Traumatic experiences can initiate strong emotions and physical reactions that can persist long after the event. Children may feel terror, helplessness, or fear, as well as physiological reactions such as heart pounding, vomiting, or loss of bowel or bladder control.
They may be clingy and fearful of new situations, easily frightened, difficult to console, and/or aggressive and impulsive. They may also have difficulty sleeping, lose recently acquired developmental skills, and show regression in functioning and behavior.
Listen to their stories, take their reactions seriously, correct any misinformation about the traumatic event, and reassure them that what happened was not their fault. Provide extra attention, comfort, and encouragement. Spending time together as a family may help children feel safe.
Trauma can seriously disrupt important aspects of child development that occur before the age of three years. These may include relationship and bonding with parents, as well as foundational development in the areas of language, mobility, physical and social skills and managing emotions.
Take their reactions seriously, correct any misinformation about the traumatic event, and reassure them that what happened was not their fault. Help your child learn to relax. Encourage your child to practice slow breathing, listen to calming music, or say positive things (“I am safe now.”).
This response happens involuntarily. Trauma triggers are reminders of the traumatizing event, and they can be almost anything: sounds, smells, articles of clothing, places or people who remind the child, consciously or unconsciously, of an abuse event. Triggers can cause memories to suddenly surface.
Sometimes effects from the traumatic events can be delayed for 6 months or longer, but when PTSD occurs soon after an event, the condition generally improves after 3 months. Some people with PTSD have long-term effects and often feel chronically, emotionally numb. PTSD in children usually becomes a chronic disorder.
A child with PTSD has constant, scary thoughts and memories of a past event. A traumatic event, such as a car crash, natural disaster, or physical abuse, can cause PTSD. Children with PTSD may relive the trauma over and over again. They may have nightmares or flashbacks.
Initial reactions to trauma can include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, dissociation, confusion, physical arousal, and blunted affect. Most responses are normal in that they affect most survivors and are socially acceptable, psychologically effective, and self-limited.
Reassurance is the key to helping children through a traumatic time. Very young children need a lot of cuddling, as well as verbal support. Answer questions about the event honestly, but do not dwell on frightening details or allow the subject to dominate family or classroom time indefinitely.
When confronted with trauma, a child may not have the ability to cope with the experience. While very young children may not remember specific events they do remember emotions, images and can be reminded of situations that cause them to be upset.
Most unresolved childhood trauma affects self-esteem and creates anxiety. Did you suffer a serious childhood illness? If so, you were likely isolated at home or hospitalized. This meant being removed from normal social activities and you probably felt lonely, maybe even worried about being different.
Young Children and Trauma. Children can experience trauma as early as infancy. In fact, young children between the ages of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are still in the early formative years.
Anxiety may present as fear or worry, but can also make children irritable and angry. Anxiety symptoms can also include trouble sleeping, as well as physical symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or stomachaches. Some anxious children keep their worries to themselves and, thus, the symptoms can be missed.
Kids exposed to trauma may mentally re-experience traumatic events, and that can make kids look spacey and distracted, like kids with the inattentive type of ADHD. “If you're having intrusive thoughts about a traumatic event you've been through, you're not attending to the present moment,” notes Dr. Howard.
Many may often ask themselves, “Will I feel this way forever?” The answer to this is both simple and complex. The effects of trauma that evolve into ost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will never entirely go away. However, they can be managed with proper treatment to make them less severe to live a normal life.
For some kids, trauma can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But kids can recover after trauma. There is therapy that can help. Kids also need extra support and comfort from parents.
In their analysis of pubertal development, the researchers found that children who experienced violence reached puberty at an earlier age than those who did not, but this was not true for children exposed to deprivation or poverty.
For some children, the cumulative effect of growing up in a family with frequent harsh verbal discipline can basically rewire the brain and lead to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. P.T.S.D.
It's also known as intergenerational trauma. Trauma can be passed on to future generations through how a parent interacts with their children, the behaviors and patterns children see their parents engaging in, or even through genetics or DNA.
Trauma-induced changes to the brain can result in varying degrees of cognitive impairment and emotional dysregulation that can lead to a host of problems, including difficulty with attention and focus, learning disabilities, low self-esteem, impaired social skills, and sleep disturbances (Nemeroff, 2016).
“Five are personal — physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect,” according to ACESTooHigh News.
The most common causes of childhood trauma include: Accidents. Bullying/cyberbullying. Chaos or dysfunction in the house (such as domestic violence, parent with a mental illness, substance abuse or incarcerated)