Today I was reading a chapter of the book "van kwetsuur naar litteken" (translated as "from injury to scar"). This book covers the consequences of traumatic experiences in the early stages of a childs upbringing and the effect on the emotional and social development of the child.
Traumatic experiences are big, unexpected occurrences which intervene with daily life, and are impossible to prepare for. It's about an event that is so shocking that the psychic apparatus can't process it the way it can with past experiences. Someone's life and functionality gets fundamentally changed. When we talk about trauma's, we tend to think about big events like a tsunami, earthquake or a serious traffic accident. Others will link the word trauma to sexual abuse, assault and battery or neglect. Today however we'll be covering a third type of trauma: trauma's caused by prolonged, multiple incidents in childcare
A baby is born with only limited possibilities to regulate his own life, which makes him reliant on caring educators that feel and understand what the baby needs. All babies need constant presence and reassurance from the main caregiver, mostly their parents. To convey this message, the baby has an arsenal of social competences and centeredness towards their parents. He can smile when he's happy, turn away his head when disgusted or afraid, cry when he wants attention, make eye-contact to reward his mother for her attention and so on. Parents on the other hand get very observing of their childs behavior and act accordingly. In other words: a baby is a social and active partner that consumes a lot of time, attention and energy from his parents so that he'll get the necessary attention and interaction to feel safe and secure.
Luckily most parents are able to react to the needs of their baby in a healthy manner. Sadly sometimes this isn't the case. Think about parents with an addiction to drugs, or with a psychological vulnerability that causes their responses to be very unpredictable and even damaging. Or think about parents who just lost a signifcant person, go through a mourning period and therefore aren't as responsive as before to the needs of their child. These can all be situations where the basic needs of warmth, nutrition, pleasure, love, structure, responsiveness...get neglected. If this happens for a sustained, prolonged amount of time, the results will impact the future of a child severely. To get some more insight in the consequences of a lack in responsiveness by parents, in 1975 Edward Troninck created the Still face experiment. The experiment wanted to prove the acute and intense stress children experienced when their main caregiver failed to respond to their needs. The video speaks for itself.
The experiment shows the importance of parental responsiveness and makes me think about how lucky I am to have parents which cared for me in the best possible way. I'm blessed, and watching and reading about these sorts of experiments lets me take time to be fully aware of that and not take it for granted. It also makes me think about the children and adults that didn't have the same loving parents that I was lucky enough to have. These individuals didn't get the same chances as I got in life, and maybe will never have the opportunity to be as fortunate, confident and happy as I am today. There's no fairness in that, but all I can do is help others to the best of my abilities and work towards becoming a better person each and every day.
Thanks for reading.
