Hidden damage to the family separation

The separation of young children from their parents occurs for many reasons, including death, DivorcePrison, natural disasters, and immigration policy. Conditions that are disrupted or cut attached It may vary, but the possibility of permanent wounds is almost always present. As a society, it reduces the way to disrupt the attachments that can undermine the child’s self -impact and influence his future relationships.

Early children are linked to their blackmail Career(S) It ensures their survival and physical health, which is the context of nervous biological development and mental health. Ideally, the attachment relationship provides three preventive factors for the child: learning sympathy, controlling feelings and balance, especially those destroyed, and the development of cognitive capabilities.

At the same time, the development of the brain and the child is also associated with environmental opportunities and risks. The ongoing presence of important relationships is what mediates the environmentAnd providing safety and adaptation skills.

The sudden and lengthy separation has an countless effect on the child. Events that go beyond our ability to cause them not to be managed pressure. The smaller children, the more they have to meet tension on their own. The comfort and a sense of safety that the reliable father can provide is a decisive insulation against the negative effects of stress. The sudden separation of the father is severe stress; The additional Wallop comes from the fact that the person who was usually turned to rest.

The prolonged exposure to stress does not have a preventive relationship until the system of response to human stress remains a stimulant, which prevents recovery and threatens the child’s ability to regain the feeling of safety needed to move forward in life. anxiety and depression It can arise when children lose hope in reunification with their absent love. It becomes difficult to trust others and engage freely in other relationships.

The negative results of the broken attachments are caused by family separation policies, as they appear in the lives of children who are tested Custody And those in the juvenile elimination system. Many of the perpetrators of the former events whose stories are told in my book, Before their crimes: What misunderstood childhood shockyouths crimeAnd the road to recoverThe primary attachment number was early. In most of their lives, these disorders were not without treatment. Trang, who I met when he was 44 years old and was recently released 26 years in prison, offers an example of what you feel when your family is torn. (His comments are edited and condensed.)

The fourth of six children, was born in the wake of the Vietnam War on East Sigon Island, where his parents were farmers. The post -war years in Vietnam were messy and cruel, a struggle to find food in a devastating landscape. The family was keen to leave. Trag’s father was appointed by the southern Vietnamese government to be an armed observer because the Communists have not yet acquired the island, a task he did not want, but he could not reject it. He did not believe in the southern Vietnamese issue and reduced their motives. Soon after his mission, he and the uncle of Trang and his older brother found a way to leave the island.

Targ said:

“I was at the second of my life when my parents and sisters left. They felt if we did not do that now, things may change where we cannot.

In the end, they fled, and I was alone with my grandparents. I have live memories of everything, small shots in my mind of feeling lonely and no one is there except for my grandparents. It was a deep feeling of isolation, from being alone. I later learned that my mother and sisters were on the mainland, preparing to leave. They could not all go once, or will make people suspicious.

It looked as if I were far from my mother throughout my life. Perhaps I was for several months, but it seems that my whole life. When I saw her again, I don’t remember feeling any complete feelings. The image I have about my childhood is empty rooms, being myself. “

She felt the most famous without his mother as if she was as if she was Pain to be regardless of the person who has more connected, the time and extends it is unbearable so that it seems endless. The separation began in the second year of Trang, when the brain growth is not far enough to allow the child to understand what is happening or contain it without help.

The harm was overwhelmed by his infant capabilities. His grandparents, for the causes of culture, a personalityOr their own distress, they were unable to provide the connection and comfort they need. Trag’s way to manage the painful void was emotionally closing. When he saw his mother in the end, after several months, there was no relief or joy – he could not feel anything.

“When I finally met my father, I felt that he and my brother and my work had a bond that I was not part of. I always felt as if I was a stranger.”

There was no feeling of the homeland with his father, too. His parents leave his early prayers with them. Not only was the distance that was not physical, but was psychological – although it was temporary. He was very small (and shocked) to have the tools to re -call without helping them; They were busy with the trip from Vietnam, where they completed a safe exit and resettlement in a new country. There was no safe base for him, and there is no opportunity to heal the losses he carried inside.

As a teenager, Trang’s uncontrolled longing for contact with a gang, and in the end, led him to face two lifelong sentences because he was in a home invasion where a police officer was shot.

The effects of broken attachments live after separation. Some children are lucky enough to have someone else to help them overcome the loss, but some, such as Trang, are not. Some separation is inevitable. Knowing the deep negative impact of such events on children should lead us to avoid each unnecessary family separation.