The Brain section gives a clear starting point for understanding how early experiences, toxic stress and Adverse Childhood Experiences, often searched for as ACEs, can affect children’s development, learning, relationships and behaviour. It explains the brainstem, limbic region and cortex in accessible language, helping parents, foster carers, kinship carers, child care providers and school staff make sense of fight, flight and freeze responses in children.
The toolkit is organised by topic, with visible sections covering resilience, attachment, cues, emotions, emotional regulation, behaviour, discipline, repair, self-care and military families. It is particularly relevant for adults caring for babies, toddlers and younger children, although many of the ideas would also help practitioners working with older kids who need calm, predictable and relationship-based support.
Practical materials listed in the contents include Circle of Security illustrations, tips for infants and toddlers, positive feedback starters, feelings charts, a feelings wheel, an emotions vocabulary chart, gingerbread cut-outs, a relaxation thermometer, games for emotional regulation, routines, rituals, songs and chants, transition supports, visual ideas, trigger work, a 1-2-3 Care poster, time-in guidance and repair after difficult moments. These tools could be printed for use in parenting sessions, nursery or classroom planning, family support visits, therapeutic work, social work conversations or everyday caregiving at home.
The tone is trauma-informed without being overly clinical, so it may suit adults looking for a caregiver trauma toolkit, child behaviour support PDF, emotional regulation handouts, attachment parenting resources, ACEs handouts, positive discipline tools or resilience-building activities for children. The material repeatedly links behaviour with unmet needs, stress responses and relationships, which can help adults respond with warmth, firmness and consistency rather than relying only on punishment or traditional time-out.
Primary authors named in the PDF are Melissa Charbonneau, Rhonda Crooker and Peggy Slider, with contributing authors Caroline Law and Rowena Pineda. The toolkit was developed by public health nurses and includes acknowledgements to schools, Head Start, Washington State University’s CLEAR team and families who contributed to the learning behind the work.
