Physical Development

Back to: Addressing the Impact of Trauma – Bringing Trauma Informed Care to Schools – Online Training

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

In our first section, we’ll be talking about physical development in children. We’ll start by talking about what you’ll see in your typical elementary and middle school kid. While children all grow at a steady pace, they’ll differ in when they reach certain milestones. You’ll learn about physical changes in coordination, neurological development as well as pre-pubertal signs, especially in girls. At the end, we’ll give a vignette of how a non-traumatized kid handles a setback.

Then, we’ll move on to the effects of trauma on physical development, including changes in growth, as well as changes in the brain as a result of trauma.  We will follow these introductory sections with suggestions to help promote physical development with traumatized children -beginning with the use of physicality to address the effects of trauma, then thinking, relationships, and lastly, feelings.  You’ll come to understand that trauma effects all aspects of development—those that we can see on the body and those that are buried deep in the mind and brain.