The Significance of Childhood Experiences

For years I did not really understand why I had chosen to work with children. It was something I guess I thought I had just fallen into doing by default, as opposed to making a conscious decision.

I never really gave it too much thought until, following the passing of my mother, I began to question why I did the work that I did.

Whilst having a conversation with a friend of mine who was a counsellor, it occurred to me that what I had been observing in children for many years was something that had very likely happened to me also.

We had been talking about children who had been exposed to trauma and as a consequence were unable to recall parts, or sometimes large portions of their childhood. ?

Whilst doing so it dawned on me that there were things I could not recall from my childhood. I discovered this because my younger brother could remember things or events that I should have been able to remember, but didn’t.

I suddenly realised that on a subconscious level, I had something in common with many of the children I had worked with and following further exploration discovered the reason why.

The things is, I could have lived my entire life not realising that I had lost, or blocked out an important part of my childhood, due to experiencing trauma too much for me, as a young child to cope with.

My trauma involved the loss of my father at an early age. I don’t know at what age my parents separated but what I do recognise, in hindsight, is that my first attachment was to my father.

When he left, in order to survive the distress, I must have blocked it out of my conscious memory. Apparently, I and my younger brother had contact with him for a period of time after he left our home, but I had no memory of it.

My brother did, and he was a few years younger than me and so I should have been able to remember it. The fact that I didn’t is how it came to my attention that I had blocked it out.

Blocking out the pain at that time was useful for me because it allowed me to carry on with my life, but it incurred a huge cost.

I grew up with a distant sense that something was missing – something I could not quite put my finger on. I grew up knowing I was different in some way from my brothers, but just was not clear exactly how or why. I grew up searching for something outside of me to make me feel whole.

The loss of my father affected all of my relationships – it meant that I didn’t really feel loved, even though my mother was very kind and loving.

Now why am I sharing this, very personal, information with you?

Well..it’s because being loved, feeling wanted and special, are I believe, the most significant and deepest needs of human beings.

For any child to be denied such needs at a time when you are most vulnerable – in your formative years – is tantamount to inflicting a wound that burrows deep into the core of your being.

It is an emotional wound that affects the way you feel and think about yourself and others and you can carry it, like a lead weight for the rest of your life.

Some may ask how something that happened in early childhood still has an impact on you as an adult.

There is for some a perception, or belief, that people change because they are older, but I would submit that unless you really work on yourself in a consistent way, or receive professional help the basic you from childhood remains largely unaltered.

Children are unable to articulate the depth of what they experience when something deeply distressing happens to them and of course if their subconscious mind has blocked it out they don’t even know that they have done so.

But what was highly necessary for them to do at that time in their early life, in order to survive, is no longer necessary years later as an adult. Unfortunately, because the memory of it has been blocked out they don’t know that it now needs to be retrieved from the archives of their mind and made sense of as a critical part of their childhood and who they are.

As child care professionals or anyone concerned with the wellbeing of children, we have a vital role to play in helping children make sense of their lives and find meaning for themselves out of their experiences.

It took me many years to figure out and make sense out of what had happened to me. I wonder how many children we work with, and have worked with, who will grow up struggling in the dark trying to piece together the puzzle of their life due to the experience of early life trauma?

I also wonder how many of you reading this article, work with children because of your own childhood experience, that remains hidden from you even now, many years after being exposed to childhood trauma? ??

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