Blog Post – Child Trauma
A traumatic experience is a terrifying, perilous, or violent event that represents a risk to a child’s life. Seeing a traumatic event that undermines the life or physical security of a friend or family member can likewise be traumatic. This is especially significant for small kids as their feeling of wellbeing relies upon the apparent security of their connection figures.
Traumatic experiences can start strong emotions and aversive physical responses that can continue long after the event. Children may feel dread, defenselessness, or fear, just as physiological responses, for example, heart palpitations, vomiting, or loss of bowel control and incontinence. Children who experience a failure to shield themselves or who lacked safeguarding from others to be shielded from the outcomes of the traumatic experience may likewise feel overpowered by the physical and emotional reactions.
Despite the fact that parents make a continuous effort to protect children, dangerous and traumatic events despite everything still can occur. This risk can emerge outside of the family, (for example, a cataclysmic event, car crash, school shooting, or even internet bullying) or from inside the family. (for example, abusive behavior at home, physical or sexual maltreatment, or the sudden passing of a friend or family member.)
In spite of the fact that people frequently make statements like, “He was so young when that occurred. He won’t even remember it as he grows up,” childhood trauma can have a deep-rooted impact in their life even long after the event is over. And keeping in mind that children are resilient, it does not mean they are made of stone. It’s critical to perceive when your child may require proficient assistance with managing a trauma. Early intervention could prevent your child from encountering the continuous impacts of the trauma growing up and even in adulthood.
I myself have an interesting relationship with childhood trauma. Just over 20 years ago, my dad, manifested his passion for mountaineering chasing peaks, along with Marcus Tobía and part of the Proyecto Cumbre team (some of the biggest names and teams of mountaineering in Venezuela). My mom did the same from motherhood, with three small children and a fourth who was on the way (me).
So, pregnant with me, she received that first alarm signal. My dad was undergoing medical examinations, in preparation like every professional mountaineer does before an expedition. And just beginning the stress test the alarmed doctor asked him to stop: “You’re going to die here! You have the highest blood pressure!” He said. Now I wasn’t born yet so I don’t know exactly what the doctor said but for the purpose of storytelling, I will tell it as my mother told it while I was growing up.
After this encounter with the doctor, my father got a bunch of tests to figure out what was wrong but the answer was worst than he could imagine. He needed a new kidney. This is when my whole family was forced to climb a whole mountain with cero preparation and no warning (a metaphorical one obviously) He had just started his own company with every penny he had saved up since college, had three children and one on the way. It seemed like the worst possible time for him to get sick but life doesn’t really care about convenience does it?
Only months after his diagnosis and weeks after I was born we got a burst of luck, and we crowned the first peak: My dad’s uncle expresses his willingness to help by donating one of his kidneys, and the transplant is done, and it is a complete success. But this is just the start (but you knew that since this couldn’t be my traumatic experience if it was over when I was a month old).
The path to follow since then has not been easy, but he faces a backpack loaded with the most valuable for those who suffer from a disease like this. Hope. His uncle gave him hope. But my dad has to take immunosuppressants for life. And if for just three days he stops taking the medicine, it turns out that his body would begin to reject the new organ, and you immediately return to zero, or to the base as mountaineers call their point of departure.
Now I can’t say I remember this but I do believe it shaped my relationship with my family for many years. The first 3 years after a transplant getting sick is a no-go. It is hard having school-age children that have school-age friends who are basically germ and snot producing machines. My mom had to make a choice and that meant my three siblings basically lived with our cousins those first three years, spending months at a time away from home. The worst part is that my dad was taking a cocktail of medications that are not only tough on your body but have serious side effects, one of which was irritability. Every time my siblings came home my dad would go into a screaming fit and get aggressively angry that they were being noisy and hyperactive.
I was three the first time my dad screamed at me that I recall (though I suspect there were many others before this one since having a child who doesn’t even sleep through the night and cries all day must be incredibly tough without those pesky side effects.) I was being homeschooled at this point because preschool is worst than a school for germs and sickness, I was outside with my mom learning my ABCs and there was a dog being walked near us.
My dad walked outside and screamed at me for not singing the song correctly and the dog got spooked, it jumped at me and bit my face, I had to get facial reconstruction surgery every year until I was 9 to make sure my face was not deformed. It made my dad so guilty he stopped interacting with me altogether. Wouldn’t come to school events, or kiss me goodnight, or even acknowledge I was home when I got home from school. My siblings had formed such a strong bond being in different houses all together they didn’t really acknowledge me either and so I started to feel lonely and sad. My mom loved me but she was so busy with my dad and keeping us alive that she didn’t have time to make me feel like I belonged in my own family.
I started to become anxious and had a lot of self-doubt. Why didn’t my own family want me? What is so horribly wrong with me that my dad won’t even talk to me? I harmed my friendships, my grades until it got to a point where I just thought I was a burden. I didn’t want to be a part of my family anymore. One night my mom talked to me about going to boarding school and I completely broke down. “You care about me so little that you just want to ship me off and never see me again?” she was confused because she thought this was an opportunity for me to learn new languages and see new cultures like my cousins had done. She never thought id remember my dad’s transplant or that I would be so traumatized by events that transgressed when I was barely a toddler but thankfully she got me help.
She took me to a psychologist who helped me understand my pain and to get through it. I owe everything I am today to having a mom who understood that I needed help. Some people are not so lucky. This is why it is so important to know the signs and get children the help they need, because thinking they won’t remember or that they won’t be affected for being so young is unfortunately not the case.