It takes a village to raise a child, and only one to traumatise it

Adverse childhood experiences (or ACEs) you may or may not have heard of. These are what occur in so many children’s lives—most—that leave a lasting impact and contribute so much in terms of leaving the adult prone to a life of addiction, substance misuse (including food), trauma, mental health issues, etc. The list goes on. Chances are if you’re reading this right now, you have some ACEs on board from decades ago, it is that common.

I have more than one if I consider the one I can think of in a flash. It had nothing to do with my parents, and simply occurred at a public swimming pool through being a less than confident swimmer.

The reason for this article is simple. That is, to highlight that while it does take a village to raise a child—so many people are involved in that child’s development—it also shows us how vulnerable a child is to exploitation—and how much a challenge that is to the child’s diligent parents (assuming they’re unconditionally loving toward the child) in their task to raise their child, against the backdrop of background risk of their child sustaining ACEs.

The aim of this article is to 1) raise awareness, 2) spread empathy, and 3) motivate action.

I want to make you aware that, of the world’s population, the persons who are most impacted by violence are those who have least influence over it: children. And in terms of violence, I want to suggest that even ridicule is violence to children—to their spirit. Mocking, ridicule, neglect, abandonment, chiding, even rebuking in many insensitive ways; all these are examples of violence that do harm to children.

Do you realise how hard it is to raise a child in this village context—where many adults, older children, peers, and even younger children potentially do damage to them?

It takes a village to raise a child, yet just one to destroy their spirit, through an unspeakable trauma, or even an unrequited trauma in the one doing violence.

We must all begin to see and realise and accept the childhood trauma that is in each of us; that which, left unchecked and unhealed, continues as violence, because trauma begets trauma. We must therefore become owners of our own trauma, and stewards of our own healing, or we will simply propagate more child abuse.

We must motivate action—both from within ourselves and in others.

We must do all we can to not only promote healing, but to see every harm done against the child (done in a village context, meaning all harms done to them globally through their lived experience) is reconciled, as far as that depends on us. Perhaps we can’t bring about a complete healing, but at least we can debrief with children the harms that occur and teach them a courageously honest way of talking about it, from as early an age as possible, with the help of appropriate professionals.

It is so important that children learn to be honest—that they’re allowed to be honest, and that it is best to be honest—about the things that occur that should not have occurred.

On far too many occasions, however, the child will need to recount something that happened that incriminates one, which also involves the broader community feeling recrimination. If we as a community—whether that be a family or a whole society—cannot hear the complaint, we do that one young person (who may be a good deal older by now) a huge disservice and will carry the trauma with them, carrying the additional threat of that trauma leaking onto others.

As a society we must become more truth-telling and more tolerant of hearing traumas brought to us that they may be healed, without feeling threatened that such things are being done to destroy us.

If we damage the child, we must be prepared to triage the child.

Photo by  Janko Ferlič on Unsplash