Dr. Jayavasanth

The problem of early childhood trauma refers to disturbing experiences that take place in children during 0-6 years of age. The traumas that young children experience can be the effects of natural disaster, war or accidents or that of intentional violence like sexual abuse, domestic violence or physical abuse.

What Does this Condition Impact Childhood?

Traumatic events have a significant impact on your child's life and can break his sense of safety. The problem has been linked with a decrease in the size of the brain cortex. This is the part of the brain that controls several complex functions like thinking, consciousness, memory, attention, awareness, and language. The changes that occur as a result can affect your child's IQ as well as his or her ability to control emotions. As a consequence, he or she may harbor feelings of danger and become more afraid or it may manifest in other personality issues which are not very obvious.

How do you identify this condition?

Generally, children who suffer from traumas face problems in regulating their emotions and behaviors.

They may display signs like:

- Fear of new situations
- Being clingy to their parent(s) or somebody close
- Become easily frightened
- Display aggressive and/or impulsive behavior
- Are difficult to comfort
- Display deterioration in behavior and functioning
- Easily forget newly attained developmental skills
- Difficulty in sleeping

Depending on the age during which your child may go through a traumatic event, he or she can exhibit signs relevant to his or her age.

For instance:

Children aged 0-2 years may also display reactions like poor verbal skills, memory problems, excessive temper, experience nightmares, etc.

On the other hand, children aged 3-6 years can face difficulties in learning as well as develop poor skill and learning disabilities, face problems in social interaction, may be unable to trust people and so on.

If this condition remains unattended or unresolved for longer, it may create personality issues and can deeply impact the individual's relationships, or equations in the society, as they grow up and even after they become adults. In fact, many behavioral problems can be traced back to childhood trauma.

In case you have a concern or query you can always consult an expert & get answers to your questions!

Sleep is the most important aspect for a healthy beign, but for kids it is of utmost priority. Lack of sleep can often have a negative impact on the brain funtioning of kids along with accidents. Listed below are the major sleep disorders in children along with their causative factors:

1. Sleepwalking: It is not uncommon for children under the age of 10 to sleep walk. Despite being harmless on its own, the effects of sleep walking can be dangerous such as stepping outdoors or hurting themselves during sleep. If the child runs into objects while sleep walking, they might wake up and hence further worsen the situation.
2. Nightmares: They might be general or result from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Nightmares, if frequent, can make falling asleep a tedious task. Nightmares in children are common and they usually begin to reduce in frequency by 9 years of age.
3. Obstructive sleep apnea: Snoring might be the result of improper respiration while sleeping and while it isn’t a cause of worry, regular snoring might lead to insufficient oxygen during sleep, thus making shut eye a challenge. It might be hereditary or the result of a deviated nasal septum or blocked nose. The snoring might hamper the quality of sleep.
4. Bedwetting: This is something most children experience, but usually grow out of by the time they turn six. It doesn’t need to be a cause of concern unless the frequency doesn’t reduce over time and more than two instances of bedwetting take place in a week.
5. Insomnia in children: It can be due to a host of factors and coping with changes to their normal lifestyle is one of the biggest triggers. Mental disorders such as anxiety and stress due to a variety of reasons (like the death of a loved one) may also be the cause of distress and lead to troubled or incomplete sleep.
6. Excessive daytime sleepiness: Excess naps throughout the day, always feeling lethargic or experiencing trouble waking up in the morning may be symptomatic of EDS. It isn’t uncommon in adults either wherein despite apparent proper sleep; energy levels seem to be low throughout the day. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a doctor.

How to maintain Good Health in children?

Hello everyone. I'm Kanchan Patwardhan. I'm a Clinical Dietician and Nutritionist working in this field from last 22yrs. Today, we are going to speak about how to increase health and stamina in children. You know healthy brain begins with smart nutrition. Diet is actually very important because your body's organ and tissues need proper nutrition to work effectively. So, without good nutrition your body is proned to diseases, infection, fatigue etc. If your children's diet is not nutritionally dense then definitely they're prone to infection and diseases. So better is you give your child a good nutrition and you know how you can give it? It's very easy. There are ceratin ways in which we can give it to them, provide them good nutrition.

There are many mothers who come to me and say that my child doesn't eat fruits, my children doesn't eat this and that. So I always ask them, do you eat that fruit, do you eat papaya, apple? If you don't eat that how are you expecting your child to eat that? So first you start that because whatever children learns, they learn it from you only. Children are very fast learner, they grasp very fast, in subconscious mind also they're learning things. So if you eat in front of them they will think my mother must be eating something very good or something very delicious and even if one day they don't look at you, second day they don't look at you but on the third day they will definitely come and try what you're eating and the same thing will become a habit. So it is very easy how to teach them to take up nutritious food. First you eat and subconsciously they will also start liking good food.

How will you see if your child is having proper nutrition or not? If he is having low concentration problem, if he is having frequent cough and cold, if he is having infections, if he is having dull skin, in the teenager if he is having pimples or if he is having mood swings, having tensions, irritation. All these problems if he is having that means your child's diet is not proper. So please look at your child's diet and find out the root cause of your problems. You must give right proteins to your child because right proteins are neccessary for repairing body tissue, development of healthy brain, proper functions of hormone and any wear and tear, if it is there then protein is going to actually help you out and heal any wear and tear. So please include protein in the diet, you can obtain proteins from fish, milk, cheese, eggs, nuts, pulses etc. So proteins are equally important.

At the same time you must give them anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals through fruits and vegetables. And at the same time you must give them good quality complex carbohydrates also. For the child's growth and development calcium is equally important because if you give enough calcium the child's bones will become strong and they will become tall. So please give them good calcium such as almonds, soya, beans, dairy products, peas, brocolli etc in your child's diet. Please give right quality iron to your children that comes from green leafy vegetables, pomegranate, eggs, cysmic seeds, garden green seeds, beans, rajma, chole, chane etc. These are the very good sources of iron. With it your children should go for physical activities, they can opt for any activity, they can play cricket, they can play tennis, they can play anything but not indoors. They should play outside for proper physical and mental growth.

Thank you very much. Please contact Kanchan's online nutrition through Lybrate.