“It’s easy to assume that babies don’t remember trauma because they express their experiences differently,” tessa chessher, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Oklahoma State University who specializes in infant and early childhood mental health, says in an email. “On [8 to 12] weeks of age, babies have stored enough memories that [the babies] they begin to anticipate their caregiver’s behavior based on past behaviors. They begin to respond based on the experiences they have had.”
‘Vulnerable to stress-related illnesses’
Evelyn Wotherspoon, a social worker specializing in child mental health, said that as they reach adulthood, “infants and very young children who have had early exposure to trauma and chronic stress … are more vulnerable to the outcomes of stress-related health conditions, such as diabetes and mental disorders. Health problems, addictions and obesity. These kids are much more vulnerable to all these stress-related illnesses, and their brains may not develop as they should.”
Although infants and toddlers are just developing, child mental health experts say they can experience a wide range of feelings, including negative emotions, sadness or anxiety. A report from American Academy of Pediatrics found that, by the age of 16, more than 2 out of 3 children had said they had experienced a traumatic event.
according to a Report of the Working Group of the World Association for Children’s Mental Health, rates of mental health disorders in childhood (which generally includes birth to age 3) are comparable to those in older children and adolescents. And a small study of 1-year-olds found that 44 percent of those who had wWitnesses of severe violence against their mother by an intimate partner showed symptoms of trauma afterward, such as increased arousal, increased aggression, or an interference with the normal development of the baby. Infants and young children (under 4 years old) can develop post-traumatic stress disorder after events, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Kathleen Mulrooney, a counselor who is also director of the Early Childhood and Infant Mental Health Program at Zero to Three, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of infants and toddlers, said it’s important to keep in mind that All babies who experience trauma will be traumatized. As with adults, it depends on the baby, “because what’s traumatic for one person isn’t for another,” she says.
In this context, caregivers can be key to protecting young children from the effects of trauma by the way they react. “The ability of key parents or caregivers to provide protection, to have a co-regulatory role when it comes to stress response, is critical,” Mulrooney said in an email.
If a child has significant trauma before the age of 2 but after the trauma “the baby has the powerful protective factors of constant safety, love and security; there is a lower chance of having mental health problems,” Chesher says in an email. “That does not mean that the baby did not suffer or that her body does not remember that trauma, it means that there were protective factors to mitigate the effects of the trauma.”
Regina Sullivan, a developmental behavioral neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, says that while a primary caregiver can’t “protect a young child from trauma in the environment, it’s called social buffering because the response of the The child’s fear and stress hormone response are reduced; more recently, we have shown that the caregiver is actually blocking neural activity in the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear.”
“Many brain areas in infants and young children are physically altered, and the ability of those brain areas to talk to each other is also altered by trauma,” Sullivan said.
Trauma can be difficult to recognize
However, childhood trauma can be difficult to recognize as babies are not yet verbal and depend on their caregivers to respond to their needs, which means a caregiver would need to watch for symptoms and seek help.
“A baby can’t just walk up to you and say, ‘Hey, this happened yesterday, I’m scared,’” says Chesher. “So it really is important to learn the language of babies and then educate people on how to read that language. So if we don’t know the warning signs, then we’re not identifying the trauma and we can have long-term effects on the brain.”
Experts say that some warning signs of trauma for babies under 12 months are: feeding or sleeping problems and not being able to be comforted by their caregiver. A young child (between 1 and 3 years old) can express himself more verbally and physically than a baby. Some warning signs of trauma in that age group may involve repeating traumatic events in their game or becoming aggressive, says Chesher.
“One of the issues is how that child expresses the trauma, whether it’s through disrupted sleep or being a little more restless,” Sullivan says, “things that happen in normal kids for a lot of reasons, which makes it hard to identify what child is going crazy”. to respond to trauma in a way that is lasting and damaging.”
If a parent or other caregiver is concerned, based on a child’s behavior and experiences, they should “ask for a referral to an early childhood and mental health specialist,” says Chesher.
Experts will look at a variety of factors, the most critical being the relationship between the baby and their primary caregiver. In addition to looking at that interaction, mental health experts may also look at “pregnancy history, birth history, medical history, developmental history, security checks, perinatal depression check.” [for both parents]how the baby eats and how the baby sleeps,” says Chesher.
Depending on the age of the child, different interventions are available, including parent-child psychotherapy.
“It’s essential that parents or… their caregivers… be heavily involved in treatment because it’s really through relationships with caring adults that babies thrive and do well,” says Zeanah.
To recover, a baby needs a caregiver in her life who can accurately read her cues and respond lovingly and patiently, says Wotherspoon. “One of the most powerful therapeutic tools we have is the relationship a child has with a caring caregiver and they only need one and it doesn’t have to be perfect. … A baby who gets that early enough can recover wonderfully from trauma,” says Wotherspoon.
Raising awareness of infant and early childhood mental health among parents and clinicians is critical, experts say. But it’s also important for parents to understand what trauma is and isn’t. A child “distressed is different from being traumatized,” says Zeanah.
“It is important to distinguish everyday events that can frighten the child and are important for the child to learn to regulate their emotions and physiology in the face of trauma from horrible events like a tornado or a parent repeatedly traumatizing the child unnecessarily through verbal or physical . assaults,” says Sullivan.
“We want parents to enjoy this time in their lives and not be afraid of traumatizing their child by making them eat vegetables or vaccinate them,” he adds. “Those are normal experiences in life that the child needs to experience as part of [the] real world.”
