Excerpt from Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes (By Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline) reprinted with permission from publisher.
“Daddy, daddy, let it go, let it go! Please don’t kill it! Let it go!”
These are the terrified screams uttered by ten-year-old Teddy as he bolts from the room like a frightened jackrabbit. Puzzled, his father holds a motionless tree shrew in the palm of his hand, one that he found in the back yard and brought to his son. He thought it an excellent and scientific way to teach Teddy how animals “play possum” in order to survive. Startled by the boy’s reaction to his seemingly harmless gestures, Teddy’s father is unaware of the connection that his son has just made to a long-forgotten event. It was an “ordinary” event, similar to one that millions of us have experienced.
On Teddy’s fifth birthday the family pediatrician and lifelong friend came for a visit. The whole clan gathered around the doctor as he proudly showed them a photograph he had taken at the local hospital of baby Teddy at age nine months. The boy took a brief look at the picture and then ran wildly from the room, screaming in rage and terror. How many parents, teachers, babysitters, and health care providers have witnessed similar mysterious reactions in children?
At nine months of age, Teddy developed a severe rash that covered his whole body. He was taken to the local hospital and strapped down to a pediatric examination table. While being poked and prodded by a team of specialist, the immobilized child screamed in terror under glaring lights. Following the examination he was placed in isolation for seven days. When his mother, who had not been allowed to see him for over a week, arrived at the hospital to bring him home, Teddy did not recognize her. She claims that the boy never again connected with her or any other family member. He did not bond with other children, grew increasingly isolated, and began living in a world of his own. Though by no means the only factor, the hospital trauma experienced by nine-month old Teddy was an important, possibly critical, component in the shaping of Theodore Kaczynski, the convicted “Unabomber,” who sent letter bombs to various people involved in technology and wielding corporate power – arguably, his revenge against the same dehumanizing forces that overwhelmed and broke him as an infant.
Cherylc asked specifically about my reference to the Unabomber and so I am including the above excerpt. Earlier in the book there’s a paragraph (couldn’t find it) setting up a scary case study and cautions readers, telling them that trauma isn’t going to make every kid a serial killer.
It’s worth repeating: Trauma in infancy and childhood isn’t going to make every kid a serial killer.
But we also can’t go through life expecting there are no after effects of trauma for the kids that experience medical trauma, or a one-time event (they address that, too) or years of medical interventions. Because this life, the life of medical intervention is not normal.
I know many of us parents suck it up and make it normal. It’s a survival technique, it’s our way of coping (or at least it’s my way) because if we don’t embrace this life of sick as our normal, there will be hell to pay in the Emotionally Well department. We have to accept the situation. But I have to also realize that accepting it doesn’t make it all normal. And it doesn’t make it right. And it doesn’t make it easy. And it certainly doesn’t make the residual affects on the kids or all of us go away.
I am sure some people experience trauma as a child – as a victim, a witness, a patient – and they are just fine. They grow up without some of the outward symptoms of trauma that Gage has experienced. But not everyone is that lucky. We’re certianly low on that around here. That and good genetics.
I think reading this book is enlightening ways that aren’t always “Ah-ha!” but sometimes is “Ah, crap.” And reading along and reading some of these case studies is hard to do on the best of days. But I still go back to it is better knowing than not knowing.
Right?
