GRIEF Doctor gives parents tips on relieving trauma in children

In grief, sadness is the primary emotion. In trauma, the reaction is terror.
YOUNGSTOWN -- How can you tell if your child is grieving, or suffering from the more severe effects of trauma? What can you do to help? What are some experiences that may be traumatizing for your child? The answers to these questions may surprise you.
Dr. William Steele, founder and director of the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children (TLC) shared his expertise earlier this month in a lecture titled "What Do I Tell My Child/Teen When I'm Scared Too!" to a group at the Boardman Holiday Inn. He has been helping others understand grief and trauma since 1965.
He has trained more than 40,000 educators, human service, mental health and Hospice workers, and health-care professionals, including one in Youngstown. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his institute worked with families of airline victims, New York City schools, the World Trade Center Family Assistance Program, and spouses and children of Pentagon employees who died. And he was one of the first Americans selected by the Kuwaiti government to train their newly formed mental health staff in trauma intervention.
Causes of trauma
Trauma, he said, can be triggered by violent or nonviolent events -- murder, suicide, physical/sexual abuse, a car accident, drowning or terminal illness of a loved one. It can also occur as a result of an act of nature, such as a tornado or flood, or separation from parents through divorce or foster-care placement.
Not all children react to situations in the same way, he said. A child may feel grief, in which sadness is the primary emotion. In trauma, the reaction is terror. People who have been traumatized feel powerless and unsafe.
"Restoring the child's sense of safety is the first, and most important, step in healing," Steele said.
He told the story of a little boy whose father died instantly in a snowmobile accident. After that, the only way the child could sleep at night was to pull his dad's TV chair into the corner and stand up against it. When the mother was finally assisted in walking the child through his experience, she realized that he needed to be close to his father's things. By filling the boy's room up with his dad's belongings, she restored his sense of safety, and he was able to sleep at night.
"From the child's view, their behavior makes perfect sense; from our point of view it may look disturbing, yet be quite normal," Steele said.
Senses
Trauma is a sensory experience, rather than cognitive, he explained. What we heard, saw, and smelled during the experience triggers the body to remember the trauma.
"The experience itself isn't just it," Steele said. "It is all the stuff that happens afterward. When we are exposed to a traumatic stress, our short-term memory shuts down. We no longer make a decision how to react, our brain makes the decision. It is fight, flight or freeze."
Steele shared the story of his grown son who was a member of the police force. He spent his first four to five years investigating murders and suicide, yet it never affected him. Then one day, he was called to the scene of a tragic car accident. Steele said he could notice a change in his son that progressively worsened.
Steele finally was able to approach his son with an attitude of curiosity, which is often a safe, nonthreatening approach to trauma sufferers. His son explained that when he was called out on murder/suicide cases, he always had time to think. He would carefully observe each detail as he entered the scene. At the car accident, he didn't have time to think. He approached the car, which was on fire, and saw two conscious children in the back, and the mother, who had been decapitated. Unlike the murder cases that he was able to think though in a cognitive process, he experienced the accident through his senses, creating trauma.
Lack of focus
Steele said that we can recognize if a child is suffering trauma when they are no longer able to focus, retain or recall, or process verbal information, which would affect their ability to learn at school. Children in trauma often will be hyper-vigilant, a chronic state of readiness. To help the child heal, he suggests keeping calm, keeping a familiar routine and giving the child lots of sensory experiences -- like hugs and teddy bears. Comfort foods are important. If the child only wants peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then that's what they should have. It often takes four to six weeks for a child to recover from trauma.
Steele founded the TLC institute in 1990 to provide direct services to traumatized children and families. It also caters to school professionals, crisis intervention teams, medical and mental health professionals, child care professionals, and clinicians by providing trauma education, training, consultation, referral services, and trauma-specific intervention programs and resource materials needed to help children, parents, families and schools traumatized by violent and nonviolent encounters.
He is the author of numerous articles and books, including his latest, "Trauma Intervention: Structured Sensory Interventions for Traumatized Children, Adolescents and Parents."
XFor more information, visit http://tlcinstitute.org on the Web.