Healing Childhood Trauma: Helping Your Kid Overcome Fear

Most parents do realize that their children have been traumatized by certain events. For instance, falling from a bike and skinning his or her knees can be quite traumatic for many children. Many children would not even dream of riding in a bike again after such a painful fall. If your child shows childhood trauma symptom after a very painful event, you should never ignore that symptom. The key to healing childhood trauma is to take action as early as possible and help the child face the problem without causing any unreasonable anxiety on the part of the child. We must understand that agitating the child will not help in healing childhood trauma. In fact, agitating the child many even cause yet another problem of childhood trauma.

Facing The Problem

Healing childhood trauma is something that every parent should learn. Yes, healing childhood trauma is not something that parents can learn to do overnight but with patients and a lot of love, parents can learn the art of healing childhood trauma. The key here is to recognize the problem at its earliest stage. When a child starts to display childhood trauma symptoms such as withdrawal or avoidance, parents should find ways to draw out the child's attention and gently remind him or her about the event that traumatized him or her. One of the best ways to reengage the child on the events that caused him or her lot of pain is to simply ask him or her to tell something about what happened. If the child does not want to talk about what happened to him or her, the parents can ask the child to draw a picture of what happened. It may take sometime before the child will have the courage to recall what happened to him or her. The parents must be very careful not to push the child or force him or her to remember what happened. Once the child warms up the idea of telling a story or drawing pictures of what happened to him or her, things will become a lot easier.

Do Not Draw Conclusions

Some parents jump into conclusions as to how their children are feeling after a traumatic event. Although parents generally have a haunch as to how their children feel, they should never jump into conclusions. Jumping into conclusions will limit their understanding of the problem and may prevent them from actually healing the childhood trauma. Instead of jumping into conclusions, parents should observe the reaction of their children to the event and get some clues about how their children feel about the situation. This way, the parents will have a better grasp of the situation and will be able to help their children better.