I've spent many years working in trauma.  A large part of my career I worked with an agency that contracted with our states Child Protective Services to provide in home pre and post adoption counseling.   The children I worked with often experienced severe neglect and abuse.  They witnessed their birth parents engage in domestic violence and often watched them succumb to addiction.  I think everyone can agree that these are traumatic experiences.  However, trauma does not have to fit into these categories to effect kids and their development and their ability to attach in healthy ways to the adults in their lives.  

When asked, "has your child experienced any trauma?"  Many birth parents will answer, "no."  But in using a different route to get the answer, most parents are surprised to hear that their children may have experienced trauma that is affecting their ability to function in their day to day lives.

Some of the not-so-obvious forms of trauma that kids experience are the ones that happen pre verbally.  Parents believe that children cannot possibly be effected by trauma that occurred prior to the development of language.  And it's true that children often have no words to describe what they've been carrying around with them for years, but their bodies and brains hold the story.

As I begin a therapeutic journey with a parent and a child, we begin to uncover sources for their children's symptoms that parents had long since packaged away in their own minds and have never considered to be a cause of their child's struggles.  One conversation with a parent whose son was in constant "fight or flight mode"  (the reptilian brain believed that he was in danger much of the day, he was triggered by being in school, a disapproving look from a teacher, being away from his mother) answered "no" to the trauma question as well.  Then I started to asked about his birth and she casually mentioned that he was in and out of the hospital from birth until age one due to a heart condition.  He doesn't remember that, so it's not an issue, right?  Quite the opposite, his body and brain remembered everything, that it was not safe to be away from mom, that the look on the adults face was associated with pain and separation from his parents, that the school building felt much like a lonely, painful hospital room.  And his body responded to what the brain was telling him, it exclaimed, "you are not safe, run, move, fight!"  

After discovering this medical trauma, we were able to use EMDR to process the negative thoughts that he carried since he was a baby and teach his brain that this trauma was in the past.

When you sit back and think about your child's history consider what may have affected them: a storm (Sandy), a fire (even a small kitchen fire), a move, a sibling birth, the death of a loved one. 

Stay tuned for more information on trauma and how the brain stores trauma, making the past feel very present.