“You cannot not communicate”—even in silence, our actions continuously transmit information about our needs, feelings, and responses to the world around us” 

– Paul Watzlawick 

This quote articulates an important understanding of how we show the world our unique reaction to experience.  

Children who have experienced abuse and violence demonstrate these reactions and behaviours in ways that are so often misunderstood.  

They often show us rage, anger, frustration and can also express it in sadness, shame and withdrawal. They communicate the internalisation of the pain that they have endured, through activating the threat systems of those that support them.  

They show us that the world is not a safe place for them. 

Their behaviour is often challenging and frightening. 

They find it difficult to bring empathy to relationships and to people trying to understand their trauma. The descriptions of them that become embedded, include they are ungrateful, argumentative, controlling, manipulative and don’t listen.  

These stories become the identities held by children. 

Experiences of themselves and interpretations of relationships become narratives filled with fear rejection isolation and shame. They begin to believe that people are untrustworthy, relationships are not reliable, they hurt, there is no-one to protect me and the only person I can rely upon is me. 

Those that care for them are often left feeling confused overwhelmed and unsafe. As such, systems and relationships around children can become organised around the same themes of disconnection and defence.  

Changing the behaviour becomes the focus of intervention, often through management correction and consequences. 

In our previous blog we discussed trauma transformation as an emerging paradigm guiding us to new ideas of understanding trauma in the lives of children. We can discover within this knowledge base, some important ideas about understanding and responding to behaviours in children that challenge and are difficult to understand. 

“Trauma transformation understands that children’s behaviour communicates the efforts made by their internal systems to protect them from the traumatic experiences of violation.”
Complexity, Uncertainty and Therapeutic Intent: Trauma – Transformative Care for Children and Young people. Janise Mitchell and Noel McNamara Chapter 16 Handbook of Trauma- Transformative Practice 

When children are harmed, self reliant protective responses develop as a response to threat. These physiological adaptions are how they survive experiences of fear. 

They are not consciously chosen, they are reflexive and an attempt to find safety, when their body has assessed that seeking relational support is not an option. 

Patterns of these responses can develop, and become actions and behaviours that become repetitive and relied upon.  They are rarely personally directed towards another person, despite them frequently seeming and feeling targeted. 

Protective states are energy intensive for children and delay opportunities for rest and regulation, often leading to children that display physiological challenges and somatic complaints. 

Children have difficulty comprehending the content of conversations, relying on other cues to assess safety. They can therefore appear to not attend, respect or recall details of communication. 

Children who have relied upon these protective responses, have rarely been helped to understand their behaviour as a strategy to help them survive. Thus they have little insight into why they are responding in the ways they do. 

Without professionals having an understanding of the function of these responses unhelpful stories can develop about children.  

These are the stories that children begin to tell themselves, I am stupid, I am bad, I hate myself, I have to run away.

But what is so important to understand is that, beneath these behaviours is often a scared vulnerable child seeking relief from fear and threat.

Maintaining curiosity about these behaviours, what they mean and what is being communicated is the key to understanding and responding to these vulnerable children.

Some questions that we might consider in doing this:

• How does the child respond to changes to their routines, environment, relationships? 

• What might activate any behaviours associated with the child feeling upset, angry, distressed, or shutdown?  

• What kind of behaviours does the child engage in when they are overwhelmed and distressed? Are there any patterns in these behaviours?  

• How does the child communicate with their body or language  when they feel threatened or unsafe? 

• What supports the child to calm down or change the way they feel? 

• What does the child  interact with that they find comforting or soothing? People, animals, objects, nature, sensory experiences, self-stimulation? 

• How does the child seek comfort to soothe feelings, and what might they need at those times? 

• Can the child listen or communicate when they are scared or unsafe? 

• Has the way that the child reacts to change or triggers changed over time?

When these reactions are understood and validated, children begin to feel safer. They become more open to connection and change, and gradually begin to shed the habitual patterns of self protective responses and behaviours that have defined them so consistently and powerfully in the world.

Resources that support understanding 

For professionals working with children affected by trauma, having shared language and practical tools can significantly shift how behaviour is understood and responded to.

One such resource is Words Matter, developed by the Australian Childhood Foundation. This practice resource supports professionals to reflect on the language they use and how it shapes understanding, assessment and response to children’s behaviour.

By shifting language, we can shift meaning, moving away from labels that blame or pathologise, and toward interpretations that emphasise safety, survival and support. 

View and download the Words Matter resource here.