26/06/2025
Why we don’t ask what’s wrong with that child. Whether a child is silent, angry, hurting themselves or others, desperate to please, terrified to make a mistake, clingy or distant, it’s a symptom, let’s work together to make their lives easier.
I saw this tree whilst waiting to collect my daughter from school. 🌳 It made me think of how trauma affects children…
Look closely at this tree. It didn’t grow freely. A metal fence was placed around it when it was young. Maybe with good intentions, maybe not, but the tree had no choice. It kept growing, because that’s what living things do. However, it had to twist, bend, and reshape itself around something that was never meant to be part of it.
Children do the same thing.
When a child experiences trauma like neglect, abuse, loss, chaos, or even just the chronic stress of not feeling safe, their development adapts to survive.
Their personalities, behaviors, and coping mechanisms might not make sense from the outside, but inside, it’s how they grow through what they go through.
The tree is still alive. Still standing, but it carries the shape of what it had to grow around.
So do many children.
Let’s stop asking “What’s wrong with this child?”
and start asking, “What happened to them?”
More importantly, “How can I help them feel safe to grow freely again?” 💛
