Processing "Everyday" Traumas with your kid
A simple, step-by-step guide to helping your child process the ‘everyday traumas’ of growing up.
Growing up can be rough... often times we romanticize it retrospectively “boy I wish I could just be a kid again...” but there are several moments early in every life that do not mesh with our rose tinted picture of childhood.
This, admittedly way too long email, is what to do when that happens to YOUR kid...
They get appendicitis and wind up in an emergency surgery;
They fall off a bike and wind up in an ER with nine stitches in their chin;
They lose a relative to an aggressive disease;
They’re in a minor car accident;
They witness a person on the street have a medical emergency;
They go to...... the dentist 😱.
All of these things are what I like to call “Everyday Traumas.”
They are regular parts of growing up that usually do not require professional therapeutic intervention but yet can affect kids profoundly, especially if they go unprocessed.
The bad news is that these everyday traumas of life are unavoidable.
The better news is that with some simple strategies parents can not only help their kids process these events but actually set them up to be more resilient with respect to future everyday traumas of childhood and for the rest of their lives. Remember, everything that happens is an opportunity for growth with our kids provided we engage patiently and intentionally.
For the rest of this email I’m going to be using an example from my own parenting.
When my son was four, he fell and split his head open on the leg of a coffee table (on the only 3 inch section that wasn’t coated in foam.... unbelievable...) Subsequently, he had to go through two additional compounding traumas: the insertion and then removal of complex stitches at a plastic surgeons office (the latter without local anesthetic) designed to eliminate what otherwise would be an extremely prominent facial scar. After this ordeal what followed was numerous symptoms consistent with someone who has had an everyday traumatic experience in childhood. I processed that the experience with him, in accordance with best practices, as outlined below.
