Written = Min Kyung-mi (Early Child Special Education Teacher)
We all have times in our lives where we go through something that will shock us. You may have been in a terrible accident, lost a loved one or witnessed the death of someone, or separated from your family through the divorce or death of your parents. The recent series of events caused by the corona virus also apply to this.
In this way, when something similar to a crisis or fear experienced in the past occurs, there are cases where you experience psychological anxiety while feeling the emotions at the time again. We call this ‘trauma’. Trauma is also a psychological traumatic change that can occur in people who have continuously suffered school violence, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, sexual assault, and bullying.
My child who has a wound in his heart, what is trauma?
The dictionary meaning of trauma is ‘a psychological traumatic change that appears as a unique physical/mental experience that only I have experienced’. It’s easy to think of trauma as something experienced by adults, but young children can have it too. Trauma can also have a worse effect on young children.
Take the example of a student in the United States whose behavior changed as a result of trauma. One day, the child was playing in the school playground, and just in time, a garbage truck picked up a large trash can from the school and shouted loudly, ‘Bang! bang!’ I made a sound. At that moment, the child trembled with fear and cried, covered his ears, and hid under the tree.
This child’s father was shot and killed by someone when he was young, and the child was the only witness to the murder. Several years have passed since that incident, but the child still feels that when he hears a loud sound similar to that of a gunshot, his body reacts first without realizing it and struggles.
Trauma experienced as a child has a greater impact on a child’s life than does an adult’s. If your child has had experiences where he or she has been exposed to an environment where he or she could be unintentionally hurt, please keep a close eye on your child. This is because negative experiences that can be traumatic can appear as various symptoms in a child’s daily life.
Typical symptoms include:
Children have less developed self-regulation skills, so when they are excessively hurt from the outside, they can express severe anger or anger.
Aggressive tendencies and behavior
If a child has had a negative experience with someone else’s aggressive tendencies (such as assault), they may unknowingly express their anger toward others in the same way.
Usually, children naturally feel fear when they encounter unfamiliar objects or environments, but children who have been hurt by close relationships around them have more fear of establishing new relationships with others. From an early age, children learn about the world through a relationship of deep trust and trust with their caregiver.
Lack of concentration, memory loss
When a child feels anxiety and fear due to trauma, the amygdala, which controls it in the brain, does not function properly, resulting in a condition in which the child’s child is difficult to learn, that is, ‘brain paralysis’.
questions and anxiety about death
Although not common, intense fear can cause a child to ask frequent questions about death or struggle with anxiety about it.
Repetitive or major injuries in childhood can directly or indirectly affect a child’s body. This causes eating disorders, digestive problems, headaches, and sleep difficulties.
The most common and alarming symptoms in children who are in a state of severe anxiety due to trauma are day dreams and shut down (a state of being desensitized and dazed). This symptom is when the child gets angry uncontrollably, and suddenly, at some point, everything changes to a state that seems to cut off the external situation. On the surface, it seems to have found momentary stability, but the child’s body and mind have become ‘given’.
Fantasy, in particular, is something children create for themselves as a means of escaping from reality. It is isolated there and indulge in daydreaming. In this case, even if you talk to the child, there may be no response or the child’s eyes may not be focused.
One more thing to keep in mind here is that children’s symptoms are like icebergs on the water. Just as there is a larger invisible ice beneath the iceberg, conscious or non-conscious thoughts and beliefs are nestled inside the child.
There may be behaviors for which there is no known cause, but there is no behavior without a cause. Everything the child does is the child’s own non-verbal. Understanding and caring for nonverbal language is the first thing parents should do, and it is the beginning of empathy for children. So, it is necessary to pay more attention to the child and observe whether there are any abnormal symptoms.
Written = Min Kyung-mi (Early Child Special Education Teacher)
She graduated from the University of Kansas in the United States with a master’s degree in early childhood special education and holds a Kansas state early childhood special education teacher’s license. She is a Kansas State School teacher at Project Eagle, a joint research venture between the Kansas State Government and the University of Kansas Hospital. She has made numerous presentations at DEC and ISJ conferences in the United States, such as ‘Education method for improving children’s executive function’ and ‘Effective self-regulation method for traumatized children’. <트라우마 있는 우리 아이, 어떻게 훈육할까?>built