In China and Myanmar, the innate impulse to communicate through art, play, and imagination is emerging as children begin the long process of recovery. But what about those who don’t want to remember what happened or discuss the terror they have experienced? Some children are so traumatized they may never learn to be children again.

In When Trauma Happens, Children Draw Part I and Part II, I discussed some of what we know about why creativity can be reparative after traumatic events. In brief, when language is not possible, sensory activities such as drawing, painting, constructing, and playing express emotions and memories when words cannot.

During the last several weeks I have been working with three service agencies in China who are attempting to address the psychological needs of child survivors of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Naturally, relief workers are eager to learn what interventions would be helpful reducing stress reactions and how to use art and play therapy to prevent posttraumatic stress in the future. Living with children in tent cities and makeshift trauma units, professionals and volunteers are dedicated to helping children do what children do—draw, play, and pretend. They are bringing, at the very least, brief respites of normalcy during what are undeniably abnormal and extreme conditions.

In regard to the tragedy in Mynamar, CNN recently aired a compelling story on a 7-year-old child survivor who pretends the cyclone that took the lives of her parents and destroyed her home never happened. Members of World Vision International discovered her wandering through a demolished village a month after the cyclone. Essentially they found a child who might never be child again, a child who cannot play, laugh, or create.

Relief workers in China initially contacted me because they encountered child survivors who did not want to talk about their feelings and experiences in the first several weeks, post-earthquake. As I reported in Part I, a specific area of the brain actually may prevent language when coping with overwhelming circumstances; culture and beliefs may also inhibit some traumatized individuals from talking about “what happened.” However, in my experience in providing intervention to survivors of domestic violence, witnesses to homicide, and survivors of natural and man-made disasters, it is vital that children have the opportunity to talk about their experiences of loss, confusion, and terror. For those who have been most directly exposed to trauma and may have experienced previous traumatic events, this is sometimes not possible for months or even years.

What do we do when a traumatized child refuses to remember? Evidence-based research tells us that the first step in trauma recovery is to establish safety for survivors. Because of the way mind and body respond to traumatic experiences, particularly disasters involving loss, injury, and uncertainty, this is often a formidable task. I believe one of the ways we can help children find an internal sense of safety is through their senses. This means opportunities to draw, play, pretend, and even learn to laugh again. It also means creating child-friendly places—even in a tent city or camp-- where children can engage in activities that make this possible.

Trauma has always existed, but media coverage of the plight of child soldiers in Uganda, children who lost homes in Hurricane Katrina, and children who saw their families killed or violated in Darfur now brings the profound effects on the youngest survivors into constant focus. We still wait to learn more about the outcome for children in Myanmar where communication with relief workers has been more difficult. While clean water, food, shelter, and reunification with community are basic to the recovery process, let’s not forget that all children have the human right to be children in every sense of the definition. Art matters and is an essential part of relief for traumatized children, to rebuild their lives while restoring their childhood.

©2008 Cathy Malchiodi

www.cathymalchiodi.com