Trauma
With several months of the coronavirus crisis behind us and more uncertainty and stress ahead, life is tough right now for kids of all ages. Many parents seeing their children experiencing anxiety, sadness and behavior challenges are wondering how all of this will affect kids in the long term. Can children be traumatized by the coronavirus crisis, and if they are, how will you know?
While this situation is difficult for everyone, the good news is that kids are resilient and parents can help foster that resilience. Even though the coronavirus crisis is stressful and could lead to long-term struggles for some kids, what you do now can make a big difference down the road.
To understand how the coronavirus crisis might affect your child, it’s helpful to know what exactly trauma is and what it isn’t. A traumatic event happens when someone is physically threatened or they witness that happening to someone else. There is physical harm and danger involved in a true traumatic event. Examples of potentially traumatic events include serious accidents, natural disasters and experiencing violence. Long-term stress like ongoing neglect, abuse or discrimination can also be traumatic.
However, it’s important to note that the event itself doesn’t define whether or not something is traumatic. Trauma is really about the individual’s reaction to the upsetting event. Just because a child goes through something that could be traumatic, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be traumatized.
There’s no easy way to predict if a particular child will be traumatized. For a lot of people, the pandemic is certainly a significant stressor but not necessarily a trauma, and then for some people, it is a true traumatic event.
Children who have gone through the death or hospitalization of a loved one due to COVID, or who have been very sick themselves, may experience those events as traumatic. Kids who have been quarantined in a violent or abusive situation are also at high risk for trauma right now.
If your child hasn’t gone through any of those especially stressful experiences during the crisis, they’re less likely to show signs of trauma.
That said, the stress that children have been experiencing over the past few months might have other significant consequences that don’t meet the clinical definition of trauma. This is where the idea of adjustment comes in.
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The DSD Parent Center is located on the south side of the Reed Elementary School campus. Call coordinator Lori Hill at 870-382-1609 for more information.
