Showing posts with label Indianapolis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indianapolis. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2010
It Hurts Us More Than it Hurts Them
A brief update from the Associated Press alerted us today that the Stepping Stones Childcare Center on the north side of Indianapolis has reopened. You may recall that an SUV driven by two robbery suspects crashed into the front room of the center in December, critically injuring one child and injuring three others and a staff member less seriously. Repairs are complete and all of the injured children are expected to return to the center now that it has reopened.
There is something very powerful about returning to the place where something traumatic occurred. Depending on where you are in your healing process, going to the scene of the incident can be very distressing, or it can be a sign of victory over the fear that the incident caused. The children who witnessed the accident or were hurt in it, in this case, are three years old and may not really remember the details of what happened unless someone has talked to them about it quite a bit. The residual effects of the crash for these kids, if there are any, are less likely to come in the form of being afraid of the space where it happened and more likely to come in the form of an overall anxiety about their safety.
The adults -- both the staff and the parents -- are another story. They remember what happened and some of them undoubtedly were really affected by it. Those who witnessed the accident might feel triggered by working in that space again. Hopefully, all of the staff have had a chance to be in there without the kids before today's opening.
In my experience, most parents bringing their kids back to school after something frightening has happened and been resolved are OK with it. Some may feel a little anxious, but they also are able to tell themselves that their fears aren't really rational -- the chances of another SUV crashing through the wall are very small. Those who are more anxious, however, don't usually come right out and say it. What they do say is that their child is anxious, and often the child is. The parent in these cases has talked to the child in a way that interferes with both of their natural processing of the event. A parent might say to a child, for example,
Daycare is opening back up on Monday. You know, it's been closed because of that scary accident where all those kids got hurt, remember? That was really frightening. It's going to be really frightening to go back, isn't it.
Before you accuse me of exaggerating, I must tell you that I have heard conversations similar to this many times between parents and kids. The parent will tell you that she is just acknowledging their child's fears, but in fact they are planting their own fears in their child. They are telling their child not just that they accept their feelings, but that they expect them to be scared. Children are pretty good at living up to our expectations.
Acknowledging children's feelings sounds a little different than that example. A parent who is responding rather than influencing might say,
Daycare is opening back up on Monday. It's been closed for a long time. How do you think you'll feel when you go back?Now the door is open for the child to say something if she's feeling anxious, but also allowing for the possibility -- even the probability -- that the child will be happy going back.
Anxious parents make for anxious children, and in a situation like this the adults are probably a lot more concerned than the kids. After a traumatic incident, we need to make space for kids to be impacted. We also need to remember to make space for them to be fine.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Psychological and Physical Scars After the Indianapolis Daycare Crash
An SUV with two robbery suspects lost control and crashed into a daycare center today just as a group of 3 year olds were getting ready for nap in the front room. One child is in critical condition, and three more had less serious injuries. One adult at the center was injured, as was another bystander when their car was hit by the SUV during the chase. Luckily, a lot of the daycare center's children were on a field trip when the accident occurred, or things might have been much worse.
Leaving your children at daycare each day can be hard. Often, it's the parents who have more trouble separating than the kids, especially after the first week or two. We drop off our kids wishing we could stay with them, but knowing we have picked a place for them to be cared for and nurtured and safe.
Anyone who's ever had kids in daycare knows the awful feeling of looking on the caller ID or having someone else answer the phone and realizing it's the daycare calling in the middle of the day. This means that things are not OK, and that something has gone wrong with the plan. It brings back those difficult feelings of separation all over again.
We can only imagine, then, the horror of learning that a serious incident has occurred at your child's daycare and that your child might be critically injured. It is hard enough to leave kids for the day when you know they'll be OK. Now, you don't even know that. You'd better believe that it's going to be hard for a lot of these parents to drop their kids off at the alternative daycare site tomorrow. It would hardly be surprising if a lot of them kept their children home.
And then there are the children. Even the ones who weren't injured at all have to have been very frightened by the noise and commotion. They saw their friends get hurt at a minimum. We tend to think that young children aren't affected by these things, but that isn't really true. They are affected, they just process them differently.
The good news is that little kids don't have the cognitive skills to take what happened to them and extrapolate to what might happen some other time. They don't see flying glass and become afraid of windows. They might see flying glass and become afraid of flying glass, but that's not such a bad thing.
The bad news is that because little kids don't have terrific verbal skills, they aren't able to talk through their experiences. The result is that events like this sometimes get "stuck" in a pre-verbal place in their minds, where they are affected by them but can't really think them through. This may well affect them later on, but it won't be necessarily in the form of intrusive memories or nightmares about the accident. They might not remember the accident at all, but it can leave a mark. That having been said, it doesn't have to leave that mark, and a few opportunities to "play" the accident with toys or draw it, if they are able, may be all they need to recover psychologically.
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Meet the Quarterback
- Naomi Zikmund-Fisher
- is a clinical social worker, former school Principal and a Crisis Consultant for schools and community organizations. You can learn more about her at www.SchoolCrisisConsultant.com
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