Discovering my child had trauma

Some of you will know that you have a child with trauma. Others will not yet know it, but will experience patterns that are confusing, frightening and exhausting, and over time (if you are fortunate), you will encounter skilled professionals who help you understand 1) that trauma occurred, and 2) what you can do about it.

I have a child with trauma. I knew since he was born that something was not okay—but I couldn’t quite understand WHY.

He was not our first child, and our first was a high-needs baby who grew into a strong, confident, passionate and empathetic girl… so we were not novices, and in fact, we had developed quite a strong set of parenting and life skills to support our family.

But our son was different.

The world was too much for him. Nothing was ever safe enough, or calm enough, for him—despite the fact that we had the safest, calmest family life of anyone we knew. We had a rock solid village, filled with the warmest, most loving and supportive family and friends we could find.

But his cry wasn’t a cry: it was a blood-chilling scream. And it didn’t settle down—it persisted, for hours on end, despite providing the utmost love, patience and calm on our part. Life with him was exhausting, sometimes scary, and extremely limiting: we could not easily go over to friends’ houses to hang out, or travel anywhere, or even be with family who didn’t have the ability to understand and help support. We needed to pull back from some relationships with people who did not have a basis for understanding or very deep capacity for empathy, and hold on fiercely to those who did.

Every decision of every day was made first and foremost in an attempt to keep a sense of safety for him, and only after, to address our other various needs. We did this, and we managed. Our family was filled with love, patience, and a deep well of empathy that only grew deeper from our caring for him and each other. But our success in managing was, in a way, a hindrance to discovering what was wrong—we did such a good job at caring for him that he never tipped over the edge into full-blown dysregulation.

Until he was 3 years old.

it took until our son started school at age 3 to finally figure out the source of our pain and exhaustion, and that happened for two very important reasons. First, the transition to school was so hard for him that it turned our challenging but love-filled life into a nightmare of fear for our son and desperation in our family.

And second, because we are fortunate to have a brilliant and compassionate pediatrician, who truly embodies the meaning of being a doctor: she is in the business of studying and healing (this is a non-negotiable for me in all of the medical and health professionals I bring onto my family’s team, and we were just extremely lucky to have found her and developed a trusting relationship since our first was born).

I’ll never forget the day that my husband and I sat with our pediatrician in her office and cried, because we shared the horror that our life had become when our son began suffering in a way that far exceeded our capacities to care—despite being two highly responsive, patient, parents, and my having left working in the science lab full-time, in part, to be able to properly care for him and support our family.

We described to the doctor the behaviors that brought us to her after all this time of managing: the frightening rages; hypervigilance and obsessive attempts to control his environment; emotional flooding that led to throwing heavy objects; having to safely but skillfully restrain him from causing danger; the waves of sadness and confusion that washed over him when his rages finally died down (sometimes after hours), because he never intended them; the way he crawled into our laps afterwards looking for comfort—but gently: he might not be able to tolerate the touch of a caress; and the sound of his tender voice asking “Mama, why did Zevi throw heavy things?”, because he couldn’t understand why he was so out of control.

The pediatrician listened calmly, asked smart questions, and then hesitated not one bit to tell us that his behavior was consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. We were stunned—we never expected to hear that—but it took less than two full seconds for my husband and me to look at each other and immediately realize that she was correct. Hearing those words made everything suddenly make sense. After three years of pain, exhaustion, and constant questioning about why we were all okay but he was never “okay enough”, we understood in an instant more deeply than ever: he had trauma.

Now, we had the work of investigating and understanding where it came from, and what to do about it.

From that moment, everything morphed from confusion and overwhelm—and, frankly, trauma for all of us—into a plan for healing trauma for our son, and our family.

***

There is no one way to characterize children with trauma, because trauma can manifest in so many different ways, and for so many different reasons. But I want to highlight some of the common markers of trauma for those who may need to recognize it. Then, I will be sharing more of our personal story and my training in trauma work, to help guide parents in supporting children with trauma.

First, trauma results when an organism’s autonomic nervous system is so overwhelmed that it can’t feel safe from threat, whether real or perceived. This overwhelm causes the brain-body system to find mechanisms to protect or defend itself, for survival. These mechanisms will include behaviors of fight, flight and/or freeze. Keep in mind that the organism (animal, child, adult) will resort to these mechanisms because the brain evolved to protect us and keep us safe from danger—they are not wrong; they’re actually intelligent behaviors. But when the danger is past, the organism must return to homeostasis—a functional state of rest, social connection, and productivity. If this can’t happen, there is dysregulation.

For my son, his revealing behavior that led us to the doctor for diagnosis, was a “fight” behavior: rage. (Actually, my son had ALWAYS had rage… but as I said, we had managed it so well that we weren’t aware that it was indicative of a deep problem).

For other children, the revealing behaviors might be a form of “flight” (trying to get away or disappear) or “freeze” (the final attempt at surviving, by shutting down or dissociating from their body and experience), such as fatigue, excessive worrying, insomnia, persistent sadness, inability to concentrate, confusion or clumsiness, loss of appetite, withdrawal from activity, or isolation, numbness or collapse.

All children—all of us—will experience some of these behaviors at some point. But a parent knows when a child is being himself, as flawed and beautiful as he is, and when he is losing his sense of self. It was when we began losing our son, and suffering as a family, that we realized we needed help.

I will share much, much more about our personal journey, and resources for managing stress and trauma in our children—especially during this time of crisis. But first I want to hear from you: during these very challenging times, has your child shown behaviors that possibly reveal a dysregulated nervous system? Are you seeing signs of fight, flight or freeze? Share your observations below.

You are not alone. You will need to find professionals who are knowledgeable, compassionate, and equipped to support you and your family during this time. You will also need to connect with other parents who have experienced something similar, because it is too lonely not to. The first step is discovering that the feeling you have had all along is correct: there is something that is not okay. It’s not your fault, or your child’s—it’s a result of trauma. Once you cross that bridge of understanding, then everything morphs from confusion and overwhelm into a plan for healing.

I am here for you.

Sound, Movement + Rhythm: A framework for growing brains and healing bodies

For the past 2 decades, all of my scientific research and teaching is founded on a simple framework: supporting Optimal Brain Growth and Healing through these fundamental tools:

SOUND + MOVEMENT + RHYTHM.

Every scientific paper I’ve published, and every talk I’ve given, and every workshop I’ve lead has been based on these 3 pillars of brain growth.

SOUND is important to the human brain, even before birth. And it’s worth noting that sound is accessible not only through the ear, but through touch (think of feeling vibrations). It’s important to know that D/deaf people have access to characteristics of sound, through non-auditory senses. Sound conveys extremely important information, from the emotional content of someone’s voice, to the source location of people and other things in space, to timing—knowing when to anticipate the next beat in the music, or when it’s your turn to speak. Musical sound contributes to improvements in self-regulation and learning in school—in fact, from my perspective, music education is one perfect example of what school should really be. Sound also heals, and developing our sensitivity to sound (good listening skills), is one important path to healing.

MOVEMENT is absolutely critical to brain development, because frankly, it’s what the brain evolved for. The brain’s job is to move the body and accomplish the goals of survival. But it turns out that the benefits of movement go far beyond that—extending to all aspects of our experience including, at a very basic level, our learning. My own research on babies showed that moving their bodies determined how they learned to hear, and recognize, a beat. So movement is not just for finding our next meal, escaping a predator or staying fit—it’s inextricably linked to our learning. Movement also heals brain and body—we are not meant to be sedentary, and we function optimally when we find meaningful movement.

The third pillar is what brings sound and movement together: RHYTHM. The rhythms that we hear and feel in sound are what direct our brains to move our bodies together in time—and ultimately, to find connection and cooperation. Without rhythm, we would lose much more than just music. We’d lose our abilities for synchronization, turn-taking, and collective action. We rely on rhythm in many aspects of our life as humans, and it’s not unique to us. All living organisms (even single-celled ones!) depend on detecting rhythms in the environment and responding appropriately.

But in music and dance, we experience the epitome of our brain’s capacity for complex rhythm. We hear seasoned musicians playing polyrhythms—multiple beat structures at once—with origins from Africa. We see infants bouncing to the beat of music before they can even crawl! And we witness the ability for rhythm to get inside the brain and body at times when we’re afraid we’re losing someone: the patient with Parkinson’s begins to walk smoothly again; the person with Alzheimer’s comes back to life and communicates with us again; the dangerously premature infant in the NICU survives another day because she was held and rocked to a gentle beat—just enough to settle her nervous system into safety again.

My SOUND + MOVEMENT + RHYTHM framework is my answer to the question: what does it look like to provide optimal support for brain growth and healing?

After 20 years of researching, teaching and working with organizations in the arts, education and healing, I can summarize what I believe is necessary for children’s growing brains in three words: sound, movement, and rhythm. Rhythm brings our sensory experience (e.g., sound) and our movement experience together—which I believe is precisely why our brains evolved for rhythm.