Violence And Trauma Affects Children's Brain Development

1. There are ten ACES that someone could experience. The first five ACES are personal and they are physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. The last five ACES is if a child has a family member who is diagnosed with a mental illness or is suicidal, addicted to alcohol or another substance, a victim of domestic violence, in prison, or losing a parent through divorce, death, or abandonment.
2. Young children are more vulnerable to the impact of trauma than older children. This is because the younger you are, the more sponge like your brain is. This is the reason why three year old children can learn things like language or walking. This sponge like brain of a young child that can quickly acquire language is the same sponge like brain that makes young children more vulnerable.
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Violence and trauma affect children’s brain development can be because of repeated exposure to violence. Our brain develops from the bottom (brainstem) to the top (cortical), then inside and out. The top part of our brain can easily change but if the child is having developmental experiences of threat and exposure to domestic violence, the lower parts of the brain will be impacted. The lower parts will be a lot harder to change as the child gets older. Also, if the child’s brain is exposed to a state of fear where domestic violence is going on, the systems in the child’s brain that are involved in thinking and the top part of the brain will shut