Numbness and/or overreaction: The child is unable to develop a balanced emotional life due to the trauma. He/she must either react to the violence or numb out. The child may become an adult who always lives in chaos to feel alive or moves inward and becomes anxious and depressed.

Hypervigilant: Anxious, alert, ready to react or dissociate, constant watchfulness.

Outward Focus: The child is unable to focus inward on development of self.

Developmental Delays: Develops learning disabilities, symptoms which appear to be attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression all of which impede optimum development.

Distorted Reality: Sense of what is real becomes distorted. Normalcy is unknown.

Unspoken Rules and Family Secrets: In families where violence and substance abuse occur, openness and joy are suppressed. Children learn "not to tell", "not to see", and finally "not to know" the truth. If left unchallenged these ideas are carried into adulthood.

Children under the age of five who view violence against their mothers have less ability to recover from the trauma than from a direct assault on themselves. The single best predictor of a good outcome for the very young child is a good outcome for their mother.

Three primary post traumatic stress characteristics of young children:

1. Play is compulsive, repetitive, reenacting of violence.

2. Social withdrawal with restricted range of affect, loss of developmental skills already acquired, and a decrease of play or constricted play.

3. Night terrors outside the norm, sleep problems, wakefulness.

4. Nightmares, flashbacks, fear of exposure to the event, attention problems, hypervigilance, and exaggerated startle response.

5. Increased aggression, increased separation anxiety, and newly developed fears

(Source:  Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Conference, 1998)

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