As you may know from many of my previous posts, Dr. Bruce Perry is a significant resource for our trauma training curriculum. He has been speaking all over the world on childhood trauma and is the Senior Fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas.
This coming Sunday on March 11, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS, Oprah, as a special contributor, will be exploring childhood trauma. She will be featuring a trauma-informed program in Milwaukee where she was raised.
She will also be interviewing Dr. Bruce Perry on the impact of childhood trauma, its effects on the brain, and the vulnerability that trauma creates in a child’s brain wiring. It is an interview that gets right to the core of how trauma-impacted children are judged.
On CBS This Morning, Oprah spoke about childhood trauma and revealed her own perspective regarding the shift in how we view behavior in children and how often label them as delinquents (or some other negative label) when the real issue is a poorly-wired brain due to their childhood trauma.
Thus so many approaches we use to help these children are really not helpful at all. Oprah states, “Unless you fix the trauma, you are working on the wrong thing!”
Oprah has made a commitment to have her own school in Africa become trauma informed in their approach for the girls who attend the school. Using her capacity as an advocate and a philanthropist, she has also pledged to advance the agenda of trauma-informed approaches to help those children who have been trauma-impacted.
For those who are concerned about the impact of childhood trauma, I highly recommend watching 60 Minutes this Sunday.
Hopefully, the show will have a significant impact, only as Oprah can, in how we deal with this significant issue in our children.
I am so appreciative that Oprah has taken such a bold stand and is making a deeply personal commitment to help our traumatized children.
Thank you so much Oprah, for your inspiration on this vital issue for our children.
Gerry Vassar, President/CEO
