Question
How does trauma impact child development?
Answer
When we think about child development, not only does trauma delay further child development, but it also delays development in general. Early childhood trauma frequently results in dynamics that are reflective of that age of trauma. For example, if a child experiences trauma at age four, that trauma may impact the child as a fourth-grader, but it goes beyond that. It often shows up in our work with adults or in marriage and couples counseling. You might see this if there was a trauma at age 13, and at 35 continue to expect that social relationships are going to mimic that of our relationships at 13, or that we continue to regulate our own senses of stress and find identity in the same ways that we typically would if we were still 13.
There is a persistent theme similar to the idea of Erikson's Stages of Development. I had a professor who would refer to it as the idea of packing a bag in that you pack your bag with what you have at that stage of development and then you move on. When we haven't packed the bag with what we need for the next stage, we just stay for a while until we figure out what that need is, and then are able to meet that need and move forward.
Those problem-solving skills reflect the age where trauma occurred and the regulation capacity of the person. Again, throughout not only adolescence, but into adulthood, it will come up that adults who have experienced chronic trauma as children often are much more impulsive, have a lot of difficulty engaging in really healthy relationships, and are in that place of constant fight or flight. Part of that is because that's the way that children function. We remain there neurologically because we haven't yet gone through that stage.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Using What We Know About How We Grow: Utilizing Development as an Assessment Tool for Early Childhood Services, presented by Alison Peak, MSW, LCSW, IMH-E.
