Trauma - a child's perspective

For example, a 36 month
old who saw her father stab her mother
with a knife re-enacted the event with
a doll during treatment. When asked
to describe what was happening, she
said: “I was bad, and he got mad.” She
believed that her misbehavior had triggered
the attack on her mother, and
thus, she carried a sense of responsibility
and guilt for her mother’s injuries
and her father’s imprisonment. This example
illustrates young children’s remarkable
capacity to assume that they
are at the center of events in the lives of
the adults that are closest to them and
that their thoughts, feelings, and actions
can cause events to occur.

Lieberman, A. F., & Knorr, K. (2007). The impact of trauma: A developmental framework for infancy and early childhood. Psychiatric Annals, 37(6), 416-422.  Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/docview/217056236/fulltextPDF?accountid=14872