A Special Therapy for Toddlers with Trauma Symptoms
Can Toddlers Have PTSD?
Trauma has become a buzzword among people who care for children. In the past, the word “trauma” was usually reserved for experiences most common among adults, like war and violent crime. Now, mental health professionals understand that many other frightening experiences, such as abuse, medical emergencies, and witnessing accidents or violent arguments can lead to trauma in people of all ages. In this post, I’ll be discussing how therapy can help toddlers with trauma symptoms and PTSD following one of these experiences.
Doctors, teachers, counselors, and parents are becoming increasingly aware of the ways that traumatic experiences like these can affect children's physical and emotional health. Even children's television programs like Sesame Street have recognized the impact of trauma on young children, and have started to address difficult experiences like grief, foster care, and incarceration in episodes. As hard as it might be to imagine, trauma and PTSD can affect even very young children—including toddlers.
How Trauma Affects Toddlers
Studies have shown that exposure to extremely frightening or violent events impacts a child's ability to learn, form close relationships with family and friends, and can even make kids more susceptible to chronic illnesses later in life. Separation from a parent, even when it isn’t due to a violent or scary cause, can also have similar effects on a child. We also know now that these effects last for a long time: even if a toddler is too young to remember the traumatic event, he may suffer from trauma symptoms like tantrums, anxiety, difficulty bonding with parents, or problems with sleep for years to come if he does not receive the help he needs to move forward.
Therapy for Toddlers with PTSD
While there are quite a few forms of therapy to help older children cope after a trauma, it can be hard to find therapy that is a good fit for very young children. Toddlers often have a hard time putting their feelings into words, and need specialized therapy that incorporates play and nonverbal techniques to help make sense of traumatic experiences, as well as coping skills to manage strong emotions. Child-Parent Psychotherapy is one of the only forms of therapy specially designed for the youngest kids--children under the age of five--who have survived a trauma or loss.
Child-Parent Psychotherapy, or CPP, is a form of play and talk therapy for children ages 0-5 and a parent or caregiver. It is a dyadic therapy, which means that typically the child and parent participate together with support from a therapist. CPP aims to strengthen the bond between parent and child after a frightening event. Because parents are so central to young children's lives, they are especially equipped to help a child return to healthy growth and development.
How Child-Parent Psychotherapy Works
Through CPP, toddlers with PTSD symptoms rediscover how to feel safe and protected after a trauma, and make sense of what has happened to them in an age-appropriate way. Learning coping skills to help the child relax and manage emotional outbursts is another important goal of CPP. Parents can also get support for themselves through caregiver coaching sessions, where they have the opportunity to cope with their own feelings about what happened and receive tips from the therapist on how to handle behavior problems related to trauma.
CPP is an evidence-based therapy, which means that it has been proven effective by scientific research. While not every form of therapy works for every person, CPP has been used successfully with kids from many different cultural backgrounds, and to help with a variety of traumatic events including domestic violence, grief, abuse or neglect, parental separation, and serious accidents. It can be a helpful therapy for children with biological, foster, or adoptive parents, and even a caring relative can serve as a support system in CPP sessions.
Therapy for Young Children After Trauma in Davidson, NC
Coping with a trauma or loss can be an extremely challenging situation for people of any age, but parents with toddlers don't have to struggle with this alone. If you think your young child might benefit from therapy for toddlers with trauma symptoms, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and learn more about this approach. You can also learn more about the impact of trauma on children and how therapy can help here.
