Dealing with PTSD in a 2 year old

[Hardknocks]

Does anyone have any experience of this? Our 2 year old DD had a hospital stay earlier this year and it was intrusive and honestly traumatic for all of us, but she’s well again thankfully.

She was discharged a month ago but her behaviour has completely changed since, she’s so fearful, distrusting, withdrawn. We’ve noticed it and have tried talking to her about the experience (as much as she can - she can do very short sentences). She still talks about it every day, without prompting.

Nursery rang me today to say since the incident she’s been really distressed there and it’s getting worse, they think she has PTSD.

How can I help her? I’m going to speak to the GP tomorrow but I really have no idea what to expect or what to do. I feel so upset about the whole situation.

No experience of this in such a young child. With any luck she is so little the memories will fade, especially if she has some more positive medical experiences (like a simple injection or similar).

Ask about play therapy
Maybe ask hospital if you can get advice from their play therapy services

DS is now 3 but has had several hospital stays which required intrusive treatment. His very first one at 8 months he didn’t make eye contact with me for several days after, as though he felt let down by me as I didn’t help him. Not exaggerating that - DH and my mum saw it too. That was tough.

A couple other times he was super quiet and withdrawn, and another time he was very upset a lot.

In all those cases, it was temporary. We just spent more time with him giving him our full attention. I don’t want to say this is what’s going to happen with your daughter, but just don’t want you to panic and think there may be permanent damage.

Sending love xx

Thank you everyone, that’s so helpful. It’s so hard watching her be so scared of the world now. I’m hoping she will eventually go on to forget about this, I guess it’s such a big thing to have happened in her little world at the moment.