Brains Under Pressure

In this episode, I walk through the research that helped me make sense of why childhood stress affects learning, emotions, and behavior. Growing up, I often felt misunderstood, especially when school felt harder than it should have. It wasn’t until reading studies like Smith & Pollak (2021), Dumornay et al. (2023), and Nelson et al. (2025) that I finally understood how factors like threat, dep...

In this episode, I talk about why children’s emotions and behaviors can look “difficult” when they’re actually responding to stress. I explain how adversity affects brain regions involved in attention, emotional regulation, and learning, drawing on research by Smith & Pollak (2021) and Whittle (2025) . I also reflect on how, growing up, I didn’t understand why school felt harder for me during...

In this episode, I focus on how caregivers and educators can create the kinds of environments that truly support children who are dealing with adversity. I talk about what consistent routines, emotional responsiveness, and supportive relationships actually look like in everyday life — and why they matter so much for learning, behavior, and mental health. Drawing from the developmental concepts I i...