![]() ![]() It is increasingly clear that experience in childhood has relatively more impact on the developing child than experiences later in life. Over the last twenty years, neuroscientists studying the brain have learned how fear and trauma influence the mature brain, and more recently, the developing brain. And the stimulation associated with fear and trauma changes the brain. This is so because the brain is designed to change in response to patterned, repetitive stimulation. All experience changes the brain – good experiences like piano lessons and bad experiences like living through a tornado as it destroys your home. To help Sandy and millions of other traumatized children, we need to understand how the brain responds to threat, how it stores traumatic memories and how it is altered by the traumatic experience. In contrast, the twenty million (or more) children with PTSD are among the least understood, under-studied and inconsistently served groups in the United States. Indeed, the United States has spent billions of dollars on research and clinical services for the 1 million veterans from the Vietnam era suffering from PTSD. PTSD has been studied primarily in adult combat veterans. The most common are Post-traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). Beginning with Lenore Terr’s landmark work, investigators over the last twenty years have determined that more than thirty percent of children exposed to these kinds of traumatic events will develop serious and chronic neuropsychiatric problems. These experiences can have a devastating impact on children. In the United States alone from 1996 to 1998 there were more than 5 million children exposed to some form of severe traumatic event such as physical abuse, domestic and community violence, motor vehicle accidents, chronic painful medical procedures and natural disasters. In so many ways, she was robbed of her future, robbed of her true potential. She carries elements of her terror into every relationship and every classroom. She carries elements of this trauma with her everyday. Her brain is etched with the memories of terror. Her entire being was altered - the way she thinks, the way she behaves, the way she feels, the way she grows. Sandy was alone - her world forever changed. Sandy wandered that apartment for eleven hours before anyone came. The mother’s multiple stab wounds oozed at first - then there was nothing but drying, ‘sticky’ blood. She gave some to her mother - ‘she was not thirsty’.Ī three-year-old, throat-cut child, weeping, whimpering, comforting and seeking comfort from her naked mother’s hog-tied, bloody, cold body. She took milk from the refrigerator and gagged when she tried to drink some. Later she regained consciousness and attempted to ‘wake up’ her mother. "Mama was yelling, the bad guy was hurting her I should have killed him." "I came out of my room and mama was asleep - then he cut me - he said "It’s for your own good, dude." And then, in a slow, robotic monotone, she told me about that night.Īn acquaintance of her mother came to their apartment. ![]() I felt her frenzied breathing slow and then almost stop. Finally, I rose and caught her on one of her jumps. She did not respond to my verbal warnings about being careful. She threw the animal to the floor, ran to the radiator, climbed up and jumped off - again and again. As she slashed she repeated "It’s for your own good, dude." Over and over - a stuck recording. Sandy stood up, grabbed a stuffed animal, held it by a tuft of hair and slashed at the neck of the animal with the crayon. She took her crayon and scribbled over her well-formed, disciplined picture but gave no verbal response. She did not change the pace of her coloring. "What happened to your neck?" I asked, pointing to the two scars running from behind her ear to the front of her throat. All of the adults in her ‘new’ life had sooner or later returned her to that night. She knew that was why I was there I knew she knew that was why I was there. I complied.īut soon I had to ask her about what had happened. Sandy broke the rhythm by silently directing me to use a specific color. For many minutes we colored together in silence. She was justifiably suspicious as I joined her on the floor in coloring. ![]() But now, her eyes studied my face, my hands, and my slow movements - only partly attentive to the few words I spoke. Nine months earlier, she was found covered in blood, lying over her murdered mother’s naked body, whimpering incoherently. ![]()
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