What does trauma have to do with a child’s behavior? While adults may have the emotional awareness, cognitive skills, and internal tools to recognize psychological trauma and address it or seek help from a professional, young children do not. This can leave the child in a flight, fight, or even freeze mode – making it challenging to interact socially, “behave” in daycare or school, and feel safe in their environment. This makes it important for the adults in the child’s life to understand what trauma is, the effects it has, and what they can do.
Trauma Isn’t Always the Same
There isn’t one standard type of trauma a child could experience. Along with differences in individual experiences or events that lead to traumatic responses, there are also different general categories of trauma. These break trauma down by event, length of time, complexity, and biological/genetic causes. More specifically: acute, chronic, historical, and complex trauma. Along with these types of trauma, epigenetics – the way past generations’ trauma is expressed through the current generations genes – is an emerging area that can help to explain why some children react the way they do to certain situations or triggers.
Not only are the roots of trauma different, the way the child perceives or interprets the trauma differs too. While it might seem like the severity or intensity of the traumatic event would increase the severity of the response, this isn’t always the case. The child’s individual sensory system often plays a larger role in the emotional, mental, social, and physical effects of trauma.
Trauma and the Brain
Why do children respond in certain ways to trauma and the related triggers? To understand trauma responses, you need to start with basic brain biology. Different areas of the brain are responsible for different types or levels of responses. The forebrain is the control center. It is where abstract thought, reasoning, impulse control, and logic happen. When trauma affects this area of the brain, the child may “freeze” or shut down. The child may not have the ability to make decisions, communicate/talk, or move.
While freezing is one trauma response, it certainly isn’t the only behavior that intense experiences can cause – and the forebrain isn’t the only area that causes this reaction. When trauma affects the hindbrain, it can cause the fight, flight, or even freeze. This alarm center of the brain can make your heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rates rise in response to stress or perceived stress.
And, then there’s the mid or limbic brain. This area controls emotional responses and plays a crucial role in the child’s affect regulation, attachment, emotional reactivity, and their sense of belonging. When stimulated, the limbic area can produce an alarm-like response. The child may startle easily, avoid some types of social situations, or have difficulty reading social cues.
Trauma and Triggers
A traumatic experience can have lasting results. This means the child may experience feelings associated with the trauma at any time. A trigger can activate a fight, flight, or freeze response in the brain, dramatically changing the child’s behavior. Keep in mind, a trigger isn’t always obvious. Something that seems innocent or safe may remind a child of a past trauma or in some other way set off a negatively charged response. This can scare the child, make them angry, or make them feel unsafe.
Fight and flight are often more obvious responses. Common fight behaviors in a young child could include hitting, biting, yelling, kicking, or tantruming. Flight behaviors may include avoidance, hiding, not listening to an adult, or, as the name implies, fleeing the scene. When a child freezes they may also avoid social situations. But they may also withdraw, hide, or have language/communication-related delays.
Trauma and Resilience
Even though trauma can negatively impact children, there are strategies to help build resilience. Adults, such as parents and teachers, can help the child to regulate their behaviors, feel safe, develop social/emotional strategies for success, and in some ways – rewrite their brain. Providing a safe, predictable environment is a way to start this process. Parents and other adults can also act as mirrors, modeling a calm or emotionally regulated state that the child can follow.
Young children aren’t able to identify or understand their emotions in the same way that an adult can. This means the adult may need to help the child build an emotion-centered vocabulary, give them strategies for recognizing different emotions, and make it possible for the child to learn about different levels of emotions.
Trauma can be a barrier when a child is trying to access the social and academic curriculum. Counseling can help the child explore his/her thoughts and feelings, develop coping skills, regulate emotional responses and form healthy relationships with family and friends. If you believe you child struggles with trauma, consider asking your school for support services to help you child engage and participate in school. You are your child's best advocate!
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