What Parents Need to Know About Trauma

Are you facing a struggle with your child?

If you have a child who has experienced trauma, it may seem like your best efforts to work with them are getting nowhere. You may frequently question your parenting approach. And you may start to feel despair about making progress.

In this next episode of our series, Surviving and Thriving After Trauma, we tackle a question that might be the key to moving forward with your child: What do parents need to know about trauma?

Austin is joined by Kari Nietzel, a behavior analyst with over 14 years of experience working with families and children who have experienced trauma. Together, they explore how trauma impacts children, how it manifests in behavior, and how parents and caregivers can better understand and support their kids.

Austin and Kari discuss:

• What trauma is and how it manifests in children

• The difference between ‘trauma’ behavior and ‘normal’ behavior

• The importance of understanding the ‘why’ behind a child's behavior

• The challenges of parenting a child with trauma

• Strategies for parents, families, and caregivers

The Impact of Trauma

If you are the parent of a child who has experienced trauma in some way – either a one-time event or something ongoing – you know the impact that trauma can have on children, and the importance of providing safety, security, and tools for healing.

There are many ways that kids can experience trauma. They may be fostered or adopted from a situation where they experienced abuse or neglect. Or they have been through something traumatic, like health issues, loss of a loved one, or abuse outside the home.

Even if you don’t have kids with trauma, or you’re not a parent yet, you still may need this information because you likely know a parent in this situation. You may be a teacher or coach of kids who have gone through traumatic events or who are currently living in an overwhelming, dysfunctional environment.

If you find yourself in any of these situations, we know you’ll be encouraged, comforted and equipped with parenting strategies as you learn from Kari’s personal and clinical experiences.

Austin’s Conversation with Kari

Austin: Kari, would you mind telling us who you are, what you do, what sort of training you’ve gotten, and how you found yourself in this role?

Kari: I work as a behavior analyst for families; training parents and working with kids who have different diagnoses and traumatic experiences. I’ve been doing it for about 15 years.

We've got a three-year-old foster son and then our biological kids are four, seven and eight. It’s so much fun and also tiring in the most beautiful way.

Austin: I’m going to ask you some questions, find out what you’re doing that’s working, get some tips on how to manage trauma, and then we can share some resources.

To start, how would you define trauma?

Kari: I would define trauma as the occurrence of an event – either repeated occurrences or a one-time event – that has like significant damaging qualities, based on the psychological, mental, or physical perception of what happened.

Austin: I’m curious, what’s the difference between “trauma behavior” vs. “normal behavior”? Is that even a fair distinction to make?

Kari: I tend to look at behavior as behavior. It's something that’s used to communicate a need or want. Behaviors that are the result of trauma are fear-based. They’re coming from a place of wanting to escape or avoid being hurt again and seeking safety.

Sometimes from the outside, it looks like an illogical response, but if you look at the bigger context of why a kid is acting that way, there’s usually a fear-based reason.

Austin: So the reason behind that particular behavior can be the difference?

Kari: Yes. That means the response to the behavior may be different. For example, you may have a kid who is non-compliant in school. It looks like they’re trying to disobey. They’re hiding under a table or acting silly. But when you look at the bigger picture, maybe a demand has been placed on them by a parent to get a perfect score, and they’re having a fear-based response because they are scared of the consequences.

Austin: That’s helpful to know as a parent. You’re saying that when the child doesn’t have the exact words to describe what they really need, they’re going to act out.

Kari: Exactly. Whenever you engage in a behavior, it’s to communicate a want or need. Sometimes those are gestures or expressions. Many times with kids, it’s whining, which can be very frustrating. Usually the root of that is wanting attention. There are appropriate ways to communicate needs and inappropriate ways.

So if you look at behavior as communication, you can ask, is the child engaging in appropriate behaviors to get what they need? We can reteach appropriate ways to feel safe, to feel cared for, to feel loved, so that you can be in an environment where you're scared, but you know how to appropriately respond.

Austin: Where and how have you seen families impacted by these behaviors? What are you hearing and seeing?

Kari: Families come to me when they've reached a point of crisis. They’ve tried everything – they’ve tried gentle parenting, they’ve tried authoritative parenting, they're reading books and they're trying to get insight. They may find some good tools. But that can damage their thought process because maybe a strategy doesn’t work for their kid. So they move on to the next one. But kids are growing and learning, and they need a melting pot of strategies that are evolving.

If you have a mom who experiences trauma, depression, anxiety, or substance abuse when the baby is in the womb, the baby’s brain is affected. The results of that may not be seen right away – in fact sometimes that trauma doesn’t show up until puberty. So parents are impacted by big behavioral changes that they didn’t see coming.

Austin: What are some ways you work with parents, families, and caregivers to help them manage their life situation?

Kari: When parents come to me, often at the end of their rope, I ask them to change how they engage with their kid - and do more work. That’s my least favorite part. If we can look objectively at what that kid needs, we can take the focus off of the parents and help them realize that it isn’t their fault. They haven’t failed. If there was a right way or an easy way to do it, someone would have written a book and they’d be billionaires.

We work to remove the personal feelings of guilt and shame that parents feel, and we look for progress, not perfection. We cannot expect full healing, but we can expect progress together.

Another thing I emphasize is connection before correction. Mutual trust with kids can only be built by moments of connection and building a relationship where they know they are safe and loved, and that looks different for every child. When you've seen one kid with trauma, you've seen one kid; you can't generalize anything about the next kid that you welcome into your home.

When you take time to connect and make sure there are intentional moments for that love and felt safety, then in the moments when you have to correct, it’s done from a place of connection, where they know they are safe and loved.

Austin: What might success look like for kids with trauma, and why do parents and caregivers need to know this?

Kari: When it comes to progress, not perfection, there's the teaching element for me - I'm coming alongside you, I'm helping you, I am modeling with you and helping you use the tools. When parents step back from that, they may notice that it takes their child less time to calm down and get to a better place. It’s baby steps for the child as they begin to understand how they feel and handle their emotions in a healthy, constructive way.

Austin: How have you seen Jesus help, strengthen, and empower kids, parents, and families?

Kari: Without the hope and the redemptive qualities that Jesus has, we can lose sight of why we're even in this struggle, why we're fighting the battle, why we keep pushing and fighting and working hard and being exhausted because there's a promise for so much more. Jesus is with us in the joyful moments, he is with us in the moments of progress – the baby steps – he’s alive and in us and has given us all we need. He’s our hope for healing.

Austin: Kari, it has been so great to have you here. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and resources. We know there are many different stories and different reasons why people need this information about trauma. We pray that people would feel God’s presence and see him at work. It is so tricky to raise kids, and we can’t do it without the hope that Jesus brings us.

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Resources:

Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors by Robyn Gobell

The Connected Parent by Karyn Purvis and Lisa Qualls

TBRI Podcast (Trust-Based Relational Intervention)

Calm Parenting Podcast