I was so focused on helping my oldest daughter work through her grief of losing her dad and my mom whom was her absolute best friend that I neglected to pick up on the youngest daughter internalizing grief. It took all I had to not have a mental breakdown myself which actually evolved into depression but I will only share how it affected my youngest daughter to avoid writing a novel.
Alondra my youngest daughter was 9 years old due to turn 10 at the end of the year. She was observing all the loss and grief around her and really not reacting to it or so we thought. It was the small things that we did not see happening with her. She was not eating, she never wanted to go anywhere or be around anyone she would just sit and read or lay around as if she were tired. The affects of loss for my oldest daughter had affected my youngest daughter. My oldest cried so much she would make herself sick. We got her in to talk to someone and we allowed her to process every stage of grief. But these were not things that my youngest daughter Alondra was a witness to nor did it cross our minds that anything was having an effect on her until her little mind took a pause to ask "WHY".
Alondra wanted to know WHY our loved ones had to die and WHY her granny could not just come home. After attempting to explain the process of death to her being mindful that she had never lost anyone it then began to dawn on me that I had been so busy with one child that I neglected another during her time of grief. I honestly never saw the signs mainly because I never saw a reaction when everything was going on. That was definitely a lesson learned for me. Children cope with things in life that stress them differently, they may not react with emotion it could be a lack of emotion that is an indicator to a strain or tension within a child. Looking back there are so many things I would have done different to help my daughters during that time, I am grateful that chapter did not define either of my girls with a negative mindset about life their life.
Children all over the world have their way of coping with the stress of their daily lives. Children in Sierra Leone and Uganda experience tragedies ranging from separation, to violence and displacement the results of which can cause an impact on their cognitive ability and brain development. As per an article I read in TIME professionals allow children to express themselves or the trauma they experience through their own drawings. Like my daughter children may not be able to verbally express what they are going through right away however, a child drawings can convey to us what their minds are experiencing. If a child is enduring any level of stress for an extensive period of time it wears heavy on their ability to control their emotions.Toxic stress can cause a significant amount of long term damage to a child physical growth. The International Rescue Service or IRC believes that these effects in lack of development can be broken. The IRC works with young children and their families to form alternative paradigms with their environment playing a major role.The most pertinent factor is for children whom have been in a traumatic encounter is to have a consistent adult figure in their lives.
How Children Suffering Trauma and Toxic Stress See the World. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2019, from https://time.com/longform/toxic-stress-children-migrant-trauma/.
2 comments:
Oh my goodness. My heart dropped reading this. I am so sorry for the loss that you and your children have experienced. I could only imagine having something like this happen. I lost one of my very good friends and his sister when I was a freshman in high school. Our entire community felt their loss. It was hard for me to understand the grief that I was feeling at 14. This kind of stress and grief on a younger brain must have had a big impact. I'm so glad that your daughters had you through this all.
Children's early social experiences shape their developing neurological and biological systems for good or for ill, writes Ross Thompson, and the kinds of stressful experiences that are endemic to families living in poverty can alter children's neurobiology in ways that undermine their health, their social competence, and their ability to succeed in school and in life. Childhood stress can be present in any setting that requires the child to adapt or change. Stress may be caused by positive changes, such as starting a new activity, but it is most commonly linked with negative changes such as illness or death in the family.
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