Imaginif

Childhood trauma is more than a frightening or distressing event. No matter how the trauma occurs, trauma is classified as having three parts that turn a scary event into a traumatic event:

1. It was an unexpected event
2. the child was unprepared for the event
3. there was nothing the child could do to prevent it from happening.

Article by Megan Bayliss

Potentially traumatic events that may affect our kids range from a single incident (witnessing domestic violence between parents or a car accident) to repeated and ongoing stress (separation trauma from a parents death or living with war). There are three different types of trauma that create negative affect in our children:

1. Impersonal trauma (flood/fire/hurricane, etc)
2. Interpersonal trauma (an assault on the child)
3. Attachment trauma (breakdowns that have occurred in close family relationships)

Despite the type of trauma, each can have a devastating and life changing impact on our children. The trauma can alter their physical, emotional, cognitive and social development. Further, the trauma can increase the likelihood of the child experiencing a range of social, neuropsychiatric and medical problems. Why? Because trauma changes the way we develop.

As a child begins to feel threatened the brain releases messages of arousal. The arousal continuum follows a path from calm, vigilance, alarm, fear, through to terror. At any point along the continuum changes are happening to the child’s thinking, behaving and feeling reactions. A frightened child doesn’t focus on words, they watch the threat around them. The more frightened they become, the quicker the movement from vigilance to terror.

This movement along the continuum is often called the flight/fight response. The response causes

• increased heart rate, blood pressure and breathing
• a release of glucose stored in muscle and increased muscle tone, and
• a state of hypervigilance (always on the lookout - hyper alert) where all non critical information is tuned out

Imagine if you are surrounded by ongoing trauma (children in domestic violence/war/being sexually assaulted by a family member). The physiological changes will make you sick. Imagine being hypervigilant all the time. You may miss developmental and social milestones that are taken for granted. You may well become a social outcast because you do not have the social skills to engage with people.

We’ve probably all heard of the flight/fight response but it is important to remember that just as children’s personalities differ, so too does their response to a traumatic event. Often it is impossible for a child to flee or fight back. When this happens, a child often uses a psychological  fleeing tool to protect themselves: dissociation. Dissociation on the lower end of a continuum is day dreaming, an escape from the immediate and boring reality of life. On the other end of the continuum, dissociation is survival for the child. Their reality is so traumatic that they have to dissociate from the outside world and focus on a nice world they create internally.

Dissociation can be a functional way to survive a dysfunctional situation. But…imagine if you have to dissociate on a daily basis. The world you’ve created within yourself is so lovely, why would you want to come back to reality. Constant dissociation as a child experiencing trauma can lead to Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Order in popular media).

Most traumatised children will adapt their trauma response to a combination of hypersrousal and dissociation.  With this combination of physical, perceptual, cognitive, emotional and neurological yoyoing happening as a protection mechanism for our children, the result of ongoing trauma can only ever be an altered stated compared to the pretrauma child. Oh my goodness, what are we doing to our children by not protecting them from trauma!

After a traumatic event the child’s mind and body slowly moves back down the arousal or dissociation continuum. IF they are able to return to a safe place, their brain and body can return to pre traumatic event functioning. This is where they can begin to process what has happened. They can become aware of how their body feels, what their emotions are, what is happening around them and what their thoughts are. This is the stage where often a person “falls to pieces”. I know that I am great in a crisis. I take over, I act, I am instinctually in control. Afterwards, when I re look at the sequence of events, I might cry, shake and feel exhausted as I process the trauma that has just occurred. I am an adult and I have the words, knowledge and understanding to know what is happening. A child does not.

During the acute post traumatic period, a child will play out the traumatic even in their head: again and again. Images of the event may pop into the child’s head at the most inappropriate times and may take over the child’s thinking. The child relives and re-experiences the trauma and tells the story over and over again. Acting out the event in play, drawing or dreams is common. These are memories of the trauma - complex memories that do not really make any sense outside of the trauma because during the trauma event the child was in an altered state. Sometimes, reliving and re-experiencing the trauma forces the  child back into the aroused state thereby strengthening the likelihood of ongoing alteration to their physical, social, cognitive and emotional development.

These persisting responses to trauma exhaust a child and create an internal agitation that antacid preparations just cannot sooth. When faced with reminders of the event, the child may become so overwhelmed that dissociation becomes a great option for them again. They may look to you as though they are impulsive, hyperactive, withdrawn or depressed. They may have sleep difficulties and anxieties. They may be slow to reach developmental tasks or regress in the tasks they have already reached. They may also have a constant fast heart rate and blood pressure pushing toward the too high end. And so the vicious cycle of trauma continues….

If you child has experienced trauma, there is help available. Trained professionals can assist in the child processing the trauma and returning to a state of pre trauma existence. Ring a counselling agency today and ask for a referral to a practitioner that specialises in integrating childhood trauma. The child will never forget what has happened to them. Their body will always remember. What can change is a therapeutic control over the affects of trauma and a path of child development that leads toward a fully functioning adult. This is your responsibility as a parent/carer for a child who has been traumatised.

The best protection against trauma is prevention. Child protection is serious business. Do you risk manage and do everything you can to prevent your child being exposed to a traumatic event? I hope so, because our children deserve to grow up after they’ve had a childhood rather than be forced to grow up and take on altered states of survival during childhood.

Much of the information for this article was sourced from Perry, BD. (2003) Effects of Traumatic Events on Children, Child Trauma Academy. I recommend this resource for foster carers, social science professionals and parents wanting to know more indepth information about the effects of trauma on children. Please seek permission from the Child Trauma Academy prior to printing and disseminating their document.

Related trauma pages for further study.

Helping Hurting Kids
Child Molestation Trauma
The psychologial effects of trauma
Trauma and children - tips for parents
How can trauma affect my young child?
David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages
Emotional and psychological trauma: Causes, symptoms, effects and treatment.