Resolution 1, Childhood Trauma and Concept Research

Like I mentioned when Brainstorming I need to research into the theory of childhood trauma and see if it works and links in within my specific family experiences.

Childhood Trauma

For this research I went to the The National Child Traumatic Stress Network website where I discovered that Childhood Trauma has many different categories to it which effect the child for different reasons in different ways. The categories are:

• Community Violence: This would include acts of violence that aren't from family members but instead members of the community the child is growing up in. It could be acts such as shootings, rapes, stabbings, and beatings. Children can experience trauma from these acts as victims, witnesses, or perpetrators. This could also mean an event which has happened in the school community that the child is part of.

• Complex Trauma: This is when a child has suffered multiple or prolonged traumatic events which then impacts on there development. This would usually be used to described a child who has suffered psychological maltreatment, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and domestic violence. This then impacts how they perceive, react and deal with issues in their life. This is what then effects their development which could cause issues later in life for them.


• Domestic Violence: This is when the child is effected by having to witness physical and emotional abuse between their parents or caregivers. This has a lasting impact on the child and what is scarier is that it is usual children under the age of 8 who get exposed mostly to this.

• Medical Trauma: This is referring to the reactions that a child has to pain such as injury, serious illness, "invasive" medical procedures (such as surgery) or treatments (such as burn care) which can be very frightening for the child. This trauma suffered then effects them mentally but also can effect them physically making them reluctant to want to ever go to the doctors again or even partake in usual activities which they enjoyed before.

• Neglect: Child Neglect is when the parent or care giver for that child does not provide them with the care they need such as food, mediation, shelter etc even though they have the means to be able to do so if they wanted. It can also involve putting the child somewhere unsafe or leaving them in the care of someone unsafe and even abandoning them. This is the most common form of abuse which is reported to authorities.

• Physical Abuse: This is when the child suffers because they have been harmed in a physical way either deliberately being beaten or being physically punished unfairly. This can be one major trauma or can even be a series of traumas that the child os made to suffer.

• Traumatic Grief: This is the trauma a child suffers when someone they know dies. It can effect them regardless of the circumstances of the death (expected/unexpected) because in their mind it is still traumatic to suffer that loss. It stops the child from grieving in a way most people normally would and instead usually results in any memory of the person stirring up negative emotions, feelings and images linking to their sad death.

I feel like looking into the severity of childhood trauma through this research has made me realise how negative my work will be made by attaching this theme to it.

It has made me realise that I want to show a more realistic representation of my family with balance in it between maybe some good memories and some bad memories. I have thought about things that happened to me and my brother and the biggest part of my childhood which I have never really addressed is my parents divorce. Instead of thinking into this in terms of childhood trauma I should think of it more in terms of a massive childhood upheaval. I have decided I want to look into the studies of how divorce effects children:

I began by asking google the question 'How does Divorce affect the Children?' and I got a lot of results come up. There are mixed messages with in them, some saying it that these children will grow up normally still and some saying it will reflect in behavioural issues. However the most interesting points I agree with and have found are...

Divorce

Children will be upset and stressed when there parents divorce unless the marriage was a very consistently unhappy one. The divorce will make them vulnerable to developing some issues to do with behaviour, attitude and anger. One website reads:

'Troubled children are particularly likely to develop problems with anger, disobedience, and rule violations. School achievement also can suffer. Other children become sad for prolonged periods of time. They may become depressed, anxious, or become perhaps overly responsible kids who end up caring for their parents instead of getting cared for by them.'

(http://emeryondivorce.com/how_divorce_affects_children.php)

However these issues that can occur and develop aren't already pre-determined. Instead the affect the divorce will have is more based on how the child sees their parents handling it. Majority of children do bounce back and end up functioning like any other child who's parents are married. However there is still the risk that if it is a stressful divorce resulting in the child witnessing this then the child will react accordingly. Also by having a difficult divorce it will prolong the situation therefore increasing the time you children do have to spend feeling stressed and chaotic about what is going on.

Children with divorced parents however well they handled it will still express painful memories from the time and ongoing worries about divorce themselves and their parents. Here is a graph I found which comes from research done by Lisa Laumann-Billings in 2000. They studied 99 college students who's parents had divorced at least 3 years prior then made this graph from the percentage who reported painful feelings on some of the questions:

Now comparing what I have found out to my own situation I do feel that my feeling on the situation are like it says more from my parents reaction and less from it actually happening. I also do agree with the statistics because I know that me and my brother both have doubts about our parents and our own relationships due to experiencing it however I feel like we do function as normal people in society. I would like to maybe create a visual and auditive symbolic journey through the transitions from prior to the divorce and then all the way through the struggles relating to me and my brother and then to now because my family have all over come that.