Not all children experience traumatic stress after experiencing trauma. Family members can react differently to the same event.

Assure them they are safe and identify how you are keeping them safe at home and school.

They are not responsible for what happened.

Be patient. There is no time table for healing, continue to be supportive and reassuring. Even with the protective factors of family support and reassurance some children need additional tools to overcome trauma.

Counseling can provide a number of tools and resources that will help build resiliency and healthy coping mechanisms to deal with the negative effects of trauma. Treatment will be based on the nature, timing and amount of exposure of trauma as well as age and emotional development of your child. I will look closely at the level of impact the trauma has had on them individually.

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral therapy will focus on countering the unhelpful thoughts and behaviors that have developed to cope with the trauma. Counseling will provide psychoeducation about trauma, PTSD and managing difficult behaviors for parents, relaxation, emotional expression and regulation skills, tools to cope with difficult thoughts and fears, and reinforcement narrative that they are and can keep themselves safe.

EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (in child friendly terms, Eyes Moving to Digest and Recover ~ by Ana Gomez https://www.anagomez.org/what-emdr-kids/ ) in combination with play and sand tray therapy gives children the physical ability to manage the big, heavy, bad, intrusive mixed-up thoughts and make them smaller, more understandable and easier to digest in their own unique way. This is a purposeful and way to heal as we do when we enter into REM sleep.

feelings of guilt or shame

development of new fears

separation anxiety

change in sleep patterns

sadness or depression

loss of interest in normal activities

reduced concentration - decline in school work

anger and irritability

somatic/physical complaints (headaches, tummy aches)