Child development is normally dependent on various external factors which govern the environment of growth of the child. A peaceful environment is essential for proper and full development into adulthood. Traumatic and violent experiences however, adversely affect the child’s ability to develop in certain areas and might even have a prolonged effect later in their lives. Research shows that children who have been brought up in unconventionally violent environments are usually haunted by the experiences and in some cases even get numb to the pain experienced early in life. Traumatic events therefore have a defining impact on childhood development and might define the reactionary responses to the specific instances that caused the trauma later in life.
Traumatic experiences in children’s lives range from direct physical violence, the watching of traumatic experiences and the experience of violent events in their environment. Direct physical assault happens when children are physically abused or assaulted by an older person. This person can also be termed as the caregiver to the child. In most instances of physical assault, the assaulter is usually a parent or a guardian. Watching of traumatic experiences range from the traditional violent films to more real events like watching a father assault a mother. Other instances might also be the watching of parents beating up their siblings causing them great pain and grief. The last instance of trauma that a child might experience is an environment of war and despondency. These environments normally have the potential of causing unprecedented hunger and misery that might greatly affect childhood development.
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Traumatic events especially affect attachment of children to their caregivers and subsequent relationships. When a child is well taken care of they grow attached to their caregiver and develop close relationships with them. The converse of this situation also holds that when a child is severely traumatized in their childhood they grow detached from their caregivers and subsequently from the rest of the world. Traumatic events therefore induce inability develop strong relationships in a person (Schauer and Elbert, 2015). The resulting effect is skewed relationships between the individuals with friends or significant others in their adult life. Other relationships that constantly suffer include the relationships with authoritative figures like the police especially when the acts of violence were perpetrated by these figures.
A more telling effect of traumatic events later in life is the reaction to the same traumatic experiences later in life. When a child is exposed to ordinary levels of stress in different stages of growth they develop normal stimuli in relation to these stresses. Suddenly violent or extremely stressful situations trigger abnormal reaction to trauma which might be carried on into adulthood. When the brain and the nervous system are poorly developed in relation to stressful situations, they will either overreact or underreact in the face of similar stimuli. Responses to these stressful situations might involve increased breathing or complete shutdown of the body (Nierop et al, 2015). In other cases, the bodies of adults with a history of traumatic situations might develop certain strong sensory responses or hypersensitivity to sounds or smells which might be relatable to the traumatic events they experienced.
In most cases, prior traumatic events have negative effects on the ability to cope with similar traumatic experiences. Some childhood victims of trauma turn to risky behavior in a bid to numb the overbearing pain that they feel when they are reminded of their violent past. These can be seen in heavy alcohol usage or drug use in adulthood. But this is just one of the external ways devised to cope with trauma. The fact is that traumatic events affect more than just physical health and effects might escalate to mental (Car et al, 2013), and emotional issues. Emotionally especially, childhood victims show inability to express or control certain emotions (Marusak, Martin, Etkin and Thomason, 2015). These emotions vary from anger, rage to intense fear which might later affect their reaction to normal human interactions (Nierop et al, 2015). People might avoid them because they tend to be frustrated or angered by seemingly mundane things. Traumatic events therefore render the adult who experienced trauma in their infancy to be perceived as different from regular people (Gulec et al).
When they are treated differently, they develop certain mental characteristics to protect themselves from future trauma. This can be manifested in the way they separate themselves from the experience assuming third party in various situations (Schauer and Elbert, 2015). The result might be denial of oneself (Car et al, 2013). Mental coping mechanisms therefore generally have slippery slope effect on future traumatic event preparation. The victim of childhood trauma can have a delayed sense of presence of time which will have debilitating effects on their problem solving and reasoning skills. A blend of all these responses might render one more prone to traumatic events in their future lives. In essence, the loss of a sense of direction or self-worth might have even a greater bearing in their positioning in relation to stressful or traumatic events. This usually happens when one resorts to illegal activities such as stealing, drinking and violence as a coping mechanism.
Traumatic events in childhood affect an individual in all aspects of their growth from the physical aspects to the mental reactions (Kelleher et al, 2015). The result is usually an array of coping mechanisms that are developed to make up for the traumatic event that might have happened when the adult was two to five years old. Ranging from intense reaction to seemingly mundane situations to mentally detaching oneself from reality, these coping mechanisms are developed by the body automatically in response of the prior traumatic event. It is believed that these mechanisms, however, can make the victim more prone to traumatic and stressful events in the future.
References
Carr, C P, Martins, C M Stingel, A M, Lemgruber, V B and, Juruena, M F. (Dec 2013). The Role of Early Life Stress in Adult Psychiatric Disorders: A Systematic Review According to Childhood Trauma Subtypes. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease , Vol 201, Issue 12, pp.1007-1020.
Gulec M, Altintaş M, İnanç L, Bezgin CH, Koca E K, and Güleç H. (March 2013). Effects of childhood trauma on somatization in major depressive disorder: The role of alexithymia. Journal of Affective Disorders , Vol 146, Issue 1, pp. 137–141
Kelleher I, Keeley H, Corcoran P, Ramsay H, Wasserman C, Carli V, Sarchiapone M, Hoven C, Wasserman D, and Mary Cannon M. (2012). Childhood Trauma and Psychosis in a Prospective Cohort Study: Cause, Effect, and Directionality. The American Journal of Psychiatry , Vol 170, Issue 7, pp. 734-741
Marusak, H A, Martin K R, Etkin A, and Thomason M E. (2015). Childhood Trauma Exposure Disrupts the Automatic Regulation of Emotional Processing. Neuropsychopharmacology , Vol 40, pp. 1250-1258
Nierop, M, Viechtbauer W, Gunther N and Zelst C. (April 2015). Childhood trauma is associated with a specific admixture of affective, anxiety, and psychosis symptoms cutting across traditional diagnostic boundaries. Psychological medicine , Vol 45, Issue 6, pp.1277-1288
Schauer, M and Elbert T. (Feb 2015). Dissociation Following Traumatic Stress. Journal of Psychology , Vol 218, pp. 109-127
