A child who has been removed from her parents' custody because of alleged maltreatment may bring with her something more than a change of clothing and perhaps a favorite toy. But what that something is can differ widely. We would be mistaken to assume that the recollection--conscious or unconscious--of every child living in foster care includes thoughts or images of severe distress resulting from past maltreatment. And this is so not because of experience too painful to bear but rather because the formation of such thoughts may not have entered the child's conceptual apparatus to begin with. Or, perhaps did at one point but then later changed. There are several possible explanations for this:
1) The child may not have ever assigned distressful meaning to the maltreatment; 2) Some level of distressful meaning may have been assigned but not an extreme version; 3) Initial thoughts of distress may have been set aside as a result of a change in the child's understanding and view of what occurred; 4) The child may have believed that the parents' motivation was positive, contrary to the actual behavior, and that dominated her understanding of what occurred; 5) The child may have assumed a philosophical understanding of the parents' behavior and then placed it in a benign context.
The child may have developed seriously distressful thoughts about past maltreatment but here too it will be important to understand what exactly those thoughts are. Our initial hunch may be surprisingly inaccurate, or perhaps partly so.
Variables such as age, temperament, verbal ability, experience using complex ideas, the extent to which the maltreatment differed from the child's usual experience and other aspects of the parent-child relationship will factor into the formation and nature of distressful thought patterns.
So, no specific thought pattern can be assumed to exist. The fact that one is a foster child does not include the automatic premise that severe distress exists. And it therefore can not imply that even more than distress, that trauma exists. Yet, distress may be present but still not trauma. Since "trauma might be defined by the objective attributes of the stressor, by the subjective response of the victim, or by both," as psychologist Richard J. McNally has written, an established system-wide approach that uniformly matches the foster child with so-called trauma therapy is more than mistaken and likely hurtful to the child. It also serves as a prime example of what drives and motivates child welfare policy and procedure. The concept trauma, which has become quite a buzzword in child welfare circles, has been providing regurgitated promises of healing offered up in big-dollar contracts, just as its many ancestors have done for decades now.
Just as it has become common to hear cheerful talk of foster children's possible coming adoption, without any sensitive regard to the real troubling meaning of this for the child and her parents, so too has child welfare discussion about trauma come to embody similar cognitively dissonant chatter. As if describing appetizing items on a dinner menu, a child welfare agency administrator might rattle off the various services provided ending with and then we do the trauma.
This dilettante approach presents the possibility of several additional problems for the child. Such indiscriminate treatment can in fact lead to distress for the child who has been designated "traumatized," while in reality her set of circumstances are not so. Misplaced focus on past events can also lead to overlooking the very real distress of being separated from one's parents and of living with strangers.
And, as this or any other kind of typical treatment proceeds, most often the child's normal development--the kinds of things that are essential for building a satisfying life, now and in the future--are just not on the agenda.
1) The child may not have ever assigned distressful meaning to the maltreatment; 2) Some level of distressful meaning may have been assigned but not an extreme version; 3) Initial thoughts of distress may have been set aside as a result of a change in the child's understanding and view of what occurred; 4) The child may have believed that the parents' motivation was positive, contrary to the actual behavior, and that dominated her understanding of what occurred; 5) The child may have assumed a philosophical understanding of the parents' behavior and then placed it in a benign context.
The child may have developed seriously distressful thoughts about past maltreatment but here too it will be important to understand what exactly those thoughts are. Our initial hunch may be surprisingly inaccurate, or perhaps partly so.
Variables such as age, temperament, verbal ability, experience using complex ideas, the extent to which the maltreatment differed from the child's usual experience and other aspects of the parent-child relationship will factor into the formation and nature of distressful thought patterns.
So, no specific thought pattern can be assumed to exist. The fact that one is a foster child does not include the automatic premise that severe distress exists. And it therefore can not imply that even more than distress, that trauma exists. Yet, distress may be present but still not trauma. Since "trauma might be defined by the objective attributes of the stressor, by the subjective response of the victim, or by both," as psychologist Richard J. McNally has written, an established system-wide approach that uniformly matches the foster child with so-called trauma therapy is more than mistaken and likely hurtful to the child. It also serves as a prime example of what drives and motivates child welfare policy and procedure. The concept trauma, which has become quite a buzzword in child welfare circles, has been providing regurgitated promises of healing offered up in big-dollar contracts, just as its many ancestors have done for decades now.
Just as it has become common to hear cheerful talk of foster children's possible coming adoption, without any sensitive regard to the real troubling meaning of this for the child and her parents, so too has child welfare discussion about trauma come to embody similar cognitively dissonant chatter. As if describing appetizing items on a dinner menu, a child welfare agency administrator might rattle off the various services provided ending with and then we do the trauma.
This dilettante approach presents the possibility of several additional problems for the child. Such indiscriminate treatment can in fact lead to distress for the child who has been designated "traumatized," while in reality her set of circumstances are not so. Misplaced focus on past events can also lead to overlooking the very real distress of being separated from one's parents and of living with strangers.
And, as this or any other kind of typical treatment proceeds, most often the child's normal development--the kinds of things that are essential for building a satisfying life, now and in the future--are just not on the agenda.