Being separated from a parent isn't just a trauma

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/20/17480680/child-separate-parent-trauma-effects

The separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy is, to many people — liberals and conservatives alike — a viscerally repellent act.

Reports like the recording ProPublica obtained of children crying for their parents, or accounts of children in temporary foster care crying themselves to sleep every night, inspire in a lot of people the idea that something deeply wrong is happening. They make it apparent that not only are children being harmed, but they may be being harmed permanently.

It seems to be, in a word, traumatic.

But when we call family separation traumatic, what does that actually mean? What about children’s brains and their understanding of the world is broken when they’re taken from a parent?

Over the past few decades, we’ve gained a lot of insight into this question. And one of the foremost experts on it is Nadine Burke Harris, whose organization, the Center for Youth Wellness, does research and clinical work on “toxic stress” — a condition that researchers have identified with significant mental and physical health differences, in the short and long run.

The key to preventing an adverse childhood experience from metastasizing into toxic stress, Harris and others have concluded, is having a “safe, stable, nurturing relationship” with an adult caregiver.

In other words, Harris told me, Trump’s policy is “almost a recipe for toxic stress.”

(more at link)