Everyone has their own mode of expression, but in all cases, the scene is experienced intensely. “Between 2 and 5 years old, a child is very sensitive to his environment. He does not yet benefit from the psychic protection locks put in place around the age of 6-7, at the time of the latency period (when the urges subside), when the child puts his questions about sexuality on hold in order to open up to the world around him. And the events of life can mark it very deeply, ”explains psychologist Elisabeth Doyon. If he’s crying, screaming, or freaking out, that’s fine, because he’s not burying emotions that might otherwise resurface later.
If he seems indifferent, that’s where you have to be vigilant. He may just be in a state of shock and can’t seem to express what he’s feeling. It is also possible that he does not feel authorized to do so, when the adults around him are themselves too weakened by the event or insensitive to what is happening. The child feels he cannot get help from them and keeps everything to himself.
Talk about it to play it down
The ideal would be to bounce back hot after a potentially impressive episode. But you have to give the child time to digest it. The next day, the situation is clearly explained to him and he is invited to express what he felt at the time. If the child flees the discussion, we come back to it later, in a roundabout way, with the help of books, for example. But sometimes, we have to react a long time later and, in this case, we have to reach out to him. When the symptoms of his anxiety persist, especially if the child is also experiencing a complex family situation, a move or a birth, the help of a psychologist is useful to allow the child to free himself.
A sometimes delayed reaction
The traumatic event can go almost unnoticed, so detached is the child from the situation. But some time later, the episode catches up with him. Depending on the case, he begins to be aggressive or to make disturbing drawings. He becomes fascinated by stories about ghosts, wolves… and can develop phobias. Sometimes he can no longer fall asleep or he wakes up panicked. These manifestations do not necessarily signal trauma. But we can try to take stock by tracing the course of events and trying to establish cause and effect links.
