Health

Children

Prevention is best

Excessive stress interrupts the architecture of the developing brain. Maltreatment of children is very harmful. Children need to have a supportive adult who loves them and on which they can count to be there for them in a wholesome and positive way. All children need someone who they can trust completely and rely on.

In Germany after the war it was not particularly popular to hug children, to listen to them, hear them and truly pay attention to them. The Victorian Values of hitting children and the idea that children should not be heard were still popular. Eventually the German government had a national campaign to educate parents about how to bring up happy children. Efforts around the world have generated many studies about the best child-rearing techniques.

In order for parents to be a reliable source of nuturing they themselves will have to be emotionally and financially stable. They need to be able to spend time with their children and they need to feel safe themselves. Society needs to come together to create a supportive environment. In order for everyone to be well - the society needs to be well.

Break-down of Family in this new decade

We are getting more and more media coverage of children and teens committing acts of violence. Often with the question as to why this is happening and what could be done about it. Actually the answer is simple. Our society has not paid attention to our children in quite a long while. We need to consider creating a society that focuses on nurturing children and parents who are overly stressed. As the economy will reap the consequences of the last few years national spending policies, the stress level for everyone will go up. As the foreign policy of the past few years continues to undermine the US economic position in the world the economic fall out will be felt stronger all the time. As the lack of emphasis on Education shows its results we find that many American children cannot compete internationally.

Our national self perception is based on how the nation performed in the 50s and 60s and 90s. We might as well be realisticabout the fact that the national stress level will go up some more before it gets better. Pretending that it is not happening will only make the situation worse. Acknowledging that the facts of life are sometimes hard will take some of the pressure away from parents. Creating a society that is family friendly is urgently needed. The demographic trend is that this population is rapidly aging. Having to care for underinsured older adults, holding a job in a declining market is hard and stressful. Raising children and spending time with them in a reliable fashion in a business climate where business owners are often callous to the importance of how their demands on parents affect their stress level, the way they treat their children and therefore society.

We must come together as a society to alleviate the stress on young families and encouraging a climate of civility. Focus on being nurturing will be important if America is to stay a civilized nation. There are some well-known empirical studies that show that children suffering from maltreatment experience a higher level of health, emotional and behavioral problems.

Even if your own children are treated well at home and are thriving it still affects them. They have to go to school with the children who may not have the all important emotional support structure at home. Growing up with the knowledge that every day at school could be deadly is stressful for children from even the most nurturing of homes. We recommend to start becoming educated and aware of how the current trends affect our society.

"The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog" is Dr. Bruce Perry's finest achievement… it gives us all the opportunity to unlock the deepest mystery of our species:  why some children turn out to be heroes, and others to be predatory sociopaths.  Anyone who wants to understand childhood trauma and its heartbreaking consequences must read this book."   -- Andrew Vachss, award-winning author and attorney, founder and national advisory board member of PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children

These stories of hope amidst tragedy are not only compelling in and of themselves, but offer important lessons about the importance of social connection, love and community.   By showing how empathy develops through connected and caring early parenting and by illustrating how the brain becomes what it does most, Perry offers a new way of seeing the world, which provides a surprising-- and sometimes frightening-- perspective on current child-rearing and educational practices that has implications not just for these extreme cases, but for us all.

About the Authors

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy www.ChildTrauma.org), a Houston-based non-profit organization which promotes innovations in service, research and education in child maltreatment and childhood trauma. He has served as a consultant to the FBI and is the former Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital and former Vice-Chairman for Research in the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Perry runs an organization that assists children recover from the severe trauma of child abuseThrough the stories of children who recover-physically, mentally, and emotionally-from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language, and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse.

Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning journalist who specializes in science and health. She is the author, with Jospeh Volpicelli, M.D., Ph.D., of Recovery Options: The Complete Guide and Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids. She lives in New York City.

Over 1% of US children experience maltreatment

Nearly one Million children have been reportedly abused during 2006. We all know that not all abuse cases get reported. This means that In 2006, there were 73.7 million children under age 18 in the United States. Since the early 1960s,children have formed an ever-smaller proportion of our total national population, declining from 36 percent in 1960 to 26 percent in 1990 and remaining stable through 2000. Since 2001, children have made up 25 percent of the total population. This percentage is expected to decline slightly to 24 percent by 2030.

NCANDS was created in response to the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. It is a national data and collection analysis system - the data have been collected each year since 1993. States submit case-level data as child-specific records for each report of alleged child maltreatment for which a completed investigation or assessment by a CPS agency has been made during the reporting period.

Specific details on Infants (babies no more than one year of age) - -

91,278 infants (23.2 per 1,000 infants) experienced non-fatal maltreatment

29,881 of them were under one week old

35,455 were under one month old

68.5% of the maltreated infants aged less than one week were classed as 'neglect' maltreatment. NCANDS did not allow further elaboration on what this neglect constituted.

51.6% of victims were male, 48.4% were female

43.6% were white, 25.2% were black or African American, 19.3% were Hispanic, 1.3% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.6% were Asian

Children

Excessive stress interrupts the architecture of the developing brain. Maltreatment of children is very harmful. Children need to have a supportive adult who loves them and on which they can count to be there for them - someone who is reliable.

Child maltreatment has a negative effect on health.

The few cases of abuse or neglect we see in the news are only a small part of the problem. Many cases are not reported to police or social services. What we do know is that: 1,530 children died in the United States in 2006 from abuse and neglect.905,000 children were victims of maltreatment in 2006.

Child maltreatment has a negative effect on health. Abused children often suffer physical injuries including cuts, bruises, burns, and broken bones. In addition, maltreatment causes stress that can disrupt early brain development. Extreme stress can harm the development of the nervous and immune systems. As a result, children who are abused or neglected are at higher risk for health problems as adults. These problems include alcoholism, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, obesity, sexual promiscuity, smoking, suicide, and certain chronic diseases.

The ability to cope with novel and/or potentially threatening situations, such as an unfamiliar environment or physical danger, is essential to survival. This capacity is built into specific brain circuits whose development is influenced by multiple experiences beginning early in life. Environmental stimuli that activate these circuits are often referred to as stressors, and stress reactions are the body’s chemical and neural responses that promote adaptation.

Stressful events can be harmful, tolerable, or beneficial, depending on how much of a bodily stress response they provoke and how long the response lasts. These, in turn, depend on whether the stressful experience is controllable, how often and for how long the body’s stress system has been activated in the past, and whether the affected child has safe and dependable relationships to turn to for support. Thus, the extent to which stressful events have lasting adverse effects is determined more by the individual’s response to the stress, based in part on past experiences and the availability of a supportive adult, than by the nature of the stressor itself.

This matters because a child’s ability to cope with stress in the early years has consequences for physical and mental health throughout life. Furthermore, categorizing the nature and severity of early stressful experiences helps us make better judgments about the need for interventions that reduce the risk for later negative impacts.

Toxic Stress refers to strong, frequent or prolonged activation of the body’s stress management system. Stressful events that are chronic, uncontrollable, and/or experienced without the child having access to support from caring adults tend to provoke these types of toxic stress responses. Studies indicate that such stress responses can have an adverse impact on brain architecture. In the extreme, such as in cases of severe, chronic abuse, toxic stress may result in the development of a smaller brain. Less extreme exposure to toxic stress can change the stress system so that it responds at lower thresholds to events that might not be stressful to others, thereby increasing the risk of stress-related physical and mental illness.

Tolerable Stress refers to stress responses that could affect brain architecture but generally occur for briefer periods that allow time for the brain to recover and thereby reverse potentially harmful effects. In addition to their relative brevity, one of the critical ingredients that make stressful events tolerable rather than toxic is the presence of supportive adults who create safe environments that help children learn to cope with and recover from major adverse experiences, such as the death or serious illness of a loved one, a frightening accident, or parental separation or divorce. In some circumstances, tolerable stress can even have positive effects.

Nevertheless, it also can become toxic stress in the absence of supportive relationships. Positive Stress refers to moderate, short-lived stress responses, such as brief increases in heart rate or mild changes in the body’s stress hormone levels. This kind of stress is a normal part of life, and learning to adjust to it is an essential feature of healthy development. Adverse events that provoke positive stress responses tend to be those that a child can learn to control and manage well with the support of caring adults, and which occur against the backdrop of generally safe, warm, and positive relationships. The challenge of meeting new people, dealing with frustration, entering a new child care setting, getting an immunization, and overcoming a fear of animals all can be positive stressors if a child has the support needed to develop a sense of mastery. This is an important part of the normal developmental process.

Stress responses include activation of a variety of hormone and neurochemical systems throughout the body. Two hormonal systems have received extensive attention in this regard:

1) the sympathetic-adrenomedullary (SAM) system, which produces adrenaline in the central part
of the adrenal gland.

2) the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system, which produces cortisol in the outer shell of the adrenal gland. Both chemicals are produced under normal circumstances and help prepare the body for coping with stressors.

Sources: www.developingchild.net and Center of Disease Control