Beneath the Behavior: A Trauma-Informed Guide to Foster Parenting, Healing, and Everyday Compassion
What if the behavior you see is only the surface of the story?
A child may seem angry, defiant, withdrawn, controlling, dishonest, or impossible to reach. But beneath those behaviors may be fear, grief, hunger, shame, loss, uncertainty, and a nervous system shaped by survival.
Beneath the Behavior is a compassionate, practical guide for foster parents, kinship caregivers, teachers, helping professionals, and anyone who wants to understand trauma with greater clarity and respond with greater wisdom.
Through relatable stories, reflection questions, and everyday tools, LaTina Figures explains how trauma can affect the brain, body, emotions, relationships, and behavior. Readers will learn how to recognize survival responses, build felt safety, connect before correcting, prepare for triggers and setbacks, support teens, honor first families, and care for themselves along the way.
Inside, you will discover how to:
Recognize behavior as communicationUnderstand fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responsesBuild trust through consistency, structure, and compassion
Respond to meltdowns, aggression, food hoarding, lying, withdrawal, and control
Create routines and rituals that help children feel safeUse connection, co-regulation, and repair after conflict
Support reunification while respecting a child's love for their first family
Recognize caregiver stress, burnout, and secondary trauma
Apply trauma-informed compassion at home, school, work, and in everyday life
Trauma-informed care does not mean ignoring boundaries or allowing unsafe behavior. It means looking beneath the behavior, understanding the need, and responding with both structure and compassion.
Healing does not happen through perfection. It happens through safe relationships, repeated moments of trust, and adults who keep showing up.
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