A parent asked about helping her young son with a brief traumatic experience that he recently had. He came out of it unhurt, but really frightened. That evening, he talked about it again and again, and was clingy and worried at bedtime. Since then, all kinds of questions and thoughts about death are occurring to him. This mother wondered how to help him recover his confidence after this childhood trauma.
It’s a very good sign that your son is talking a lot and showing you his feelings after his brush with helplessness. Trusting you with his thoughts and worries is the first step in healing childhood trauma. The fact that his mind keeps going to this place of worry means that he’s looking for more help. Here are some ideas to work with.
Fear upends a child’s ability to process their experience
A traumatic experience, even one that turns out well, creates a knot of fear in a child’s emotional memory. That knot is a bundle of all the sights, sounds, and physical perceptions they took in during the seconds they felt danger, glued together by a stark shot of emotion—fear.
Their mind is not going to be able to process the details of what happened, Nor be able to sort out the experience, store what can be learned, and move on, until they have been able to fully and safely express their innate reaction to the fear.
A child in the midst of a traumatic moment believes they are in danger. Their perception of danger triggers an internal “fight or flight” response. If they can’t flee, and can’t fight, their body goes into “wait it out” mode, but is still in an emotionally charged state of fear.
Their mind records the emotions that go with the “danger of death!” perception, along with all the information that their mind encounters during the threatening moments. All that information is wadded together with the feeling of fear.
They can’t learn from the experience, because every time their mind tries to access one small bit of the information they took in, out comes the whole emotional charge. The experience can’t be sorted. But their mind wants to try.
So a child will talk about the experience, with emotion lurking not far under the surface. Or they will set up games that frame their fear in order to try to process it. Or they will experience the fear once again, full on, at the mere sight of something vaguely related to what they remember, or wrapped in a dream that they wake from in terror.
How children recover from a fearful incident
Children have a natural emotional processing system they try to use after a frightening incident. We sometimes get in their way, but they do their best to offload the emotion of fear. You’ll see your child using this elegant process if you see them trembling, screaming, or crying wildly after an incident like that. Support this process as best you can.
Do your best not to inject your fears or anger into the situation.
To help a child release the fear lodged in their mind , it usually takes a safe, quiet, relatively unruffled person to anchor him. It’s safest for the frightened child when it’s their emotion that’s the focus, not the adult’s upset about what just happened.
Of course, for a parent not to be upset after a child has been in danger is an almost superhuman feat. When the parent panics or becomes angry, their fear transfers into the child, who then needs to heal from what happened to them and also the added fear they felt when their parent reacted.
Stay close, Staylisten.
So, for any “next time” that might occur, as soon as you are able to notice that your child is going to physically be OK, it will help for you to say very little, move in close, pay attention, and let them talk, cry, tremble or scream. Give them the safety and the time to fully feel the very uncomfortable emotions that follow a trauma.
Make sure no further harm can be done, then stay right with your child, receive whatever reaction they have, and don’t hurry on to do anything. The longer you can stay right where it happened (or if it’s not safe, then very close by), and pay close attention to whatever feelings pour out of them, the better they can loosen the hold of the fear they just experienced.
Often, a child gripped by fear wants to cling to their parent and stare over the parent’s shoulder or bury their head in the parent’s body. The child appears to be comforted, but can’t engage in a relaxed way with anyone, because they are not finished processing the highly uncomfortable feelings they need to release before they can walk away unafraid in the end.
Stay close, but try to turn them so they face you. They need to be able to meet your gaze if they choose. Most frightened children can’t and won’t make more than fleeting eye contact with their parents for awhile, because eye contact intensifies their release of fear. So offering eye contact at every possible moment is important in maintaining a child’s immediate sense of safety and support, and in keeping the noisy emotional healing process going.
Don’t try to alleviate your child’s panic. They need you to simply listen and anchor them.
A child will sometimes become panicked after a fright or shocking event, and jump up and down in a kind of tantrum, begging to leave, or to have their comfort item brought to them, or to get some water—they feel tremendous urgency about something.
The danger the child has experienced transfers from the incident, now over, to the present moment, as if the real issue were that they need that object, or to change the situation. Don’t accommodate your child’s avoidance of difficult feelings, but do reassure them,.
Your position needs to be, “Honey, we’re not going to leave right now. You’re safe. You made it. We can stay right here.” Or, “I know you want your blanket. But it’s in the car. We’ll get it later. Right now, you have me. I’m keeping you safe.” Or, “Honey, I know you’re thirsty. We’ll get water in a bit. Right now, I want to stay with you. Being right with you is very important to me.”
If you move your focus to trying to make your child comfortable, it may derail the emotional processing, and they will carry this same intense sense of unease into later times. Children emerge from traumatic experiences more completely if someone understands that this panic is a byproduct of the experience that’s already been survived. It needs to be shared for healing to be complete.
Healing takes place when a child has the safety of their parents’ arms, the time and permission to show how awful they feel, and steady reassurance that all is well.
A child will continue to try to work through leftover fear.
When a child can’t work all the way through their feelings about a trauma right when it happens, those feelings erupt again and again, changing the child’s behavior, and sometimes even their personality. But some simple interventions on your part can help your child feel safe enough to revisit the feelings, now stuck inside emotional memory, and process them.
Special Time is the Listening Tool to start with. There’s an article on our web site about how to do Special Time: you put your child in charge of what you will do together, clear your mind, bring an attitude of warm interest and delight, and set a timer. Your child has one hundred percent of your attention for, say, 5 to 10 minutes.
What they do during that 5 minutes is less important than your focus on connecting during that time, with added eye contact, added warmth, added affection, and added enjoyment. Children will sometimes set up games that show how they felt about the traumatic moments they experienced.
Sometimes, the Special Time is spent doing things together that seem fairly ordinary, but afterward, big feelings erupt over a piece of toast cut “wrong,” or who gets to sit in the red chair at the table. Sometimes, nightmares arise that encapsulate a child’s terror, and you can help your child work it through that way.
Your child needs your warmth and attention to face feeling afraid again. And you need to let them have these occasions when they are wildly upset over some small thing, so you can move in, anchor them, and promote this messy but efficient process of getting panic and terror out, so your love and reassurance can take its place in their emotional memory.
Play with laughter (but without tickling) is also deeply healing.
Playlistening is another Listening Tool that helps children overcome fears they’ve acquired from traumatic experiences. You notice what lets your child giggle, and you do more of that. Laughter is a powerful release of the lighter fears a child carries, and it helps a child’s perspective to have the upper hand in play.
For instance, I did extensive work with a child in our school who had had five major surgeries to correct a birth defect by the time he was four years old. He was a timid and quiet child. He never exerted himself in play. Somehow, our play evolved into a game in which I would hide under a big beanbag, and he would run around it. I would “hiccup” under the beanbag, and he would laugh very hard. I would hiccup, he would laugh.
For weeks, that was the game. Slowly but surely, he became brave enough to jump on me under the bag, and then I would hiccup him off. Or he would throw a ball at me under there. More hearty, loose laughter. On and on the game went, day by day, until he was running at me, jumping on me, and I had to work hard to shake him off, all to great laughter. As his bravery in play progressed, he made good strides in talking, standing up for himself, and engaging with other children.
For a child who has been through an incident of physical danger, you might try playfully running to then when they have a very minor bump or tumble, “Emergency, emergency rescue! Hello, how can we help? Hmmm, let me see. Is it the leg? (You shake their leg, pat it all over, move it around). No, not the leg, maybe it’s the toes. May I count your toes? Well, all the toes are here, maybe it’s the cheek. Let me see that cheek, dear!”
Make a big, friendly, goofy fuss. See, when you inspect in this slightly silly way, if they can laugh a bit, or try to run away, so you can run after them, “Hey! Hey! I’m your emergency helper! Please don’t go! I have to check out all your parts, friend!” They have the upper hand, but you keep pursuing. They keep showing you they are OK, but you play a kind of “happy puppy” version of an emergency worker. Be all over them with affection. Watch what elicits a laugh, and do that some more.
You will need listening time for yourself, to be patient enough to help your child.
To be relaxed while you do this, you are probably going to need someone to listen to how it was for you to go through this experience with him. Your anger, your surprise, your worry, your own fears, and whatever memories this incident triggered for you about similar moments in your own life—these are things to talk to another adult about, so your own tears and trembling can flow.
You, too, have been through a trauma. You’ll be a much more effective listener for your child once the worries locked into your own system are expressed and released. Don’t try to just tell the story. Go ahead and show your fears, go ahead and let that tantrum out. Go ahead and cry hard. They made it, but they were in danger. You saw. You felt. Tell someone how it was, and every detail you remember.
Using Listening Tools, you have the power to heal your child’s traumatic experience.
Special Time, Playlistening and Staylistening will help you partner with your child to offload the fright now stored in their memory. As they face their fears, both playfully and gripped by panic in your arms, they’ll have your support and the safety of an entirely benign situation.
Bit by bit, their mind will release chunks of feelings, so that they are no longer governed by the leftover fear from their experience. And you, helpless during that moment, will have worked effectively and powerfully with them to help them recover.
Hand in Hand Toolbox
More ideas on using PLAY to work on fear.
How to find a Listening Partner to work on our own fear
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