Dr. Peter Levine on helping children who experience trauma

we've done a lot of work in areas our organization the somatic experiencing trauma Institute in areas where they have been you know tremendous natural disasters earthquakes floods tsunamis hurricanes and we've you know worked with the children there and so many cases where they had these have them relive these and talk about these things that they were clearly retraumatization onit eyes so we had developed different kinds of games where they could master these feelings of helplessness now that's what I wanted to ask you about how would parents be towards a child that they know better I've had some trauma yeah the the the main thing is the shock reaction it's a biological reaction it's meant to pass it's meant you go into and you're meant to come out of it it prevents you from feeling pain yeah and and again if there's injury that can be very important so when kids have a fall often parents of course they the the first thing we tell parents is take that moment for yourself you know when you're in the airplane they always tell you in the event unlikely event of a depressurization these things are going to pop out and if there's a child or somebody infirm next to you take the mask first to yourself then help them with the mask and this we give similar advice to parents take the moment because parents when they see the child spill off the bicycle or get terrified you know in the hospital they have fear and often this fear comes that anger and their the child is then yelled at why didn't you you know do what we told you to do you would not supposed to be riding your bicycle here comes from fear from the parents fear so we take a moment and give the parents some guided exercises so they can learn to feel the fear in their body and learn this is a key in letting it move through and every intense sensation will do that it will accumulate in the body for some moments but then if we learn to attend to it you know it's a kind of a mind a body mindfulness a body Ness that it will move through and then the parents are able to be there in the present and then they come up to the child depending on the age if it's a young child to take the child in their arms to hold it if it's an a little bit older child to sit by their side to put the hand berry off and say on their upper back to give them support and just to say sweetheart it's okay you just had a fall you're gonna be okay and I'm just going to be here with you and you see we have so we wrote a book called trauma proofing your kids a parent's guide for instilling confidence Julian resilience just to teach parents these kinds of tools and we've gotten so much feedback from parents who say you know the kid was just devastated they stat with them for a few moments and then they that's that shaking trembling sometimes crying deep spontaneous breath and then the kids would just run off and get back to play now of course if there's a possibility of any injury especially concussion you have to monitor the child very carefully and bring the child to you know to do a doctor or to an emergency room but but even so to help the child come out of shock before that because if they if they're frightened and then they come into a frightening environment that you know multiply is the the fear so anyhow in these in these different situations we design different games that children play which again help them have new feelings we in China and Thailand we've a number of the children adults as well developed hysterical paralysis afterwards they and we saw this one little boy I think this was in the after the China earthquake he was like about three three and a half and he'd been paralyzed and so one of one of my students a beautiful young man brazilian student practitioner from that from brazil hello Jean Alice chambre birthday he just sat with the child played a little game with the child's nose because the child could you know still move his head and then started just touching his feet and finding out where the stuck movements were where the frozen movements were and in 20 minutes the child was running around the room and you could see the the expression on that all the doctors that were there was like what but again you know trauma is a fact of life it does not have to be a life sentence and there are so many things that we can do in prevention and healing and also healing in groups I think that's a another really important aspect you

Channel: PsychAlive

Views: 28,351

Keywords: Dr. Peter Levine, children who experience trauma, trauma, childhood trauma, Psychological Trauma (Disease Cause)

Id: cmsyNxag6fc

Length: 5min 43sec (343 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 19 2014