I remember hearing the saying growing up as a kid, don’t judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes. I think that this is something that I don’t always do as an adult. That is what makes this article so powerful. Complex Trauma can happen to anyone. Children caught up in a high conflict child custody battle and bitter divorce struggle may be considered caught up in a complex traumatic event. I know that Eryk has definitely caught in the middle of the battle between his mother and I. I am not proud of my early participation in pulling him one way or another. But I realized a couple of months in what I was doing and proceeded to stop. I don’t believe that his mother ever did.

The author, Michael Allen, mentions a change in how we begin a conversation with someone who is showing signs of emotional distress. Asking what happened to you versus what is wrong with you is a powerful change in attitude. It is more open ended and less threatening. I have been researching Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) for a couple of years now and have found that a kid carries a great deal of baggage with them that affects how they function as an adult.

I have been working with and around young people since 1991 and I can tell you that I have seen all the ways that kids respond to stress and trauma in their lives. As I have continued my research in better understanding how an ACE can affect a child, the more I understand why and how they turn to risky and dangerous behavior like drug and alcohol use. When you throw in depression, anxiety and suicide, the results are scary. The school I have been working at the past 7 years has seen an uptick in suicides and suicide attempts. Not all of these are a direct result of high conflict child custody battles, but it is because of the increased complex trauma that we adults are putting on our kids without giving them the tools necessary to deal with all the crap they have to deal with.

Michael Allen is a friend and I am grateful to the work he has done, and is continuing to do, in this arena. The children are our future. They will take care of us when we get old, so let’s raise them to be the kind of caregivers we want.