How to protect your children from trauma – 07/12/2023 – Equilibrium

In the 1950s, English psychologist Dr. John Bowlby published his first works on Attachment Theory. Breaking away from the then-prevailing Freudian theory of explaining dynamics between fathers and children, Bowlby begins to observe and classify reactions that children have to being separated from their mothers for a few hours. In the course of observational research, predictability of these children’s behavior began to materialize depending on how safe or unsafe their relationship was with these adult primary caregivers. Bowlby’s work and his Theory of Attachment would be the first concrete and scientifically observed evidence of how the quality of a caring adult’s relationship directly influences the well-being of their child.

With the start of concrete studies on trauma in the 1970s, mainly aimed at better understanding the bewildered behavior of North American veterans – many returning from the Vietnam War with post-traumatic disorder syndrome – light began to be shed on the fact of the trauma really being a trauma, and how it affects people’s lives.

Attachment Theory and trauma studies were, and still are, essential for us to start thinking about how the experiences we live affect us. In the family context, this becomes even more important, considering that we, the parents or adult caregivers, impact our children all the time. We can feel a great weight in front of it or we can see it as a beautiful opportunity.

I decided, more than five years ago, to start seeing the power of what I can provide for my children through the way I relate to them and how my relationship with them becomes the greatest protective factor against trauma.

Trauma is not beneficial. Contrary to what we hear out there, it’s not through pain that we prosper, but through love. We don’t have to survive a lot of childhood trauma to become “strong.” Parents and caring adults don’t have to be hard on children to make them “resilient.” There are many studies, including the 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, which exposes how much traumatic childhood experiences affect and harm a person’s emotional and physical health.

I don’t believe it’s possible to raise children without any trauma, but I firmly believe that we can prevent trauma and reduce the damage of our own traumas on our children. And the way to do it had already been wide open in the last century, through Bowlby’s studies: it is in the quality of the parent’s relationship with the child that the greatest source of protection and prevention of trauma and its effects is found. As much as we have injured parents and become surviving children, we can break this cycle.

We parents have the power to foster our children’s physical and emotional health with every loving and respectful interaction we have with them. We literally strengthen your immune systems through our attention and connection. We stimulate the myelination of a baby’s neurons through a lot of cervix, because, yes, contrary to what is heard, that cervix “spoils” babies, science proves otherwise. We foster healthy brain development in our children when we foster a warm and safe home environment.

There is no glory in trauma. May we, day after day, dedicate ourselves to creating respectful relationships with the offspring of our species. In the words of Charles Raison: “A generation full of parents who love their children dearly could change the next generation’s brain, and with it, the world.”

Let us remember: anger does not educate. Calm educates.