By: Wanjohi. P. Mugambi
Childhood trauma occurs when a child experiences an intense or stressing events that threatens or causes harm to his or her emotional and physical well-being. These experiences may range from extreme adverse event to more common stressful events, such as community or domestic violence, neglect, medical emergencies, and physical or sexual abuse.
These events in most cases they tend to pose danger or harm or unwanted emotions to the child at a young age. A child does not have to be the direct victim of such an occurrence to be traumatized; witnessing such an event can also be traumatic. While various types of trauma exist at different degrees of intensity, it is the individual’s stress associated with each trauma that affects how he or she responds to and behaves following a traumatic event.
Majority of children are exposed to or witness trauma during a young age. Research shows that most of adults experience abuse or other difficult family circumstances during childhood. Sixty percent of children in Kenya and Africa will witness or experience a traumatic event before they turn four.
Through interviews with youth or the therapy sessions most psychologiest have surveyed children from birth to age 17 on their recent exposure to several major categories of violence, such as peer victimization, witnessing violence, and Internet victimization. These categories examined children’s exposure to violence in the home, school, and community settings.
The findings after a strict research done to different individuals shows that:
- More than 60 percent of children were exposed to at least one type of violence within the past year.
- More than 10 percent reported five or more exposures to violence.
- About 10 percent of children surveyed suffered from child maltreatment, were injured in an assault, or witnessed a family member assault another family member.
- About 25 percent were victims of robbery or witnessed a violent act.
- Nearly half of children and adolescents surveyed were assaulted at least once in the past year.
These information also show that children who had been victimized once are at a far greater risk of experiencing other types of violence. Those who have been victimized or assaulted in the past year are five times as likely also to have been sexually victimized, and over four times as likely also to have been maltreated during that period.
How children experience trauma is related to their stress response following the trauma. Most traumas are tolerable, and toxic stress. Positive stress refers to the everyday stress people experience that is normal. Children and youth must learn to respond to stress in healthy ways that support their healthy development. For instance, when an adolescent enters a classroom to take an exam, he or she experiences stress. Once he or she completes the exam, the adolescent’s stress level should return to baseline.
Children and youth experience tolerable stress when they undergo a heightened state of arousal due to traumatic events, such as the death of a loved one or a natural disaster. Secure relationships with adults and community supports can help the child recover from the stress. However, in the absence of these supports, experiencing such trauma may exceed a child’s capacity to cope with and respond to the stress, thus elevating the stress level and putting at risk the child’s physical, social, and emotional developmental trajectory.
When traumatic experiences are prolonged, such as community violence or domestic abuse, a child’s or youth’s stress response system is continually activated. It is this prolonged activation of the stress response system in the absence of appropriate supports that disrupt a child’s or youth’s normal development. This level of stress is also referred to as toxic stress. Such experiences have shown to lead to impairments in brain development and delayed social and emotional development. Unaddressed, the child’s experience of trauma may eventually influence the way he or she behaves at home and in school, which will in turn affect the way he or she develops into an adult.
Regardless of the type of traumatic event, it is important to note that each child or youth experiences trauma and responds to it in a unique way. An event that produces a toxic stress response in one youth, such as hearing about the death of a peer, may not produce the same reaction in another. Factors related to individual characteristics, family setting, and the environment interact and contribute to how a child responds.
Just as each person experiences and responds to trauma differently, trauma manifests itself in unique ways among kids. The way a child or youth responds to trauma depends on developmental level, environmental factors, and family setting. It is important to distinguish the differences between how trauma may affect very young children compared with school-aged children or adolescents. Taking a developmental perspective, we can become aware of what behaviors we might observe as well as better understand the types of supports that are most critical for each age group.Very young children are especially vulnerable when it comes to trauma. Infants and toddlers are at greatest risk for witnessing family violence or experiencing assault by a sibling.At this stage, they are still acquiring the skills needed to adjust their behavior adequately in response to changes in the environment. In addition, young children are in the process of acquiring verbal and communication skills and developing a sense of self. Infants and toddlers rely heavily on their parents to protect them and interpret the meaning of social interactions and novel events. While it may be difficult to see the immediate effect of trauma on very young children, the potential for developmental problems in the short-term and the added risks for negative long-term outcomes are very real. When young children witness or experience a traumatic event, they can experience overwhelming feelings of helplessness, especially if they are unable to rely on the protection of adults in their environment. They may respond by recreating the event in imaginary play or having nightmares about the event. These kids may have undeveloped coping skills for comfort. Having not yet developed the cognitive reasoning to interpret an event accurately, young children may also form assumptions that affect the way they interact with others and with their environment
Additional short-term behavioral symptoms include clinginess, temper tantrums, toileting and sleep disturbances, phobias, social withdrawal, and poor attention. They may also act out aggressively toward others. Children exhibiting these behaviors may experience difficulty in positively engaging with teachers in the early child care setting as well as with other family members at home.
