoke-the-high-pressure-eyfs-reforms-young-children-need-real-learning-not-rote-learning-rightfromthestart

ACEs too High? Educating Yorkshire in ACEs awareness

The concept of ACEs- Adverse Childhood Experiences and their effects upon later adult life- is becoming a much discussed meme across the western world. It is therefore now time to reflect upon these ideas and to consider their validity, particularly within practice environments. This blog will consider ACEs in this spotlight, arguing that the concept has a clear relevance and application for practice with children and families going forward into the twenty first century, although there are clear pitfalls which must be carefully avoided when putting the ideas into practice. The basic ACEs theory is demonstrated in the following diagram:

 

The original study to explore the concept of ACEs was that of Felitti et al in 1998. The researchers carried out a large-scale analysis of the effects of a range of childhood stressors upon both mental and physical health in later life and found a number of statistically significant effects. Film maker James Redford, son of actor Robert Redford, came across an article disseminating the research findings and thought these ideas should be raised more prominently within the public eye (Cocozza 2017) In order to achieve this he made a film entitled Resilience: the biology of stress and the science of hope which has now been widely distributed across the western world.

Redford compares the constant stress that some children live under as comparable to arriving home every night to find a bear in the living room; that the mentally ill or abusive parent and/or the effects of ongoing poverty upon the family are likely to have long term adverse effects: ‘day after day, those chemicals – the adrenaline, cortisol, the process of high sugar, that whole response, changes the way your brain processes information. It affects the development of the organs on a cellular level. This continual exposure to stress wears the body down’ (Cocozza 2017, online).

ACEs research has continued across the world, making very similar findings to Felliti et al (1998). Recent large-scale studies in Wales (Bellis et al 2015) and Scotland (Couper and Mackie 2016) have linked poor mental and physical health in adulthood to childhood ACEs, while clear links have been drawn between ACEs, poverty and parenting stress (Steele et al 2016). Of course, human beings are the sum of all their experiences, which makes isolating cause and effect extremely difficult. A recent development has been the suggestion of a 'pair of ACEs', encompassing the environmental aspect. This was recently explored by NHS (Highland) in their Annual Report of 2018.

Such a vast number of variables in individual experience have been raised by those criticising the ACEs concept, who propose that, by over-simplification, there may be the creation of a deficiency model and a subsequent self-fulfilling prophecy, depicting individuals simplistically as victims of circumstance. The implication emergent from such a construction may be that people have little ability to control their own destinies, leading to stereotyping and stigma (Edwards et al., 2017). These researchers also express concerns about the problem of simplistic tick box screening being developed by amateurs, which may subsequently be used to promote shallow concepts of building resilience through counselling, rather than exploring solutions to the root causes.

These are of course highly valid concerns, but at the level of how we as a society respond to the concept of ACEs, rather than whether the effects actually exist or not. It is however useful to note that the practice of simplistic screening leading to self fulfilling prophecies must certainly be stringently avoided as a more ACEs aware society develops.

Edwards et al.’s more far reaching criticism- that ACEs is a retrospective model based on adults’ recall of childhood events, and may therefore lack reliability and validity (2017) is partially countered by the findings of Barboza Solis et al (2015) who found evidence of ACEs effects in the 1958 British birth cohort study, and by Horowitz et al (2001) who created a sample of participants from records of those who had experienced childhood adversity, and thence exploring whether ACEs were a factor in their adult lives. Both studies found evidence of ACEs effects, and additionally that later life events and gender were also significant influencing factors. Dube et al (2003) found evidence of ACEs effects in a US study dating back to participants born in the early 1900s. They concluded that although ‘ACEs rarely occur in isolation...it has been shown that the limbic system, which is responsible for emotional response, is adversely affected’ (p.274).

People with significant ACE loads, having experienced toxic stress in childhood, enter adulthood with a stress ‘thermostat’ that is chronically set at too high a level, in the same manner as a central heating system that has been set at maximum heat, which puts constant pressure on the boiler, so that when the thermostat is advanced even further by stressors in the day-to-day environment, the system becomes increasingly likely to ‘blow’, see diagram below.

The effect of the stress in early childhood through disruption of the human attachment process has also been extensively studied. Neurobiologists have investigated potential dysfunctions in the limbic system created by the modern practice of placing young infants in mass daycare settings for very long hours. I have carried out a literature review on this area of research, which is currently under peer review. In this I propose on the basis of my findings that as a society we should urgently explore more creative care initiatives for under 3s. In an earlier blog, I reflected that there is much for nations such as the UK to address, for example, the fact that ‘nearly one in three children live in families that are officially designated poor [and] where there is little financial or social support specifically targeted at families with children under three.’ I also consider the problems with memory and learning by cortisol disturbance, such as a short attention span and problems with concentration.

Links have additionally been drawn between adult attachment anxiety and cortisol dysfunction (Quirin et al 2008) and between ‘toxic stress’ and cortisol dysfunction (Oral et al 2015). Burke Harris (2018 p.187) reflects that it is a far more challenging prospect to build healthy attachment relationships and carry out calm, focused nurturing in families who are coping with poverty. It is becoming increasingly clear that categories of ACEs will continue to be refined as the effects are more widely studied, and that we will become more intricately aware of some of the more insidious effects of everyday stressors such as poverty and infant attachment disturbances

Some of these more subtle and transactional effects are already emerging from ACEs research, particularly with respect to attachment. Tharner (2011, p.162) found that ‘parenting stress explained the most variance in child emotional and behaviour problems’ but that ‘in families with high parenting stress securely attached children had fewer socio-emotional problems than insecurely attached children’. Shonkoff et al (2015) found that even just one supportive adult-child relationship in early childhood could blunt the impact of ACEs. These researchers propose that ‘resilience requires relationships’ (p.7) and that it can be strengthened by relationships at any point in childhood. Their checklist of important protective factors is illustrated in the following diagram.

Finally, it is important to remember that ACEs tend to be passed from generation to generation if parents do not receive support to reflect upon childhood stressors, and to explore how these may feed into current problematic behaviours and ongoing health issues. The aim of working with adults with high ACE scores should therefore be to help them to understand how their body and brain have been primed by their childhood environment. Just as we must guard against shallow screening exercises that label and ‘victimise’ children, so we must guard against doing the same thing to their parents. As Burke Harris (2018, p.219) points out, ‘how adversity affects you is not a referendum on your character. We don’t need to play the shame game.’ Support for parents with high ACE scores is currently being trialled.

For example, Blair et al.,(2019) studied the effects of ‘Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)’ which compared families where parents were carrying a range of emotional stressors from their own childhoods to those who were not, indicated by scores on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (Felitti et al., 1998). They found that parents with a high ‘ACEs’ score (4 or over) reported significant improvements in the child’s behaviour following PCIT. Thomas et al., (2018) investigated whether pre-natal social support offered to mothers reduced their biological stress reactions and whether any positive effect was then transmitted to the child. They found that this practice reduced biological stress markers in both mother and child.

Of course, the ultimate aim for ACEs informed practice is to create a society in which ACEs occur far less frequently, and where they do, the child and the family are offered support at the earliest opportunity. Will this be very expensive for the nation? Most certainly. But in the end in such a society, taxpayers will not be required to contribute so much to adult health, social care and criminal justice systems, spending less on average on each individual over a ‘whole life’ basis. And of course, far more of the population will have an experience of life that is far more pleasant than they do at the moment. The answer to those who propose that we cannot afford to address ACEs on a national scale is that what we actually cannot afford is to continue to sleepwalk into a society that is incrementally losing connection to human emotional needs.

In April 2018, I worked with three other Leeds-based early years professionals to host a showing of Resilience at the Leeds Vue Cinema, in The Light. Initially we were concerned that we would not manage to secure the 30 ticket purchases we needed to fund the film showing. We advertised the event on social media and through our personal contacts, and the ticket sales quickly took off. The cinema kept moving the viewing to bigger and bigger screening rooms, and by the week before the viewing, we had sold all 175 tickets available.

The film was screened to a packed cinema of children’s workforce professionals. We asked people to fill in an anonymous feedback slip on the film, and to state their professional role. When we collated the information from the slips we found that we had attendees from the fields of teaching (primary secondary and university), social work, educational psychology, child and adolescent mental health services, students on child and family related programmes and early years education and care professionals working across the statutory and voluntary/independent sector. The feedback from the attendees made the following overall points:

We can collectively make a change'

'Everybody can play a part'

'It's not hopeless'

'ACEs affect everyone'

‘The world needs to change'

'Spread the word'

'Parent power'

The future for ACE aware practice would seem to be optimistic, although as detailed above, care must be taken to navigate the inherent problems that arise in the use of ACEs in services for children and families. This primarily centres around well-meaning but poorly informed applications of the ACEs questionnaire by people with insufficient training in the relevant area, which, in the worst scenarios, can increase distress rather than alleviating it. The goal should always be to nurture strong attachment relationships between parents and children rather than engaging in ‘parent blaming’, and to support the development of restorative, ACEs aware practices in education, youth work and youth justice.


References

Barboza Solis, B., Kelly-Irving, M., Fantin, R., Darnaudery, M. Torriusani, J., Lang, T. And Delpierre, C. (2015) Adverse Childhood Experiences and physiological wear-and-tear in midlife: findings from the 1958 British birth cohort. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/27/1417325112 Accessed 25th April 2018.

Bellis, M., Ashton, K., Hughes, K., Ford, K., Bishop, J. and Paranjothy, P. (2015) Adverse Childhood Experiences and their impact on health-harming behaviours in the Welsh adult population. Cardiff: Public Health Wales. Available at: http://www2.nphs.wales.nhs.uk:8080/PRIDDocs.nsf/7c21215d6d0c613e80256f490030c05a/d488a3852491bc1d80257f370038919e/$FILE/ACE%20Report%20FINAL%20(E).pdf Accessed on 25th April 2018.

Blair, K. Topitzes, J. and Mersky, J. (2019) Do Parents’ Adverse Childhood Experiences Influence Treatment Responses to Parent-Child Interaction Therapy? An exploratory Study with a Child Welfare Sample, Child & Family Behavior Therapy, 41:2, 73-83, DOI:10.1080/07317107.2019.1599255

Bloom, S. (1995) Creating sanctuary in the school. Journal for a Just and Caring Education Vol 1(4): pp.403-433. Available at: http://www.sanctuaryweb.com/Portals/0/Bloom%20Pubs/1995%20Bloom%20Sanctuary%20in%20the%20Classroom.pdf Accessed on 25th April 2018.

Burke Harris, N. (2018) The Deepest Well: healing the long-term effects of childhood adversity. London: Bluebird.

Cocozza, P. (2017) How childhood stress can knock 20 Years off your life. The Guardian Online. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/29/how-bad-parenting-can-knock-20-years-off-your-life Accessed 25th April 2018.

Coupar, S. and Mackie, P. (2016) Polishing the diamonds: addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences in Scotland. Glasgow: Public Health Scotland. Available at: https://www.scotphn.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2016_05_26-ACE-Report-Final-AF.pdf Accessed 25th April 2018.

Dube, S., Felitti, V., Dong, M., Giles, W. and Anda, R. (2003) The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on health problems: evidence from four birth cohorts dating back to 1900. Preventative Medicine Vol 37, pp.268-277.

Edwards, R., Gillies, V., Lee, E., Macvarish, J. White, S. and Walsall, D. (2017) The problem with ACEs. Submission to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Enquiry into the evidence base for early years intervention (EY100039). Available at: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/files/2018/01/Discussing-the-Problem-with-ACEs.pdf Accessed on 25th April 2018.

Felitti, V., Anda, R., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D., Spitz, A., Edwards, V., Koss, M. and Marks, J. (1998) Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults (The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventative Medicine Vol 14 (4), pp.245-258.

Horowitz, A,. Spatz Widom, C.,McLaughlin, J. and Raskin White, H. (2001) The impact of childhood abuse and neglect on adult mental health: a prospective study. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour. Vol 42(2), pp.184-201.

Jarvis, P. (2014) Some reflections upon infancy in the 21st Century. Mothers at Home Matter. Available at: http://mothersathomematter.co.uk/archives/1512 Accessed 25th April 2018.

Jarvis, P. (2016) Mum’s the word for Theresa, Jeremy and Owen. The Huffington Post. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/pam-jarvis/mums-the-word-for-theresa_b_11674502.html Accessed 25th April 2018.

Jarvis, P. (2017) Banish Baseline, beat poverty instead. Leeds Trinity University Blog. Available at: http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/blogs/Banish-Baseline-Beat-Poverty-instead Accessed 25th April 2018.

Oral, R., Ramirez, M. Coohey, C., Nakada, S. Walz, A., Kuntz, A., Benoit, J. and Peek-Asa, C. (2015) Adverse Childhood Experiences and trauma informed care: the future of health care. Pediatric Research. Vol 79 (1) pp.227-233.

Quirin, M., Prusessner., J. and Kuhl, J. (2008) HPA system regulation and adult attachment anxiety: individual differences in reactive and awakening cortisol. Psychoneurology. Vol 33, pp.581-590.

Shonkoff, J., Levitt, P., Bunge, S., Cameron, J., Duncan, G., Fisher, P., Fox, N., Gunnar, M., Hensch, T., Martinez, F., Mayes, L., McEwen, B. and Nelson, C. Supportive relationships and active skill building strengthen the foundations of resilience. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Harvard: Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University. Available at: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Science-of-Resilience.pdf Accessed on 25th April 2018.

Steele, M., Knafo, H., Meissner, P. and Murphy, A. (2016) Adverse Childhood Experiences, poverty and parenting stress. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science. Vol 48(1), pp.32-38.

Tharner, A. (2011) Parents and Infants: determinants of attachment in a longitudinal population-based study. Amsterdam: Erasmus Medical Centre.

Thomas, J, Letourneau, N. Campbell, T. and Giesbrecht, G. 2018. Social buffering of the maternal and infant HPA axes: Mediation and moderation in the intergenerational transmission of adverse childhood experiences. Development and Psychopathology 30, 921–939

Pictures 1-5 supplied by  70/30 Campaign http://www.70-30.org.uk/infographics/
Picture 6, Author's own.