I am a nurse. I am also a parent to 7 children. I guess this qualifies me for lots of things, but one of my favorite parts of my job is teaching inmates about parenting and trauma. Two days ago I was teaching 15 male inmates about parenting and we had just completed the ACES (adverse childhood events) quiz. I was explaining how traumatic events in childhood could actually affect health across the lifespan. I watched the room as the inmates kept marking the “yes” boxes as I read aloud the different types of abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough childhood. I had done this before and each time, it would open the door to traumatic childhoods and heart breaking stories. As children, these men had been beaten, molested, cursed at, and witness to violence and abuse. It did not take my nursing degree to see a correlation between a loveless and painful childhood, and an unconnected adult making horrible life choices. I am a parent of 7 children and I have learned that early life wires the brain for future function.
I sat with broken men who were once broken boys, and they were desperate to understand how to help their children “not turn out like me”.
I sat in that jail with broken boys hiding in the body of tattooed, hard-worn men, and all the things that I learned in my college courses about children being resilient and having the ability to naturally overcome trauma flew the coop.
This was not an entirely new concept to me, it was just solidified in that moment. For years we had fostered and adopted and we saw how early trauma played out in babies and children. I knew children were not resilient, but I did not really think about why. What happened when no one intervened? I never really looked at what happens when these babies grow to be adults, and no one ever addressed their trauma.
I was taught…
Children are resilient…they won’t remember what happened when they were babies.
Children are resilient..if we don’t talk about the past, it will fade away.
Children are resilient…don’t bring up the bad stuff, it just makes it concrete and real.
Years ago, I had my first taste of trauma in the life of a baby. At the time, I believed that children were resilient and if bad things happened, they wouldn’t remember. I thought that if they experienced trauma as a baby or toddler, they would be “resilient”. Resilient means that the person is doing well for the situation they are in, for example they are coping despite the neglect, abuse, or trauma. In society, resilient means that the person is not a clinical problem, a criminal or a drop out, even though their basic needs were not met. And if someone ended up an addict, a criminal or a social deviant, I figured this was the result of poor genetics or some random process. It never crossed my mind, that a baby might be affected. I always assumed babies cope by “not remembering”.
When I walked through the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) doors to meet her, my heart flip-flopped in my chest; equal parts excitement and fear. I stood at the stainless steel wash station and perfunctorily washed the outside world off my hands, while my mind thought about the infant girl waiting to meet me. DCS (Department of Child Safety) had called the night prior and wanted to know if we had a bed available for a medically fragile newborn. It was explained that she was incredibly ill and then they rattled a list of diagnosis and problems. Topping the list was her failure to thrive. There was big concern because the 3 month old baby had been left at birth at the hospital and during all that time, had failed to gain weight in the specialized and monitored setting of the NICU. She was not growing, and they could not determine a medical reason for her lack of growth. I agreed to meet her the next day, and decide whether she was stable enough for our home.
I walked to the charge nurse desk and she smiled and said, “You are here for Hair.”
“Hair?” I questioned
“You’ll see.” and she gestured for me to follow her to the back of the unit.
She opened the glass door and I entered a small room with one tiny bed. She was asleep and all I could see was a dark shock of hair sticking out like a scrub brush.
“Hair.” I smiled.
‘Hair’ at 4 months old
I started to walk to her bed, when the nurse stopped me and asked that I put on a gown, gloves and mask before touching her. By way of explanation, she told me that she was on contact precaution for MRSA and that everyone had to do this to protect the unit. I looked at ‘Hair’ and I felt so terribly sad for her. Every person she had come into contact with, had been covered with paper and plastic. This tiny scrap of an infant had not had direct human touch, and much of her trauma had occurred before she was born. I thought about all the training I had, and I thought ‘Children Are Resilient”. She’s too little to remember. She was three months old.
I sat in her room and learned her care and then took her home. I figured that aside from the feeding tubes and medications, we would do just fine.
She did not do just fine.
Children are not resilient…she was three months old and did not like to be held facing in. She did not contour to my chest or lay her head upon my shoulder. Instead her tiny body arched against mine, she cried and her limbs flailed. If I turned her to face out, she calmed instantly.
Children are not resilient…her medical issues caused her to be hospitalized several times over the first year of life. One instance almost resulted in her dying. She was diagnosed with multi-system issues and we saw cardiology, gastroenterology, developmental, dietary, and the list goes on.
Children are not resilient…terror and safety are incompatible.
Children are not resilient…the first time she fell asleep in my arms, I called my best friend crying. She was 1 year old and had been in my home for 9 months.
Children are not resilient…food is an issue. A baby that is washed in cortisol (stress hormone), feels a deep need to eat and fill the hole.
Children are not resilient…early life wires the brain and body for lifetime functioning.
I started to learn in my home what the books never told me. Babies are not resilient and since they are preverbal, they can’t verbalize their fears. They can’t describe a nightmare or flashback. But the behaviors of infants and toddlers is how they communicate. This little baby could not regulate and her behaviors communicated trauma.
A baby cannot regulate themselves. A parent or caregiver is the only way they are able to survive. Babies are designed to attach to a ‘person’ that will in turn respond to their needs. When we respond to a child, we are actually teaching them how to self regulate. This is what builds resilience. Trust in a mother, trust in a family, trust in a community, is what allows us to cope with trauma. A child is not born resilient, it is built through human bonding. The single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult. (Center on the Developing Child – Harvard University)
Sitting in the jail with broken boys who live with immaturity, fear, blame, shame, resentments, anger, confusion and suffering point to core trauma wounds and a lack of connection. They are ‘stuck’ in the emotional development of a young child, and struggle to learn how to take responsibility for their lives. Many of these men get stuck at the point of trauma that happened in their lives and they don’t know how to let go of or to process.
Connection builds resiliency.
It is much easier to build strong children, than to repair broken adults. F. Douglass
‘Hair’, our beloved daughter.