When There's No Peace on Earth

In the wake of the events in Newtown, Connecticut and other recent incidents of violence, many of us (therapists included) find ourselves at a loss on how to promote a sense of safety and security within our children.  We see the effects of exposure on them to the repeated televised scenes of trauma, death, and injury, let alone the intense grief reactions displayed by all. Sometimes the effects do not show up immediately as children often process these events in their minds based on their own limited life experience or level of understanding. It may even take a while before they can verbally express their own beliefs about what they believed happened and what it means to them.
 
In particular, young preschool and school-aged children, who lack the cognitive understanding of the finality of life, may be thrust into new experiences that defy their own view of the world.  Thus, they may exhibit intense fearfulness, separation anxiety, or regression to earlier behaviors, or they may become agitated and aggressive in an attempt to push away their fears. Older children, who have already grasped the concept of death and dying, may respond with deep denial or a numbing of their feelings, as they wonder about their own safety or mortality.  Finally, adolescents may tend to abstract the experience in their minds and take on an existential view of a fore-shortened life which ultimately has no meaning. In any case, youth can vicariously experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder without having to be the actual victims of the violence.
 
In their book, The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz (2006) described what they learned about children’s large-scale response to trauma following the 1993 Waco incident in Texas:

“. . . research has demonstrated that rushing to ‘debrief’ people with a new therapist or counselor after a traumatic event is often intrusive, unwanted, and may actually be counterproductive. In some of our own work we’ve found that the most effective interventions involve educating and supporting the existing social support network, particularly the family, about the known and predictable effects of acute trauma and offering access to more therapeutic support if – and only if – the family sees extreme or prolonged post-traumatic symptoms.  I thought these children needed the opportunity to process what had happened at their own pace and in their own ways . . . We wanted to offer structure, but not rigidity; nurturance, but not forced affection” (pps. 70-71).

Because the human brain is wonderfully designed to take in information, sort out discrepancies or contradictions to everyday occurrences, and process new data, we have built-in mechanisms that attempt to metabolize even the most extreme types of experiences.  However, intense, frightening experiences have a tendency to short-circuit this process and throw children into a “fight or flight” mode. So how can we support our children through this stressful season which was meant to be joyous and cheerful?  Here are some pointers:

1.     Parents and caregivers should maintain good, predictable routines and structure, with less isolated down time and more nurturing together time, especially over the holidays.

2.     Parents and caregivers should limit the amount of unsupervised exposure children have to continuous televised coverage of tragedies.  Rather than helping the developing child process events in a healthy way, they have a tendency to shut down or become numb with over-exposure.

3.     Parents and caregivers should reassure their children that they will keep them safe, yet at the same time set up routine exercises for dangerous situations that may present themselves, for example, home evacuation drills, stranger resistance skills, and just being aware of one’s surroundings.

4.     Parents and caregivers should encourage compassion and empathy-building skills to help children understand that real people suffer negative life events, but others can show caring and concern.  An example could be sending a holiday / get well drawing to the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School or sponsoring a needy family.

 

5.     Finally, if you notice that your child is continuing to be anxious or worried, sad or hopeless, or agitated or aggressive, you should seek professional help.

On the bright side, research supports the fact that parents or primary caregivers truly establish the first environment for the development of security, safety, and nurturance in the child. The school soon becomes the next layer, and the community the next.  When these domains work together in harmony, children continue to build their protective factors (kind of like one’s emotional immune system), and can progress forward towards success across many domains.  Studies show that those communities who share the belief that all children and youth are their children, and who are willing to intervene towards the common good, demonstrate lower levels of violence than communities who share similar demographics (Sampson et al, 1997).  I can assure you that the Newtown community will urgently re-invest in the lives of all its young people, in as many ways as possible.  Shouldn’t we be doing the same for our kids?

Happy Holidays!

Youth & Spirituality

One of the most troubling experiences for parents of adolescents and young adults is when the youth openly rejects their family's religion or spiritual belief system, or when the youth adopts a spiritual belief system that has not been promoted within the family.  Extreme images can run through parents' minds including fears of their child abandoning all faith and suffering eternal damnation, or of their child becoming fanatical and taking on strange, new practices.

Not to be interpreted as identical to a youth's struggle with accepting or rejecting a higher power, Anna Freud, the well-known child psychiatrist and daughter of Sigmund Freud, referred to an ascetic phase of development. Occuring between pre-adolescence and young adulthood, the youth attempts to regulate tension between prohibited urges and thoughts, and what they believe are right or wrong ways of acting upon those urges.  When expressed as a defense mechanism, certain behaviors can take on a religious or "spiritual" appearance (e.g., becoming a vegan overnight because of fears of hurting animals; avoiding all movies because they may contain explicit sexual scenes; or, extreme bouts of guilt or self-punishing rituals), yet are anxiety-based (A. Freud, 1936).   In these instances, it is important for parents to help youth find a more balanced and acceptable way of expression, especially if the youth tends to err on the side of more restrictiveness.

In general, youth may challenge or reject their parents' religion or beliefs for many reasons.  Some include:

1. Youth are beginning to experience themselves as separate, thinking individuals who can point out discrepancies between what adults say and how they practice what they say;
2. Youth are developing their own personal relationship to a higher power that stands on its own, and does not have to be expressed in the same way as their parents;
3. Youth struggle with believing in a higher power when they have been disappointed by adults who should have been their first representation of a higher power; or,
4. Youth have different needs or learning pathways that their family's practices don't connect to.  An example would be youth who do better grasping a message through modern music or dance versus a long sermon.

In his book, The Spiritual Life of Children, Robert Coles (1990) states:

"Children try to understand not only what is happening to them but why; and in doing that they call upon the religious life they have experienced, the spiritual values they have received, as well as other sources of potential explanation." (p. 100)

This quest has been found to result in better psychological and physical outcomes as youth attempt to move from merely experiencing distressful events in their lives, to attributing larger meaning for themselves, their family, their community.   A resilient and healthy progression, this is similar to certain trauma victims who are able to put their narratives into a context of meaning for their own cultures, and then move towards giving back to others as a form of self-healing.  The search for meaning in youth establishes the foundation for adolescent altruism and caring for one's neighbor.

Overall, parents can help by maintaining open communication with their children, listening to the development of their critical thinking and values, and encouraging them to explore all aspects of their stated beliefs, while challenging apparent discrepancies between the new beliefs and the child's own value system.  For those youth who tend to be more black-and-white in their thinking and have adopted a more dogmatic belief system, parents should role play certain scenarios that can entertain more than one fixed outcome or set of consequences.  For those youth who are confused or searching, parents can help by addressing the youth's personal strengths, values, and character, and how one's beliefs usually line up accordingly.

In either case, the long held words of King Soloman still ring true today,

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6, NKJV)