With older children we would encourage them to put words to their feelings. For a 1-year-old there are no words to help her cope, no words providing understanding or comfort.
How a child manages long-term following such a traumatic event is shaped by many factors. These include her age when her parent died, the quality of the relationship she had with that parent, her own inborn resilience and health, and most importantly as the child moves forward, the quality and consistency of her new caregivers.
What will likely be most important for that tiny little girl rescued from her mother’s car is for her to be sheltered with a trusted and familiar family member, a surrogate parent who can maintain a calm, loving and ongoing presence, someone who can support her and understand her grief through the difficult years ahead.
These recent horrific shootings — from Sandy Hook Elementary, to the U.S. Navy Yard, to Capitol Hill — highlight the necessity of recognizing the devastating effects of mental illness on society. When we live in a world of fear and terror we run the risk of treating our mentally ill as terrorists, rather than providing them the help they truly need. If we are to care for our children and protect them we need to do more. We need to provide treatment for the mentally ill, insurance coverage to pay for the treatment and early childhood programs to support the children of the mentally ill.
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