Childhood Trauma Treatment
Support for your family when childhood is way heavier than it's supposed to be.
Childhood Trauma: Understanding what your child is carrying
As parents, we all want our children to feel safe, loved, and free to enjoy their childhood. But sometimes, life brings experiences that are too overwhelming for a young nervous system to process. These experiences can leave lasting marks on how a child thinks, feels, and behaves.
What "counts" as childhood trauma?
Most people think of trauma as an event. The truth of trauma is that it is not an event it's our experience of an event. Two people could experience the exact same event and have very different reactions--One person may be largely unaffected, while the other could be deeply traumatized. Our unique histories, capacities for coping, external support systems, and identity factors affect how we respond to difficult experiences.
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Any experience that overwhelms our capacity to cope can be traumatizing. Many children come to trauma treatment with histories including:
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Single-incident events
like a car accident, ​medical emergency, the death of a loved one, or witnessing a violent act.
Ongoing or "complex" traumatic experiences like living in a home with domestic violence, parental separation/divorce, or unpredictable caregiving.
​Medical trauma:
Medical emergencies, living with a chronic illness, or coping with having a chronically ill sibling, parent, or family member
Impaired Caregiving:
When parents themselves are struggling with substance use, mental illness, financial strain, inability to be a present caregiver, and more, this can make it extremely difficult to also meet the needs of a growing child. Even when we are doing the very best we can, our children can be affected by things that are outside of our control. Many parents feel shame or guilt around this, and take comfort in knowing that they are not alone in this struggle and that there is a space to help their children find healing after these experiences.
Neurodiversity:
Being a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world can be traumatic in and of itself. All of our systems-- from schools to the workforce-- are designed for neurotypical brains. Children with Autism, ADHD, OCD, and/or learning disabilities, may constantly feel "othered," unable to connect, exhausted rom masking, and frustrated with feeling different. This chronic experience of "othering" can be as traumatic for the growing child as an event people typically recognize as trauma, such as experiencing a medical emergency.
School trauma:
Changing schools, programs, traumatic restraints/behavior management protocols, or inability to access academic or social experiences
Attachment trauma: Adoption, foster care, and absent caregivers early in a child's life
Systemic trauma:
Racism, homophobia, and other forms of systemic discrimination
How will you help my child?
We use Child Centered Play Therapy and Sensory Motor Arousal and Regulation Treatment to help traumatized children re-establish a sense of safety in their bodies and with others, process their traumatic experiences, and build healthy attachments to their caregivers.
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While many clinicians have training in trauma therapy for adults, SMART was specifically designed for traumatized children. SMART clinicians understand that trauma lives in our bodies and for children it often shows up in ways like..
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- Behavioral outbursts and aggression
- Developmental milestone regressions with sleep, eating, and bathroom accidents
- Nightmares
- Attention and impulse control issues
- Clinging or withdrawal from parents/caregivers
- Hypervigilance (Constantly "on-alert" and scanning for threat)
- Heightened emotional reactivity and startle response
- Somatic concerns like stomach aches, headaches, body pains, and frequent colds
- Frequent anxiety and reassurance-seeking
- Re-enactment of scary events in drawings and play
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Through child-led play, sensory inputs that support somatic regulation, and careful re-establishment of felt safety in relationships with others, SMART respects the impact trauma has on the developing child's brain and body.
