Stephen Gross, founder of the Playmaker Project, during his recent event at the Life is Good factory in Hudson. Courtesy photo

HUDSON – The Playmaker Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children with trauma recovery, recently held its Playmaker City event at the Life is Good factory.

Sixty early childhood educators attended the event and learned a myriad of strategies to “spread the power of optimism.”

Stephen Gross founded the Playmaker Project in 1989 by introducing therapeutic play to homeless children in Boston.

“It’s all about making sure kids have the childhoods they deserve,” Gross said in a follow-up interview. “Kids’ first language is play; you’ve got to be able to speak their language.”

Over the years, Gross said many adults, even early childhood teachers, lack the ability to truly connect with children.

“An early childhood program is only as good as the teachers,” he said, adding that children spend six hours per day in child care programs. “These people play a huge role in our children’s lives. To do that work is an art form.”

However, Gross said many early childhood centers do not have the support or resources they need to thrive.

“There’s high levels of burn out in that field,” he said. “We want to help change that and make sure early childhood educators have the tools to not only be effective in their work but energized in the field.”

Therefore, Gross said it is crucial to teach children how to re-establish a sense of safety in the wake of a trauma.

“Play is a corrective experience,” he said. “It gives kids back the felt sense of joy, wonder, community and empowerment that trauma robs from them.”

Gross said it is difficult for children to be “in the moment” following a trauma.

“The moment is where life is lived,” he said.

He remembered working with a group of high school teachers in Turkey in the weeks following a 7.2 earthquake that rocked the city of Düzce in November 1999.

Although the students had tremendous trepidation about returning to the classroom, Gross said the teachers used glasses of water to prove that, at that moment, the ground was not moving and that there was no danger.

Currently in New Hampshire, one in three children have been exposed to traumas such as abuse, neglect and household dysfunction. During the past three decades, the Playmaker Project has shown more than 36 million children that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.