Trauma is a powerfully distressful and disturbing experience in many ways, however the trauma of, for example, watching a horror movie would only traumatize you for a day (or a couple…) and cannot compare to the trauma of seeing and literally living through violence as a young child.
I recently read an article, “Witnesses to war: The shattered lives of Zaatari’s children“, which raises the issue of Syrian children who have witnessed violence within their country and carries with them trauma. These children have witnessed “deaths, explosions, shelling, shooting”, things that children should not normally see, or worse, adapt to see. Since they have lived through so much violence, their psychological growth or development is a concern, as worried by a Syrian teacher and mother who fled to the Zaatari refugee camp: “It is difficult to deal with the children because they are difficult psychologically.” The following photo shows a young girl who drew her family home back in Syria being “shelled by a government tank”, where her windows were blanketed by her mother who feared her children would run to the balcony and get shot:
Her calm and gentle manner with that thin smile is haunting, as we wonder how the violence she’s witnessed collided with her innocence, and how the trauma will affect her future development as she grows older. A young child is still developing, still learning, still aspiring to find their likes and dislikes, still has so much ahead. The teacher also mentions that these young children might continue to be traumatized as they will be exposed to several “triggers” throughout their lives: “If they see violence, like someone hitting someone, it is a trigger,” and would bring them back terrifying memories.
Another excellent example of “triggers” is from a scene I watched from the documentary film on the Lost Boys of Sudan, “God Grew Tired Of Us” (watch the trailer here) where one of the boys mentioned that they would wake up with fear in the middle of the night when they heard a plane or a helicopter pass. Coming from their country experiencing the Sudanese civil war when they were children, the sound of a plane gives an immediate rush of adrenaline, expecting bombings to drop at any minute.
Not only are Syrian children suffering from the effects of trauma, but there are also thousands of other children experiencing the trauma of war or have experienced it. My mother as a child suffered from the violence of the Vietnam War, but luckily found peace moving to Canada and was able to recover and find joy in life again. It is hard to imagine what traumatized children must go through, as most of us here in Canada grew up with much peace, stability and support.