Solving The Crisis At The Beginning, Not The End

​Yesterday, I led a training for preschool teachers in Stanardsville, Va. I told them they’re my favorite audience. Not because their work is cute or simple, but because so much of what I teach about trauma, resilience, and connection starts where they spend their days: with our pre-kindergarten (pre-k) little ones.

In those years, the brain is building at a pace we never see again - more than a million new neural connections fire every second in the early years, wiring how we feel safety, how we reach for people, and how we recover when life knocks us down. The architecture gets built “from the bottom up,” and the quality of our earliest relationships helps determine whether we go through life with a foundation that is sturdy or fragile.

I told them I have a kid heading off to college this week, and yet I remain most grateful for his preschool teachers. They didn’t just teach letters; they taught him how to be with other humans. They practiced the tiny, everyday rituals that keep our nervous systems from learning the world is a place to fear. When I speak about healing today, I’m really tracing lines back to rooms filled with blocks, picture books, songs, and adults who knelt to meet a child’s eyes.

Sadly, before I started my presentation, the director of the program acknowledged a shrinking number of young people served. Cuts in state and federal funding, low wages for staff, and unreasonable poverty guidelines that are used to determine eligibility have all contributed.

This is sad to me, given my own personal history with pre-k and the endless data that supports the 'head start' quality pre-k participation offers children, families and our culture in general.

So often the children who most need relationally rich preschool experiences are too often the last to get them. That’s not a moral failing of individual parents or teachers; it’s a systems problem we continue to seem unwilling to solve.

At the end of our training yesterday, I led the team through various scenarios they might encounter with their little people. They used a relational framework I provided them to guide small group discussions about how they might go about solving the challenges outlined in the scenarios.

After we finished our discussions about their resolutions, I reminded them that when they help repair a conflict stemming from a shove at the block table, they are helping young people rehearse future apologies that will save friendships and marriages.

I told them I hope they get applauded for that half as much as they applaud their 3 year-olds.

My son is packing and ready to head off to Virginia Tech tomorrow. But when I trace the through-line of his life, I find it in the preschool years: a teacher who noticed when he went quiet, a class that sang the cleanup song until belonging felt normal, a director who sent home a note celebrating who he was becoming.

Not every child gets that experience.

That’s the sentence I can’t shake.

If we want to change the trajectory of a generation, if we want fewer adolescents swallowed whole by anxiety, fewer young men chasing belonging in the wrong places, fewer families crushed under the weight of “going it alone” - we can start where the brain starts. We can make sure every child has a safe, steady place to practice being human, and every grown-up in those rooms has what they need to stay and do the work.

As a culture, we are too prone to responding to the crisis at the end - when a crisis becomes too big to ignore. Yesterday, I was reminded that the best place to respond to the crisis is going back to the beginning. And, in becoming a culture that truly believes every child DESERVES that beginning - not understanding that is the REAL too big to ignore crisis.

To all the beautiful people at Kiddie Kingdom, Inc. - thank you. He goes off prepared to tackle the many challenges ahead. I will never forget where the heart of that preparation began.

Thank you.