Posted on 07/06/2009 5:20:33 PM PDT by Albion Wilde
The prevailing view among parents, the general public and mental health professionals that infants as young as six months old "do not remember" traumatic events that happen to them or to their loved ones has recently been disproved, a professor of infant mental health said at a Jerusalem conference on Sunday....
[snip] ... Most professionals and parents have pooh-poohed this idea because infants and young toddlers do not have the verbal ability to describe the trauma, but it nevertheless is stored in their brains, she asserted....
[snip]... People are wrong to assume that when traumatized infants grow up and don't speak about it, they weren't influenced by it. Therapists often start their relationship with traumatized parents and children with [the] mistaken idea that if the child did not discuss it, they should not bring it up, the California psychiatrist said.
[snip]... Among the negative behaviors caused by traumatic events in children are temper tantrums, developmental delays, regression, unsociability and violence. However, the good news is.......
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
I think that is one of the tenets of Dianetics/Scientology. But they say the trauma of being born is the big one you have to pay them to fix for ya.
This will give the anti-circumcision crowd some ammo.
Ping — I noticed that you folks had posted a thread with a “child abuse” or similar keyword. If this article is useful to your activism on behalf of child safety, please ping it out to others.
Reason enough for many to reject the idea; however, this research appears more bona fide. I have also read studies showing that infants experience much greater pain than doctors typically give enough analgesics for, including circumcision and other surgical procedures performed on neonates.
I believe our brain is hard-wired to record everything; we will need to account for every moment when we stand before judgment. Events of this type can also be healed in the proper setting, if the memories are not suppressed.
When our son was 2 ½ he had a serious accident. Last week the accident came up in a conversation and he still remembers it, twenty years later.
But are they remembered as they happened or in the distorted view of an infant?
Traumatic memory is not just stored in the brain, i.e., limbic system, but traumatic energy mobilized during threat - fight, flight, freeze - is also commonly stuck in connective tissue throughout the entire body.
This is why psychology alone is never enough to overcome most traumatic events.
I'd wager that successfully overcoming trauma is 70% physiological renegotiation and 30% psychological retooling.
Feeling safe again in your body after a major trauma involves re-orientating yourself with your own organs, particularly your skin. Trauma causes one's physical boundaries to become blurred and the sufferer forgets or cannot distinguish where their own skin begins and ends.
Best book on all this, IMO, is The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild.
Bunk. I don’t remember a single traumatic event from my infancy.
I was born in a birthing home - within 24 hours I was taken home. When I was 2 days old I was a ‘blue baby’. Dad was not home so mom called a relative and he came and rushed me to the hospital about 1/2 hour away. Of course all this information has been told to me by my mom and dad. I still do remember the sensation of not being able to breathe. Nothing else, except the relief experienced as well - evidently when they put me in an incubator.
My first thought as well.
That’s the first time I ever heard of connective tissue having memory.
Thank you for the ping..
A 6 month old cannot verbalise but what it has seen cannot be erased.
The info is stored i believe and effects the childs life and mental growth.
This is true..I remember the Titanic sinking...even though I was born in 1962.
I think it would be more like post-traumatic stress disorder -- a fear response in the body when certain triggers are present. For example, if a toddler had seen a shooting, loud noises could raise his or her anxiety, adrenaline, and cortisol levels, and he or she might have flashes of memory, but mainly a feeling of fear and panic, sweating, heavy breathing, etc, plus fear of situations in which the triggers might be present... such as a child rape victim having big issues with intimacy... IMO
I hope he has worked through it and recovered. Memory can be a blessing or a curse. It sounds like he feels safe with you -- good job, Mom.
Our son was two and a half months old when my mother (his grandmother) died. He remembers the color of the casket and some of the decor of the funeral home as well as the dark sunglasses his nanny wore as she held him in her arms during the wake. We found this out only a few years ago, completely to our surprise. He is in his late twenties now.
That's the best story they can come up with??
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