School Trauma - Naomi Fisher
Dr Naomi Fisher
When I talk to parents, they often tell me about what sounds like signs of trauma in their child. ‘They’re jumpy all the time’, they say. Or ‘They can’t sleep at night, they have such terrible nightmares’. But when I ask about traumatic events, they’ll say no. Nothing big happened in their lives.
When we hear the word ‘trauma’ we often think of big events. Car accidents, or losing a relative. House fires or natural disasters. Something obvious.
But psychological trauma is something which happens inside a person. It’s not so much about the event, and more about the way in which a person experiences an event. One event can have a very different effect on different people.
When an event makes a child feel unsafe, and they don’t feel that others are there to help them, they can develop symptoms of trauma afterwards. They can be extremely afraid, even if ‘nothing happens’. That fear can get trapped in their bodies – perhaps particularly if no one notices or helps them with it.
When I was at primary school, we had to stand in line at the end of playtime. One day, I was chatting to my friend as we waited to walk to our classroom. A prefect came up behind me. “You”. She said. “Go to the front of the line”. That’s where you had to stand if you’d been bad.
I was terrified. I stood at the front of the line, facing my class and feeling myself going red. I was seven. I had no idea what would happen next. Maybe the headmaster would come and get me. Maybe I’d get a detention. Maybe they beat children for talking in line. Maybe he’d call my parents. I had images in my head of how awful it could be.
I had to wait whilst the rest of the class was gone. Just me, and the other children who had been pulled out of the line too. They were all bigger than me. I tried not to cry.
Then the teacher said. “You can go now” and that was it. We walked back to our classroom. I was shaking for the rest of the day. I cried when I got home but I hid it, because I was ashamed of what had happened. I thought it was because I was bad and my parents would be disappointed in me.
I still remember it now. I don’t remember a single other playtime at that school (I was only there until I was eight). But I remember that one, and I can still feel the fear of the headmaster. I still remember how ashamed I felt. I didn’t talk in line again. Their intervention ‘worked’.
That’s enough. It’s enough for a child to experience something as traumatic. I was terrified, no one helped me with that, no one helped me feel safe or reassured me, and I was just expected to get on with it afterwards. Worse things happen every day. Difficult experiences are part of life.
Yes, difficult experiences are part of life – but for some children, they get stuck. They can’t make sense of what happened and they can’t move on. Then their parents are left unsure what to do.
That's what I'm talking about in my next live webinar. School trauma. School trauma can happen to anyone but this webinar is specifically about autistic/PDA children. Why does it happen, how can we avoid it and what can we do next?
This webinar is a live re-run of the School Trauma mini-course.