The signs of trauma in a child include obsession with death or safety and issues with sleeping, eating, attention, and regulating emotions. Kids who have experienced trauma may also start to avoid school, especially if their trauma happened at school or is related to school, such as the death of a classmate.
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.
“Child trauma” refers to a scary, dangerous, violent, or life threatening event that happens to a child (0-18 years of age). This type of event may also happen to someone your child knows and your child is impacted as a result of seeing or hearing about the other person being hurt or injured.
Symptoms. PTSD symptoms get grouped into four types; avoidance, intrusive memories, adverse changes in mood and thinking, and negative changes in physical and emotional responses. Symptoms include: Flashbacks about the event (can feel like reliving the experience all over again)
Emotional Trauma Symptoms
Psychological Concerns: Anxiety and panic attacks, fear, anger, irritability, obsessions and compulsions, shock and disbelief, emotional numbing and detachment, depression, shame and guilt (especially if the person dealing with the trauma survived while others didn't)
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.
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.
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.
A study of young adults found that childhood trauma was significantly correlated with elevated psychological distress, increased sleep disturbances, reduced emotional well-being, and lower perceived social support.
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.
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.
The Trauma Test is a brief self-administered rating scale. It is useful in determining the degree to which you struggle with the aftermath of trauma, anxiety or depression, nervous system overarousal, and difficulty with healing and recovery.
Young children may show a fear of strangers or be scared to leave their parent. They might also have sleep problems or nightmares. They might think a lot about certain words or symbols that may or may not be related to the trauma. Young children may also show posttraumatic play.
Childhood trauma can occur when a child witnesses or experiences overwhelming negative events in childhood. Many childhood experiences can overwhelm a child. These can occur in relationships such as with abuse, assault, neglect, violence, exploitation or bullying.
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).
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.
Children who have experienced complex trauma often have difficulty identifying, expressing, and managing emotions, and may have limited language for feeling states. They often internalize and/or externalize stress reactions and as a result may experience significant depression, anxiety, or anger.
Here are some common reactions to trauma: Losing hope for the future. Feeling distant (detached) or losing a sense of concern about others. Being unable to concentrate or make decisions.
A trauma trigger is a stimulus that causes memories or reactions to severe or sustained trauma. For example: You get a tight feeling in your chest every time you drive past the place where you had a car accident. Your palms sweat and your cheeks flush when a certain person touches you.