Videos from the Bend Resilience Project

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All right, welcome. We're here today to do a short video giving you some information. We're coming here from the Bend Resilience Project. My name is Dr. Ashley Niemeyer and my name is Dr. Sara Downing. Both Sara and I have extensive experience working with anxiety and trauma in children and teens. We've both been working with this dating back to graduate school through different placements, different jobs, and here we are at Bend working with the Bend Resilience Project.

What we wanted to talk about today was a little bit just information for you guys about what you might be seeing in your kids, what to watch for in your kids, and some ways to hold a little bit of hope as we move forward. You know, Ashley, I think the biggest question that we keep getting is, what do I need to be looking out for in my child?

What kind of symptoms should I be concerned about? What's normal after this event? So I think it might be really helpful to talk about that. That's a great question. That's what we're both hearing. One of the things that we need to talk about first is that it's, as we're recording, it's just been about over two weeks. And right now in this timeframe, a lot of children are experiencing a lot of different things and that is still considered a normal reaction to a traumatic event.

Yeah. I mean, I think that I'm hearing a wide variety of symptoms from kids are seemingly completely fine to kids are really having a tough time. And I think the biggest takeaway that I would like to emphasize is pretty much all of it's normal two weeks out.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the things that's important to know is that we don't actually even start diagnosing PTSD until a month after the event. And the reason for that is that a lot of these things that we're seeing in our office or that we're hearing about, those are still considered normal reactions. There is a range and some of the children might be classified as having what's called acute stress disorder at this time.

So what do you what would you say some of those symptoms are that people might be seeing right now?

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest one that I'm keeping an eye on is avoidance. So when it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder, what we tend to see in kids is avoiding either thinking about the event, talking about the event, having any kinds of feelings about the event, and also avoiding any physical reminders. And that really seems to be what fuels all the other symptoms long term.

And so that's what I'm keeping an eye on. What are you seeing? What are you concerned about at this point? Yeah, before I even say that, I totally want to agree. I'm telling people the same thing that avoidance is really a good measurement of how your kid is doing. It does make sense that kids would be avoiding right now, especially avoiding anything that's a trigger that reminds them of the event.

We don't want to push kids there. Yeah, anything related to the school is a big one.

Absolutely. And we don't need to push right now. However, if we're seeing children avoiding other things that are not reminding them of the event, if we're seeing children's world start to get smaller, they're avoiding life, avoiding life, they want to stay at home, they're not avoiding that they are not participating in the things that they used to enjoy doing. To me, that's a measurement of we maybe need to check in on that.

So I agree with you, avoidance is the thing to watch for. The other things that you might be seeing in your kids are things like intrusive thoughts or memories flashing into their head, nightmares. It can either be about the trauma or about anything that's really normal in young children. The other thing I've been hearing is the kind of play, [unclear] is one to watch. And the other big one I'm hearing is a lot of emotion dysregulation, which fits with trauma, things that your kid would normally not do a lot of anger, a lot of meltdowns because processing something like this is really hard.

Yeah, absolutely. Or things that used to be a concern and maybe have improved related to emotion regulation, all of a sudden coming back. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. With younger children, we do see some regression. A lot of kids are sleeping in their parents' beds right now. And that is okay. This is not the time to fight that battle.

Yeah. But we'll see regression and things like toileting, sleeping and all of those type of things in younger kiddos.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, all of those are to be expected for the next few weeks. And what we hope and expect is for most kids, things just start to get better and better over time.

Yeah. So I guess that would be the other thing. One is watch for avoidance. The other is watch for improvement. Is your child starting slowly to get back to a little bit of regulation, a little bit of normalcy, or are things starting to get worse?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the biggest question that I'm getting is, do we put our child in therapy

right now? Yeah. Yeah, it's same. I think a lot of good parents think, well, my child experienced something traumatic, they're going to need therapy. And here we are two trauma therapists, we're gonna say it's actually the opposite. Not every child is going to need therapy. And not every child is going to need the same level of therapy. Some children might need a touch point, some children might need a short term intervention, some may need the full course of therapy, and some need nothing at all, just need some time to recover and process.

Yeah, exactly. And so actually, the recommendation is to take a little bit of a wait and see approach. I mean, obviously, if your child follow, I always say, follow your parental intuition if your child is really not doing well, if they're not able to sleep, if they're not able to function, if they're extremely fearful, if they're having really dark thoughts, seek support and get [unclear]. That's not the time to wait.

Right. But yes, give your child some time, watch, support them, focus on safety, focus on consistency, and focus on creating a sense of calm. So Ashley, another thing that I think would be really good to talk about is some of the work that you've done with resilience and hope.

Yeah. Yeah. Sara's bringing that up because my dissertation research in graduate school forever ago was on resilience, which is overcoming some kind of adversity, and moving forward. And so it's one of the messages I really want to get out right now, is that even after a really traumatic event, there's still hope. And I've had a couple of parents question me and say, how do we have hope at a time like this?

Hope doesn't mean an overarching positive view. It means finding a meaning that you can hold on to and that you can move forward with. And that might mean focusing on all the positive outpouring in our community. It might mean focusing on the closeness that you're feeling with your children right now. It might mean just that the sun comes out and you look at nature and that gives you a little bit of hope.

But finding a meaning that you can hold on to really promotes resilience and recovery.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I think that you and I do a really good job holding hope even as trauma therapists. We've been working for years on kids who've experienced anything and everything. And I know every single person that's walked into my door, I'm like, okay, we've got hope. We've got this. But how? How do we manage that in our minds? Yeah, Sara and I were discussing this before we videoed.

It is kind of an ironic fact that I think that most therapists that choose to really focus on working on trauma, especially extreme trauma or pediatric trauma, you have to have hope. And we all do. And I think the reason is because we've heard some really sad and difficult stories. But we've also seen children recover. And children recover quicker and easier than adults.

Yeah. They're so resilient. Just seeing that and knowing that a child can experience such an awful wound and such an awful experience and then go on to recover.

Right, right. My favorite thing to talk to families about is a trauma is almost like you're falling down and you're scraping your knee. And you get rocks and dirt and you know, all the germs in it and going through it as you kind of start to clean that wound out, and then finally put the bandaid on in it. You know, sometimes there's a scar, it hurts for a little bit, but then you can move on without pain.

Yep. Therapy can be painful when you go through and clean out the wound, it can be hard. But that is how we move forward. And nothing will change what happened. Nothing will take away, nothing will make what happened okay. But children can largely take the meaning that walk away with, okay, I still have hope. And I'm excited for my future. And I can move forward. Yeah, I can have experienced this really terrible thing and still move forward in my life.

Yeah.