Dear Provider…
Feel free to share this letter with your child’s teacher, therapist, daycare provider, or any staff member who supports them. It is designed to foster understanding, encourage collaboration, and create an environment where connection and safety come first. You are not in this alone. Together, we can help your child feel seen, supported, and safe.
Dear Provider,
Thank you for the work you do with children in foster care. I know this work is both meaningful and incredibly complex. You show up for kids who have lived through more than most adults ever will. That matters.
I’m writing to offer a trauma-informed lens to help you better understand some of the behaviors you might see from youth who come from hard places. These children are not broken. Their brains and bodies have adapted to survive. What looks like manipulation, control, defiance, or withdrawal is often a survival response rooted in past experiences where safety was unpredictable or unavailable.
Trauma doesn’t just affect memory. It changes the brain. For many kids in foster care, their nervous system has learned that adults are not always safe, that their needs might not be met, and that love often comes with conditions. Because of this, their brains may default to protection over connection. That means fight, flight, freeze, or shut down behaviors are common… not because they’re “bad kids,” but because their systems are doing exactly what they were designed to do: keep them alive.
From TBRI (Trust-Based Relational Intervention), we learn to view behavior as communication. If a child is dysregulated, the first question is not “How do I get them to stop?” but “What need are they trying to meet?” Connection, felt safety, and empowerment through choices are essential. When children feel safe with you, their behavior begins to change—not the other way around.
Robyn Gobbel reminds us that kids from hard places often don’t need more consequences. They need more regulation. When a child’s behavior is intense, our calm is the intervention. Co-regulation is not coddling. It is what builds the foundation for self-regulation, connection, and healing.
Many youth from hard places have a smaller window of tolerance, the zone where their nervous system can stay regulated and engage with the world. Trauma narrows this window, making everyday experiences feel overwhelming. But here’s the hope: consistent, attuned relationships can help widen it over time. Your calm presence literally helps their brain and body feel safer.
This work is not easy. Trauma shows up in ways that are loud, messy, or withdrawn. But when you respond with connection instead of control, with presence instead of power, you become a safe place in a world that hasn’t always been safe for them.
You don’t have to fix everything. You just have to be someone who doesn’t walk away when things get hard. Thank you for being that person.
When a child is dysregulated, the most important thing you can do is offer your calm, not your control. A dysregulated child cannot access logic or reasoning. In those moments, they need co-regulation, not consequences. This might look like lowering your voice, getting down to their eye level, offering a drink of water, or simply being a quiet, steady presence. If the child cannot talk, that is okay. If they cannot follow directions, that is expected. Your job is not to fix the moment but to anchor it. When you show up with safety and consistency, their nervous system learns that it no longer has to stay in survival mode. That is where real learning and healing begin.
With appreciation,
[Your Name]
Want More Tools Like This?
If this kind of tip is helpful, you can get more like it straight to your inbox. I send out free trauma-informed parenting resources designed for real life. No fluff. No judgment. Just small, meaningful steps that help.
👉 Click Here to sign up for free!!
Trauma-Informed Resources to Explore
TBRI Overview (Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development):
Robyn Gobbel’s Free Podcast + Library of Resources:
Book: Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors by Robyn Gobbel
The Whole-Brain Child and The Connected Child are also excellent book references