Developmental trauma impacts five
domains … Attachment/bonding,
Neurodevelopment, Arousal, Cognition, Relational … Developmental
trauma include the following: Multiple incidents of trauma over long periods of time … perpetrator is within
the child’s intimate circle adults: “The
Care-giving System”… occurs within
the first few years of life … derails typical development across all domains …
[I]mpact is immediate and long-term
… effects will require specialized intervention … Facts about the brain: 80%
growth by age five … growth, architecture in the first years of life mean
disproportionate effect … [V]ictims of
developmental trauma have: lessened
ability to identify, safely express, and
modulate emotional experience …
[T]hey have trouble regulating their
emotional responses or sharing them
with others … [T]hey may suffer deficits in intelligence … delayed or disrupted language development … difficulty with executive functioning (future
orientation, planning) … lack of sustained curiosity-survival…poor causeeffect thinking…memory challenges…
focus on non-verbal information (lose
content) … [T]hey are likely to receive
more negative cues from their environment, and fewer positive cues (the
former having greater impact on a dewww.vtbar.org
The Children’s Corner
cable, is nonetheless a structure-in-being.
At best, a child will need to spend some of
its development energy undoing what is in
place, at worst the child’s body will have to
develop work-arounds to compensate for
trauma-induced deficiencies.
DCF has begun to implement changes in
the way it analyzes problems and responds
to them. In particular, it has begun using a
system advocated by Bruce Perry and the
Child Trauma Academy. Although there is
a fair amount of supporting theory behind
the approach, its principal benefits are that
it is an existing, inexpensive, easily implemented, science-based system for evaluating youth, identifying their needs, and
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