To think children did not used to get support for traumatic events?

[julieca]

This is just something I was talking about with DP. Looking back there were some difficult times. A boy in my class in secondary died of cancer. DP saw a friends brother die in front of him of a sudden asthma attack when he was 8 years old. A close friends father died when she was 15 of a sudden heart attack.
Although parents tried to support us, there was no formal support at all. No school counselling, no group support exercises, nothing. I don't know if this is the best approach or not, but surely these days the school especially would be offering support?

And I agree that support isn't always necessarily there for kids or adults as in @DeepaBeesKit examples.

Could I ask, those of you who experienced these events when young. What would have helped?
My young daughter is going through similar and the school has been abysmal. Have asked them to do more and am open and supportive at home but just wondering if you had any advice? Thank you

I think there was much more of a ‘get in with it attitude’

I absolutely agree there should be support for anyone that goes through traumatic life events.

However I think there is a flip side to this also, everything these days seems to be a ‘big deal’ for example my children and friend’s children are the age that they have just started or will be starting secondary school and we all agree that when we went there was no fuss made (90s) you just did it we didn’t even visit before hand.

I know people suffer with crippling anxiety but I think the natural feeling of being nervous has been blown out of all proportion.

Meh. In the late 90s, a boy arrived at my mum's school. He was thought to be about 12, but no-one (including himself) was certain: he'd been five or thereabouts when he witnessed the execution of all his male family members in Srebrenica, and was found lying amongst the bodies. He received the square root of fuck all counselling - which was something of a surprise considering the lavish amounts available to a boy in his class the following year, who'd apparently been traumatised by seeing his moronic low-rent gangster father arrested in front of him, for his role in the Millennium Dome raid.

@Mnusernc

Could I ask, those of you who experienced these events when young. What would have helped? My young daughter is going through similar and the school has been abysmal. Have asked them to do more and am open and supportive at home but just wondering if you had any advice? Thank you

If you can pay, get private support for her and you. They teach you how to help.

Also routines and being reassuringly predictable.

I agree OP.

I was in the care system as a child (80’s and 90’s) due to neglect and abuse. No support at all. It wasn’t recognised at school either and I was classed as a ‘problem child’. Ended up using alcohol and drugs to cope. It didn’t seem to be acknowledged by anyone that my behaviour was linked to what was happening. I felt a lot of guilt and shame.

It’s only in the past few years that I’ve been lucky enough to be able to afford private therapy and work through my past.

I think sometimes people think the support always must be external and professional.

Often kids can process what's happened if they feel they have a safe and consistent outlet for it. Meaning their parents or main carer/s.

Lots of parents jump straight to 'something bad has happened that vaguely impacts my child. The school/NHS must provide the safe space for them.

Obviously, sometimes, professional outside support is needed. But it shouldn't always be the first stop.

My best friends dad died when she was 15, what she needed was her mum to be present and support her through her grief. Not the professional grief support she was given, that didn't do much. But, her mum has always been incredibly selfish and continued to be the same way. She still is.

My friend has had quite a bit of professional help. But its never replaced the fact that her mother wasn't there for her.

@Mnusernc

Could I ask, those of you who experienced these events when young. What would have helped? My young daughter is going through similar and the school has been abysmal. Have asked them to do more and am open and supportive at home but just wondering if you had any advice? Thank you

I think for me, i just needed someone who would listen. Someone who could talk through the stages of grief with me. I convinced myself that my friend hadn't really died. That it was some kind of... I don't know what. I had this mad idea that he'd run away from home and was hiding in a shack some where and that he'd come back one day. I didn't know that denial was a normal way of processing grief. It was very much swept under the carpet in a "well you knew him but you weren't best friends" kind of way. Grief should never be minimised like that.

It’s absolutely not true that people in the past didn’t have mental health problems- they just weren’t allowed to talk about them, it was all hushed up. I’ve met a fair amount of older people who clearly want to talk about the traumatic things that happened to them, but have no outlet or understanding of how to do that constructively.

Even the attitude of “Well I never received help for my traumatic experiences, so why should young people?” doesn’t exactly scream “emotionally healthy and stable”.

The understanding of mental health continues to evolve and if kids these days are getting more support then I’m glad.

Sad and tragic as it is I’m not sure why you would need counselling because a fellow pupil passed away? I could see why it might be needed if you actively watched somebody die though.

I agree, 7-10 years ago in high school we had 2/3 instances where fellow pupils died. We have an announcement made but no support really. Just crack on with it.

Even the attitude of “Well I never received help for my traumatic experiences, so why should young people?” doesn’t exactly scream “emotionally healthy and stable”

And this.

But - I do think young people are less resilient and there is far too much introspection going on - the endless memes on an average 5 minutes on Facebook analysing normal human behaviour and going on about mental health, how virtually every hardship and negative emotion is a sign you’re a wreck in need of sectioning, is way over the top.

I think we talk about it too much on the whole if I’m being honest, in the context of minor life hardships (I’m not saying this about watching someone die which I would consider quite major).

@DDUW

A girl I went to school with was routinely punished for being upset after her mother had died. I remember a class trip to the churchyard to look at gravestones. The girl broke down in tears and the teacher shouted at her for making a fuss. We were about 9 and we all took our lead from the teacher. We all thought there must have been something mentally wrong with her for being upset about it.

Oh that's so awful.

@JCFJW

This is going way back tbf, and may not be the kind of thing you mean, but I think kids did used to be expect to just get on with things up until relatively recently.

My grandma sadly lost twin girls to a premature birth and my mum remembers it very well. She remembers being really gutted and wondering why her mum had come home from the maternity unit with no baby (this was the 60s, I don’t think they knew it was twins). She said nobody explained anything to her and her mum was in bed grieving for weeks and my mum didn’t see her at all in this time. She remembers having her first day of school the week it happened and she didn’t want to go and was crying about it because of the trauma of what had happened and her dad just yanked her by the arms through the school gate and left her there. She was really emotionally neglected during this time. Nobody in the family or her school ever talked to her about her own confusion and grief and it’s something that has stayed with her.

Nowadays there are family bereavement services. And I’m sure a child’s school would want to know about what had happened at home in this situation to make provisions for supporting the child.

Yup. Lost one of twin siblings at birth when I was 3 (1980s). Couldn’t understand why I’d seen 2 babies at the hospital but only one had come home. Nobody has ever spoken to mr about it. My brother was never mentioned at home. Mum couldn’t properly grieve as had my surviving sibling to look after. I lost her that day. My dad looked after me.

When I became a defiant teen I was marched to private therapy with someone who shared everything I said with my mother who decided I was “evil”.

I’ve had 10 years+ of counselling as an adult trying to undo the damage. When eventually I hit a wall and had to try to speak to my mother about it she point blank refused and said “psychology is all well and good but sometimes you just have to get on with it” and shut the conversation down point blank.

I spoke to another relative instead who told me my mum was suicidal at the time but there was no support for her. Her family did what they could but they basically did it alone.

I lost school friends as a teen (one to epilepsy, one to leukaemia) and there was never any counselling. Just memorial services with trees or benches as memorials.

My secondary school was incredibly unlucky and had a number of students die whilst I was there. The school always called an assembly and said we would be supported and teachers knew to keep an eye out for anyone who seemed like they weren't coping. School is hard enough as it is. Dealing with death on top of it is brutal.

Not in the Uk, but 22 years ago a teen friend committed suicide and we were all offered grief counselling at our school. I didn’t think of it as odd or new but all schools had counsellors even then.

We lost our baby last year late, under traumatic circumstances. In the fog of grief and horror I was absolutely aware that I needed to be present, capable, loving and constant for my almost 4 year old.

I have had bereavement training/experience before so knew (sort of) how to explain what was happening to him so that he could process it in a safe and age appropriate way.

As the year has gone on, he has discussed his baby sibling at least once a week, brings him up as part of his family tree at school and is confident in explaining to other people that "it's sad that our baby went to heaven but he was born too early and was too poorly to stay." He knows his heart stopped beating, that it was nothing to do with "falling asleep" and that dying is something that usually happens when you are old and have lived a happy, long life. He knows that he isn't going to die soon, but when he is an old man.

My DH's response would have been to tell him very little, probably nothing and just say that there was no baby any more. He isn't good at dealing with any kind of grief himself, so I can't imagine he'd have been any good at explaining this particular death to DS without causing confusion or upset. Dh worries that DS will be "the weird kid who talks about his dead brother" if we discuss it at home and he's comfortable talking about it. I could see that doing more emotional damage than dealing with it openly because then it becomes mysterious, the unknown and potentially scary.

Yes I completely agree, I was at primary in the 80s and secondary in the 90s. There was fuck all support, bullying was rife, adults didn't seem to give a shit.

Even worse for my parents generation. Both my parents sufferers of traumatic events as children. Both were just told to get on with it. It's affected their entire life!

I think the culture (probably until quite recently) was just sweep it under the carpet and get on with it. Things have changed significantly in the last 5 yrs or so I'd say.

Yep, my mum died when I was 12 in the late 90s. No counselling. Ironically, only when I didn't get on with the stepmum was family counselling attempted 🙄

HeyFloof I am very sorry for your and your family's loss and it sounds as if you have dealt with it admirably and in an immensely emotionally healthy way for your older child.

Even up to a generation or so ago, children were required, at family and societal level, to 'function'. If they didn't, adults used their power to punish and suppress - often because the demands on them to manage difficult experiences were hard enough and they had no resources ro support their children as well, although that is an explanation, not an excuse. As with every major societal shift, occasionally things may be taken too far, but overall I am incredibly, incredibly thankful that struggles with mental and emotional health are losing the shame that has attached to them, especially for children. I am also incredibly grateful that we recognise children's humanity and vulnerability a lot more and despair that 'resilience' has become some kind of neo-authoritarian battle cry which actually expresses a wish for children to put up, shut up and express their emotions, if at all, in a way commensurate with adult needs. That's not what resilience is.

If schools were adequately funded to do so it would be great to offer mental health services to catch traumas like these at a young age to try and have the biggest impact.

A girl in my class died suddenly when I was at secondary school in the 80s. I remember our form tutor taking about her with tears in his eyes and telling us it was ok to cry. We were encouraged to go to her funeral ( that was what her family wanted) and I remember going to a special class to learn the hymns for the funeral but the teacher also talked about what the funeral would be like (as most of us had never been to one) and how we might feel.

When we were 9 (late 70s) a classmate died of leukaemia. She had been ill and got progressively worse, eventually coming to school in a wheelchair. When she died I can remember having a special assembly and doing some painting after talking about her.

I work in a job where we deal with sudden death. I’m starting to think this is a financial thing because my organisation is obsessed with us being traumatised so I think they pay an external party to offer support. Ie there is money to be made sometimes in convincing people they’re in need of help.
I’ve worked there for years and it never occurred to me to be especially bothered about the deaths until the organisation started suggesting that we might be bothered. I then began to wonder if I was normal or not because to me it’s expected to feel sad and to think about the incident but it doesn’t need to be pathologised. I have no emotional connection to the persons concerned and would prefer to chat with colleagues and move on (the bereaved families are the ones I feel for-I knew what I was getting into with this job).