The fight against Intergenerational Trauma and Child Abuse

In Liberia, today’s children are the first generation in over 20 years to live in an era of peace. With over 2 million war affected adults in the country, we know that this young generation born in peaceful times is undeniably impacted by the trauma of their parents’ experiences. We need to intervene with this new generation by building resiliency and developing skills of non-violent conflict resolution to promote peace and emotional stability.

We currently provide workshops on trauma, abuse and parenting skills at the Comfort K. Toe Orphanage and the following schools: Matthew 6 Foundation Elementary Preparatory School, DUJAR school and with the Liberian Renaissance School (LREC) in Monrovia. Parent/ teacher associations have appreciated this initiative, and styles of parenting in particular are gaining growing interest.c

Our vision is to empower caregivers to address two topics of great concern for the Liberian children: abuse and inter- generational trauma. Post-war children are highly exposed to child abuse, leading to severe emotional distress. As for intergenerational trauma, they often internalize the fears and symptoms observed at home, creating a false reality of ongoing danger. Such symptomatology can be as damaging as it is for a person

who survived a life threatening event. Even without understanding the actual event, the child is able to pick up on those emotions and anxieties, thus experiencing symptoms as traumatized caregivers do.

When we work with the children participating in this program, our goal is to build resiliency. This means enhancing their strength and capacity to overcome stress, feelings of fear, helplessness and overwhelm. With that strength, before difficult situations actually happen, they will be prepared to endure and be strong, to preserve their mental health, and avoid some of the outcomes of trauma such as drug abuse, crime, revenge and violence as they grow up.

By creating a safe environment for children at home, orphanages, and schools, caregivers are able to identify early symptoms of intergenerational trauma. They develop their roles and skills of attunement, so the children can have parental imprints in order to grow anxiety- free in a country at peace where they will be able to learn, to love learning and to build a nation where war and fear are eliminated for future generations.

Based on our work at our current institutions, we continue to receive new requests to bring our services to new schools.

Therapeutic Games for Children

Among many others from PlayWorks Program Curriculum:

BODY LANGUAGE EMOTION CIRCLE Goal:
To be able to identify different emotions

CIRCLE GRAB/GRAB RELEASE RELAY Goal:
To be able to recognize threatening grabs and respond appropriately

STOMP AND RUN Goal:
To be able to recognize dangerous situations and respond appropriately

Instructing Caregivers How to Help Traumatized Children

Here’s an example of some of the topics we address in worshops with caregivers:

- Not being afraid to talk about the traumatic event with the child
- How to provide a consistent and predictable pattern for the day
- Being nurturing, conforting, and affectionate
- Discussion about the child’s expectations for behavior with the caregiver’s style of discipline
- Watching closely for signs of reenactment (e.g., in play, drawing, behaviors), avoidance (e.g., being withdrawn, daydreaming, avoiding other children), and physiological hyper-activity (e.g., anxiety, sleep problems, behavioral impulsivity)
- How to provide proper protection for the children
- How to give the children choices and a sense of control
- How to help the child express anxiety

Comfort K. Toe Orphanage

We brought our child resiliency program to the Comfort K. Toe Orphanage Institute in October of 2010, and made a long-term commitment with the institution to continuously provide guidance to caregivers and enhance the children’s resiliency skills through therapeutic games. On average, 70 adults participate on each of our monthy full- day workshop (orphanage teachers, caregivers and parents of children in nearby villages) benefitting 140 children.

Caregivers in Session

Learning body stabilization exercises for personal self- care and well being to better care for the children.

“Security is the key to an optimal learning environment. When a child feels safe she will seek out novelty in motor, emotional, social, and cognitive domains. And she will feel more capable of tolerating any distress associated with this novelty. The activation of the stress-mediating neural systems will be perceived as excitement and not threat.”
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., ChildTrauma