Trauma in Early Childhood and Social Development.

We know trauma in Early Childhood (before the age of six) can have huge effects on children’s development and learning. Research has shown the detrimental effect that trauma in Early Childhood can have on brain development. This blog explores the impact that trauma in Early Childhood has on social development in young children and the potential long-term effects of this.

Trauma can be hard to easily define and to think about when it comes to our children, Goldsmith and Turow (2017, p.37) state that, “A common definition of trauma is an overwhelming event or situation that we experience as potentially harmful, that exceeds our coping capacities at the time, and has lasting negative effects.” Examples, of traumatic events are things such as, parental job loss, low income, neglect, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, a horrible one of event such as a car accident, illness, bereavement, rape, poverty, legal difficulties, bullying and so on (Goldsmith and Turow 2017).

Understandably, all of these types of trauma or traumatic events in Early Childhood, are going to have a huge impact on social development. Social development is the development of social skills with others and how we form relationships and friendships with people around us. The ability to form healthy relationships can be affected by our early childhood, past and experiences.

For example, a child who has continuously experienced domestic violence in the home, may be more likely to have outbursts of anger and violence and struggle to know how to play appropriately with other children. This is partly due to the fact that the child has for the majority of their time experienced an unhealthy relationship and doesn’t know what a healthy relationship looks like.

Additionally, due to the traumatic experience of experiencing domestic violence in their early childhood they are in a continuous state of fight or flight. Fight or flight is the physiological feeling/response that we have when we feel anxious or at threat of danger – do we stay and fight it or do we run! Also, other things happen to our bodies when we are in flight or fight, for example, our brain tells our body to release adrenaline and our pulse becomes quicker, there is an increase in respiratory rate and our blood pressure increases, which all sends more oxygen to the brain which increases alertness. Our brain is really clever and when we are feeling at threat of danger, we are actually only using a tiny part of our brain called the Amaygdala. (Nina Venho).

If children are in a continuous state of fight or flight due to a traumatic event, this is going to affect their brain development as well as all areas of development such as social development in early childhood. And research has told us that by the age of only 4 years old children have developed 90% of their adult brain (The National Childhood Traumatic Stress Network). Which is why it is crucial that in early childhood we identify children who have experienced trauma and support them to help reduce the long-lasting effects. As they will not be making healthy connections and building upon the connections between different parts of the brain; while they are experiencing trauma. As well as the effect of the physiological experiences of fight or flight.

Some children and adults as a result of trauma will experience something that is called complex PTSD and attachment trauma. Complex trauma is when someone experiences ongoing traumatic events, such as child abuse or extreme poverty (Schwartz 2019, Goldsmith and Turow 2017). Attachment trauma is often related to child abuse or neglect, Schwartz (2019) states the following:

“Most often there is a combined wound, in which you experience deficient nurturance from loving caregivers coupled with inadequate protection from dangerous situations or people. Growing up within an environment of fear, chaos, or rejection, and abandonment has significant and long-lasting repercussions on physical and emotional health. As a result of attachment trauma, you might carry beliefs that you are damaged, not lovable, or that you cannot trust anyone. You might have feelings of shame, unworthiness, or helplessness. Perhaps, you feel plagued by anxiety or believe that you don’t belong in this world.”

Experiencing Complex PTSD and childhood trauma or attachment trauma, it is going to not only affect children’s current social development in early childhood; but also, may have a long-lasting impact on their social development. It can easily get carried into adulthood and impact their relationships and how they trust and respond to other people; additionally, they may struggle to keep friendships and have a variety of physical and emotional health problems as a result.

As early years professionals we know the importance of developing healthy attachments in early childhood. Children need to have developed a secure attachment by 3 years old (Schwartz 2019) and we will explore in more depth attachment, attachment styles and trauma in another blog post.

To explore childhood trauma more in relation to Covid-19 – click here to join our interactive webinar on 3rd September 2020 at 7:30pm.