Childhood trauma and emotional maturity

Adults often underestimate what children experience, the extent of their reactions and what they need to know.

Childhood trauma can disrupt child or adolescent development, interfering with the growth of emotional maturity. Repeated exposure to trauma can affect a child's brain and nervous system.

Children suffer a dual response:
- The impact of the trauma on themselves
- The emotional distress of a child's caregiver

Adult support is a strong protective factor. Impacted adults may make at-risk children more vulnerable.

Common trauma responses in children include impaired concentration, difficulty in learning new things, aggression, recklessness, reduced inhibitions, somatic complaints and school refusal.

It is normal for a child who has experienced trauma to:
- Be hypervigilant and constantly alert
- Be jumpy and startled easily by loud sounds and sudden noises
- Feel exhausted
- Have a worsening of chronic medical problems
- Have difficulty concentrating
- Exhibit poor judgment
- Exhibit denial of emotions or lack memory of events

Sometimes children revert to a younger developmental stage (bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, clinging). Teenagers might respond by taking on the role of a parent, acting as an adult and taking charge of the situation. Or, the teen might try to escape in sex, drugs and alcohol.

Children who are traumatized can develop depression, anxiety, mood disorders and/or behavior disorders.

Source: Traumatic Stress in Children, NRCFCPPP, January 8, 2008

The aftermath of child traumatic stress

Child traumatic stress occurs when children and adolescents are exposed to traumatic events or situations, and this exposure overwhelms their ability to cope with what they have experienced.

Traumatic events can include physical and/or sexual abuse, assault, serious accidents or illnesses and the loss of important relationships or caregivers.

The issue of trauma has only recently received attention within the juvenile justice department, and children’s services in general. For this reason, very few agencies routinely screen for trauma or offer trauma-specific treatment interventions for youth in their care.

Severe and/or long-term trauma has a chemical effect on the body which changes the body’s normal stress response into an alarm response.

As a result, young people might internalize their feelings through depression and anxiety, or act out their feelings in the form of aggression, conduct problems and oppositional/defiant behavior.

Young people are faced with the task of dealing with past trauma, recognizing its current impact and learning ways to manage or overcome the emotional and behavioral problems caused by PTSD.

Effective strategies are those that:
- Educate survivors about biochemical reactions associated with PTSD
- Empower survivors with strategies to self-regulate their response to triggers
- Encourage survivors by giving them a safe place to share their story in an atmosphere of acceptance

Source: Ford, J., et al, Trauma among youth in the juvenile justice system. National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, Research and Program Brief, June 2007.

The Myth of Child Resiliency

Bruce Perry has made it his life's work to understand how trauma affects children, and to develop innovative ways to help them cope with it. In 1996, he founded the Child Trauma Academy, since research demonstrates that the impact of PTSD is far greater on on children than it is on adults.

Children can recover from unspeakable trauma -- but adults' responses to children during and after traumatic events can greatly affect their chances of recovery.

Quotes from The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog:

- "It's hard to imagine today, but when I was in medical school in the early 1980's, researchers didn't pay much attention to the lasting damage that psychological trauma can produce. Even less consideration was given to how trauma mgiht harm children. It wasn't considered relevant. Children were believed to be naturally "resilient" with an innate ability to "bounce back."

- "The brain is a historical organ. It stores our personal narrative. Our life experiences shape who we become by creating our brain's catalog of template memories, which guide our behavior, sometimes in ways we can consciously recognize, more often via processes beyond our awareness."

- "if anything, children are more vulnerable to trauma than adults... Resilient children are made, not born. The developing brain is most malleable and sensitive to experiences - both good and bad - early in life."

- "Children become resilient as a result of the patterns of stress and nurturing that they experience early on in life... we are rapidly and easily transformed by trauma when we are young. Though its effects may not always be visible to the untrained eye, when you know what trauma can do to children, sadly, you begin to see its aftermath everywhere."

- "Ultimately, what determines how children survive trauma, physically, emotionally , or psychologically, is whether the people around them - particularly the adults they should be able to trust and rely upon - stand by them with love, support and encouragement."

The story in this book that most deeply affected me as a reader was one about a three-year-old girl named Sandy who witnessed her mother's murder, and almost died herself.

Yet, her CPS caseworker did not believe that she needed to see a mental health professional. For nine months, Sandy was moved from foster home to foster home, with no counseling whatsoever -- and the details of her life were not shared with any of her foster parents because she was in hiding from the murderer.