Is it possible for a trauma experienced as a baby to affect their development later on as a child?

[TheRhubarb]

I ask because we've had plenty of issues surrounding ds. He's always been clingy but this suddenly got very much worse during the last summer holidays, so much so that I took him to our GPs in a right old state because I couldn't even leave the room and he was having bedtimes fears every single night including nightmares at least twice a night - every night.

We've been through the mill but are finally seeing the light and he's so much better. However I was asked about pregnancy, the birth and any traumas and the only thing I could think of was something happening when he was around 8 months old that upset me a little at the time but which made him hysterical. A friend's teenage daughter wanted to wheel him round the neighbourhood for a bit. He was asleep and so I agree, asking her to bring him back if he woke up. She was gone for around an hour and a half and when she brought him back he was hysterical. Apparently he'd woken up just after she had left the house but she didn't bring him back, instead she tried to soothe him herself and then took him to a neighbour for her to soothe him. When he didn't she finally brought him back. He was in hysterics for a while and I even tried breastfeeding him again (I had stopped some weeks back) to calm him. That night he would not settle and was very clingy and very disturbed.

Now years later I recalled the story to a psychologist helping with ds and she seems to think this incident may have triggered his problems now, which is why he cannot tell us what is wrong, because his defences are in-built and have been since he was a baby. So he has fears that I will leave him, he is afraid of being on his own etc but he cannot articulate or rationalise those fears.

Could this be right? Has he suffered all this time because of one incident? If so how can we hope to calm his fears now?

I would think that the trauma would have to be far far worse than just being comforted by a stranger as a baby for it to have a lasting effect on a child.

I should imagine every baby has woken up at some point and their mother hasn't been there -seems unlikely! as the majority of babies would be traumatised?

Phew, this is what I thought! The only thing that makes this incident stick in my mind is because at the time we were going through a pretty big change in our lives and ds spent most of his days and nights with just us - dh, I and dd. We didn't see anyone else, the kids didn't have friends to play with - basically we were living in a caravan and were a very tight family unit.

The day in question he was sleeping when we arrived and he had not met this particular girl before. She took an interest in the baby as all teenagers do and took him out but he woke up very soon afterwards, so from going to sleep with the usual faces around him that he saw day in and day out, to waking up and seeing someone completely different and being passed to someone else, in a completely alien environment must have shook him up. He was beside himself when I got him back and was pretty disturbed for a couple of nights after.

But that is the only thing I could think of that happened to him as a baby that disturbed him at all. And it does kinda fit in with his fears of me suddenly disappearing and change of any sort.

Sounds unlikely to me too. I'm always surprised by how much they remember even as tinies, but if that was the case then there would be loads of cases of traumatised children.

She said it depended on the child and the situation at the time and that our situation may have meant that a fairly innocuous or unfortunate incident could have resulted in a trauma for ds that manifested itself a little later on as part of his defence mechanism.

Other than that, there is no explanation for what triggered ds's sudden fears and anxieties. No bereavement, no major upheaval, nothing. Just a lasting fear by him of being in a strange environment, of being with strange people, of me disappearing and of being left alone at night.

Could she have hurt him in some way? Sounds awful.poor chap..

I don't think the fact that most children wouldn't have been traumatised by that incident means that this particular child hasn't been. Events affect different people in different ways.

For example - a choking incident or vomitting bug in early childhood which the vast majority of children would shrug off almost immediately can trigger food phobias in some children. Don't see why something like this would be completely different.

Half of me wants to say yes, the other no. DS2 was in NICU and had a serious operation at 5 months. He is sunny and outgoing, much more so than DS1 who was a much clingier, more nervous toddler. I wonder if what happened to DS2 had happened to DS1 that we would have faced more problems.

Something is upsetting your DS (how old is he now?). If you accept what the psychologist says, does this give you some strategies to help your DS?

I agree with Rita. Your child could have been very traumatised by the incident you describe. Just because another child might not have been is irrelevant. I hope the psychologist will give advice on how to help him feel secure again.

It could do it depends how you reacted subsequently (intentionally or not). Ie making a big fuss of leaving him because of how you felt following this incident. This would affect a child.

Interesting comments.

Well after the incident we had a hard time to settle him but it's fair to say that he didn't leave my side much. We were together all the time and the only other time he left the family unit was to go to nursery, which again disturbed him greatly even though we did the usual visiting beforehand to get him used to it etc.

He has had a problem leaving me ever since. He's always hated school and has often cried beforehand. He's been sent home before now because he's got himself into such a state he's become ill. He hates new situations and new people and has suffered from night terrors and nightmares for years.

All this came to a head last summer when we were on holiday and he completely freaked out. He was hysterical every single night and it carried on when we came back. He followed me from room to room and was terrified I would 'run away' or disappear. Since then I've received help and support from school and went on a parenting course to try to find ways of dealing with his anxieties. We've been patient with him and supportive and slowly he is getting there, although I still have to stay with him in any new situation.

This counselling is our last step and it takes place at school. Other professionals have asked about traumas in pregnancy/birth and early childhood before too so that is obviously what they are looking for. Knowing the cause might help us to go back and understand his fears and perhaps start to unravel them.

Ellovera - no, she just didn't want to bring him back. Like any teenager she probably just wanted to hold him and thought she could soothe him herself. She wanted to push him round and show him to the neighbours. In part it was my fault as I should have set down a time to bring him back or asked that she only wheel him up the road and back. It was just one of those things which may have had unfortunate consequences for us all.

Well, there are several ways of looking at anything: maybe your family circumstances created a lot of stress which you passed on to him by becoming exceptionally insular and keeping yourselves in a tight, stressed unit together, resulting in a benign incident being hugely traumatic for your baby (such an atmosphere does send out vibes that nowhere else and no-one else is safe to be around); or you created such a calm, strong bond with your baby, who was so used to your presence that he couldn't cope with being without you and found it confusing and frightening to such a degree he still hasn't got over the short period of stress hormones it created and it affected his brain forever; or your baby was a particularly sensitive one who couldn't cope with change and, being naturally that way inclined, he is still like that, now. Frankly, I don't see what relevance any of the interpretations have to the current problem????? Your child has problems rationalising his fears and is prone to anxiety. I don't see how his knowing he was stressed by an incident when he was 8 months old is going to help him deal with that??? And clearly it doesn't help you, either. If it related to a more recent incident he's not telling you about, then maybe it would be useful information. But something that happened before he can remember??????? So what if that's what made him who he is? He is who he is.

I think knowing about pregnancy trauma and trauma in infancy helps the professionals more than the people suffering mental health problems later in life - because then they can apply that information to other cases and see if there are patterns there, to help them in their quest to work out how much something might be genetic and how much environmental. That your brain development was affected by your environment isn't necessarily helpful to you as a person, as you can't go back in time to change your environment as it was then. You can change your environment and reactions now, though.

Agree with rabbitstew.

It is possible and because of the other thinhgs going on at similar times he could have felt what happenned as a trauma horrible word cos it can be misunderstood by understandinhg where his fear comes from you can work with him to reassure him you are there for him you could try a special invisible mum mark so he knows he belongs to you or taking something small to school to remind you of him if. He needs to feel secure and that you are noyt going to disappear play games wiyth him help him to feel safe exploring his world encourtage him as you would a younger child to move out into the world

Sorry should have used grammer on 'phone
Also times of change or stress or tiredmess may affect his behaviour

I agree with all of that, however from my point of view it is helpful to understand why so that I can try to tackle is. As you can appreciate, this past year has been a very difficult and stressful one and we are still trying to understand it. No, it might not help ds knowing how and why this all started, but it would help us as his parents to make sense of it.

If it was a trauma then I can start to talk about similar events with ds and I can understand his intense outpourings of love for me. I can't quite explain but it would just help me if I could discover why because I'm pretty certain that this is not 'just the way he is', normal children (horrible word I know) do not behave in the extremes that he does.

Right now he is sat with me. He should be at school but they've sent him home with severe tummy pains, tears, etc. Now that he's home he has calmed down and is chatting. This is an exact repeat of what happened at school last year and it went on for a week - with him being sent home from school every day, us visiting the GP, etc. If could look back and understand where all this came from it helps me to explain what he might be experiencing to others and to myself.

I suppose from the psychologists pov she can start to talk about his fears more specifically too and try to rationalise with him how he feels.

Trust me, I've tried all the tricks of the trade - giving him something that has magic mummy hugs in it, letting him take his snuggly bear to school, etc. Nothing works. He wants my physical presence with him all the time and there is no substitute for that. His love is suffocating at times and has a detrimental effect when I cannot work because I'm dealing with him at home. So it may or may not help him to discover a reason for this, but it helps us to try and come to terms with it.

rabbitstew - no, no over-reactions no big fuss to him going to someone else. Yes living in a caravan with 2 small children whilst searching for work and a house to rent was stressful, I can't pretend it wasn't. There were no family members or friends to provide some relief so we relied solely on each other. Yes the bond between him and myself is strong, but from my pov only as strong as it is between dd and I. The difference is that dd is much more independent whereas ds can't seem to exist without me around.

I still think that finding good reasons for someone being anxious isn't necessarily hugely helpful in helping them control their anxiety. It's like expecting someone to be cured of a spider phobia by looking for an incident in their past that gave them a good reason to be scared of spiders. It doesn't stop them being scared, it just justifies their fear - spiders can be scary. I don't think knowing their phobia didn't come out of nowhere makes a big difference to their treatment - they suffer from a fear that is excessive, not measured or rational. (Although I guess if you have post traumatic stress disorder, you are considered harder to treat than someone who just has severe anxiety...). Mothers can die, children can be harmed when their mothers aren't around. We already know that. So does your ds. Whether he had a bad experience or not, that is a hard fact that won't go away. His problem is not that he has a good reason to fear something bad will happen if you aren't around (unless there is something going on in the here and now that you are not protecting him from), it's that he doesn't have a good reason to feel the fear that strongly or to feel that harm is more likely to come to him if you aren't around. Having a teenager try to look after an 8 month old distressed baby is not a good reason for the baby to grow up anxious. So if it has made him grow up anxious, then surely his brain was pre-wired to overreact? I still don't see in what way that takes you any further forward? Cognitive behavioural therapy works on people with anxiety. Anxiety is never completely and utterly irrational, it's usually an extreme reaction to an everyday problem.

No, I said it might not help him but that it might help us to understand why. Even if you can't do anything about it, it often helps just to have some background understanding. I can't explain more than that, it just helps us to come to terms with what has been a very upsetting period and perhaps I can stop blaming myself constantly for his anxiety.

hi rhubarb, this is an interesting thread.

A couple of months before my DD turned 3 I had a nasty experience following a minor operation that she witnessed first hand. Basically a couple of days after gastro surgery she and I were at home alone together when I started to feel really ill - I thought I'd picked up a stomach bug at the hospital! I got terrible stomach pains and told her I needed the loo thinking I had the runs. Unbeknown to me I was actually hemorraging (sp?) and the next thing I know I was waking up on the floor having completely blacked out and fallen off the toilet. DD was just standing there screaming :(. I sorted myself out and a few minutes later had to go to the loo again. This time I didn't fall off but I definitely blacked out again. I had the phone with me and finally got hold of DH who rushed home, took one look at me and called an ambulance. I was then taken away and stayed in hospital for 5 days requiring a blood transfusion and careful monitoring.

We thought no more of it til 8 months later when completely randomly she asked me if I'd hurt myself when I fell off the loo, and that she hadn't wanted me to go in the ambulance and that she missed me whilst I was in hospital. She then had a similar conversation with me a few months after that.

Why am I telling you this? Well 2 years later at nearly 5 she has an absolute fear of doing a poo in the loo (she's absolutely fine with wees). Try and get her to use one and she will be screaming and backing around the room just to get away from the loo. Consequently I am still changing nappies every day :(.

I firmly believe that this is a result of the trauma when she was 2 but it is proving very hard to get help as toilet issues are so common and people seem to think its a behavioural thing that can be managed away.

A friend mentioned the EMDR association whose members use a method to deal with trauma so there is definitely a whole field out there dealing with it [www.emdrassociation.org.uk]

Oh and as an aside my DD is an extreme mummy's girl and for the last 2.5 years has got up every night, 3 or 4 times a night to come to our room so that I can put her back to bed. She can also get extremely upset on the odd occasion that I go out before her bedtime and it can take ages for DH to console her and get her to bed. Again I can't help but think that this is in some way related to the fact that she is scared mummy will be taken away from her again

So I don't think I've helped you at all but just wanted to let you know that you are not on your own and I know how hard it is to deal with an emotionally upset child

mintyneb thank you so much. That must have been a terrifying experience for you both. Don't you just wish sometimes you could go back in time, scoop them up in your arms and protect them? As a mother I feel as though I have failed my ds. I wasn't there when he needed me and as a result he has this fear of me not being there. No matter how often I reassure him, it pains me to think that he is still in fear of me disappearing.

I am so sorry you are doing through this tough time and my heart goes out to you. An expert told me to tell ds that no matter what time of the night it was and no matter what it was for, he could always come to me if he needed me. This helped a lot as ds was anxious before about disturbing us and getting into trouble so perhaps it might help your dd? I also did a reward chart with achievable goals and the rewards were to spend time with either myself or daddy doing things he wanted to do. We also got a nightlight for him. All of these things have helped a little, along with positive parenting and the support of many professionals.

I shall look into the EMDR as you suggested so thanks for that. Can I in turn recommend Young Minds to you who provide instant telephone support and who offer invaluable advice and useful suggestions for dealing with children who have mental health problems.

It's a long road to walk isn't it? But it helps enormously to think I'm not the only one. Do let me know how your dd gets on. Hugs from me x

To be honest I'd have thought it was likelier that the nursery was more of a traumatising experience for him - you say it 'disturbed him greatly' and that that was when he started having fears about losing you. The daily separation that he found so hard to deal with is more likely to have made a 'groove' in his brain and created long-term fears. I wouldn't have thought a once-off when he was so tiny would have made such an impact.

If it helps you, TheRhubarb, then I guess that's a good thing. I was looking at it from my experience of having had a ds1 who also had extreme separation anxiety and who therefore caused me to have huge feelings of guilt that I was incapable of making him feel secure or proving to him that I would never leave him. I thought at the time that finding out the reasons why he was like that would help, but in the long run it didn't, it just provided a continuous, unhelpful loop of anxious thoughts for me to go through. Was it all because he had to go into hospital when he was tiny? Was it because I was stressed when I was pregnant? Was it because I was stressed now, worrying about why he was so stressed? Was it all those things combined and I was now trapped like this forever because neither of us could escape our own particular reactions to things?

Because there are absolutely no certain answers to why someone is the way they are, looking for them can just mean a neverending search for something that would never be definitive and wouldn't have been a helpful answer in the end, anyway, because you have the situation you have, and no amount of understanding why it is the way it is is going to change that, it is just going to prolong the agony of trying to come to terms with it and will provide fertile ground for regret about past actions and how things could have been different. When I got myself out of that loop of anxiety, my ds1 became less anxious, too. And I didn't get out of the anxiety by picking on one of the random possible causes for his anxiety. I got out of it by coming to terms with the here and now. If you think you can fix on one event as the cause of all your problems and use that to help you come to terms with your child and your relationship with him, then that's wonderful for you. My experience was that it wasn't that easy. (ps my ds1 has a diagnosis of aspergers syndrome, but that isn't an answer to anything, either!).

Thanks rabbitstew, yes the possibly of ds being autistic has also cropped up but I have to say that he has no problems in communicating his feelings, he just can't seem to articulate his fears very well. He listens to reason and agrees with it, even contributing to it, but all reason is gone when in that situation. He makes friends well, he is able to play and share and recognise emotion.

Can I ask, did your ds's diagnosis help at all? Or was he diagnosed before that? How do you cope with it day to day?

Yes I've done the whole anxiety thing and blaming myself (which is normal I suppose). I suppose part of me thinks that if I can discover why, I might be able to move from it iyswim? And also it comes from that pressure that the professionals put by constantly asking about any past traumas, deaths in the family etc. In fact school today, when I just phoned up to tell them that he was fine and would be in tomorrow, asked if there was anything he was upset about, anything going on at home which would explain his behaviour today.
Everyone looks for an explanation which might provide a reason. It's hard when you can't come up with one.

I don't accept that he was always going to be this way. Perhaps he was always going to be sensitive but certainly his irrational fears don't stem from nothing. I KNOW why I'm scared of spiders, it might not help me now but at least I know that it's not actually irrational, that there was an incident which sparked it off.

I just want to help him because I can see so many times where he will miss out if he isn't more independent and there are so many hurdles he will have to jump. I am exhausted with the effort of being positive, chirpy, encouraging, supportive, patient, understanding, etc. When dh has had enough, it's always me who steps in to soothe, explain, reason, implore and it's just very tiring.