Childhood Trauma 

Trauma in childhood can rob a child from having a happy childhood and from thriving fully. It can keep a child trapped in immature emotional states, such as prolonged dependency and neediness; hamper healthy development; cause chronic unhappiness, anger and tension, and lead to symptoms such as anxiety and behaviour problems. Unless healed the emotional scars often stay with the child and persist into adulthood.

Bullying

Bullying behavior, such as social exclusion, physical attacks, name calling and public humiliation, cause lasting harm. To make matters worse bullying has become virtualized as more children partake in social media outlets.  Victims question their value as human beings and feel that they no longer have a place in society. Our sense of belonging and worth are essential human needs. The deep sense of social rejection and violation experienced by victims causes depression and in some cases leads to suicide.

Childhood Medical Conditions

Hospitalisation, surgery and medical procedures in infancy and childhood.

Surgery in infancy and childhood can be traumatic due to physical pain, and dealing with invasive medical procedures, such as having blood taken, getting stitches, having dressings replaced. Coping with a foreign hospital environment, interacting with medical staff, separation from parents, and being away from the security of home and from the companionship of siblings are all emotional traumas for children. Special diets due to nut allergies and conditions such as coeliac disease can cause children distress and hamper their social life.

When children experience life threatening illnesses such as asthma and epilepsy they are aware of the danger to their wellbeing, though they may not have an ability to grasp the permanence of death for example. They compare themselves to siblings and peers and feel different. They are aware how their life is impacted by their condition. They may not be able to have sleep overs, go to certain places, or play with friends. The curtailment of their activities and life style, and the threat to their survival are traumatic.

Children who live with physical and mental health disabilities, such as cerebral palsy and autism, have to come to terms with the fact that they cannot accomplish what their same age peers can. These issues may be less pressing when they are younger, but become more pertinent when they mature and reach adolescence. They may have a desire to be able to compete at sport, perform academically, have friends and be included socially and later to become independent. Being unable to realise their dreams and their exclusion from society is painful.

Infant Trauma

When infants have life threatening and stressful experiences they are impacted, affecting their adjustment during infancy and later in life.  Birth can be traumatic for many reasons. For example the infant may go into distress and have a low upgar score after birth, because labour was too long, or because she was born with the umbilical cord around the neck. Or the mother’s life may have been at risk while giving birth and an emergency caesarian section may have been necessary. Premature birth may result in the infant being placed in an incubator and being separated from the mother for an extended period of time.

Stressful Family Circumstances

Children may be placed in foster care because they have been orphaned, or have been neglected and abused by a parent, or because their parent is temporarily unable to care for them. Foster care may be the best solution for the child and offer them healing from their pain, but the child still has to come to terms with separation, or traumatic loss of a parent, or both parents. The recovery from their grief, fear and anger can be a slow process and the emotional scars often last a lifetime.

When children have a sick parent, or a sibling with a disability, they are often required to put their own needs aside and grow up too early. When their parents experience stress due to financial hardship, business and work challenges, or family disputes the heightened anxiety and frustrations of the parents affect the whole household. When they have parents who must travel for work this interferes with their emotional bond with the parent who is frequently away.

In families where the parents are divorced children have to cope with separation from one parent at all times. This loss causes children grief and anxiety. Feuding parents and travelling between homes add to the child’s stress load.

Grief

When children lose a parent it causes grief which can take many years to come to terms with, causing depression, anxiety and behavior problems in adolescence. When children lose a sibling they often lose a best friend; and suffer further because their parents, consumed by grief, are less available to them emotionally, causing them to have permanent feelings of abandonment and isolation. Children struggle to understand and come to terms with the loss, as it is often too hard for families to talk about such painful matters.

Displaced: Losing home and country

The child’s family home is her castle. When children lose their home they often pine and experience anxiety and depression. The family home is an important safety anchor in a child’s life, giving them security and stability. Circumstances like immigration, moving home, frequent relocation, growing up in expat communities, loss of home due to cataclysmic events, such as floods, or fires, earthquakes, trigger trauma responses in children.

Abuse

Neglect and abuse (physical and sexual abuse) in childhood are life threatening experiences, that cause a child to live in fear permanently. This highly stressed state harms and arrests the child’s development. Trust, the most basic building block of all human relationships, has been destroyed. This causes depression, anxiety, shame, mistrust, isolation and despair and turns life into a constant struggle. The damage in childhood is carried into adult life, and remains a barrier to happiness and living to one’s full potential. The adult remains trapped in the fears, shame, mistrust and self doubt from childhood.