“Grieve what you lost…. So you can celebrate what you have.”
Child’s Recovery From Brain Injury is Emotional as well as Physical.
If your child or teen has experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), you may be aware of their struggle with emotions. Emotional recovery is very important after a brain injury and should not be overlooked.
There are five levels of emotional development. In some cases, people with a traumatic brain injury will go back to the very first level and start all over again in their emotional development. The ability to connect on an emotional level in a healthy relationship is the long term goal of emotional recovery.
When our son was fifteen, he suffered a TBI. We were not really sure what to expect as he came out of a forty day coma. He began to awake only to discover he was, in a sense, a “six foot infant.” He had to start all over, like a new born, slowly learning how to do everything.
Stage One of Emotional Development:
Stage one of emotional development is the ability to receive love. For a child or teenager with a TBI, it is vitally important for both parents and siblings to be present during this stage. They should be interactive so their child’s spirit is awakened through nurturing. Physical touch such as holding your child for extended periods of time daily is most effective. In our son’s recovery, it was very obvious that physical touch activated the blood flow and drew his spirit to life. If holding your child is not possible, you might hold a hand, rub arms and legs, or kiss a forehead or cheek.
In our son’s case, the right side of his brain was injured. While he was in the coma, we gently rubbed his head on the right side to activate more blood flow, which proved to be very effective as he regained more and more movement in his left side. We could actually see the difference in alertness after his cheek was kissed and gently rubbed.
I believe that lack of nurture in early stages of recovery:
- Causes the spirit to remain in a slumber.
- Causes the child or teen to feel unloved, leading to insecurity and the need for constant reassurance of love later in life.
- Causes emotional growth and development to be stunted.
- Creates a void in the foundation stage of emotional development. If the foundation has a void, something is missing.
Stage Two of Emotional Development:
Stage two is “Independence.” Each child or teen is uniquely created by God as an individual. During the second stage of emotional development, a child will begin to explore their independence. We as a family observed that as our son felt secure and loved, he progressed quickly into this stage. He wanted to venture out in his own uniqueness. During this stage, a child or teen will test his parents’ love with acts of independence. For emotional development purposes, these acts of independence need to be handled correctly.
I believe it is important for parents to be careful to correct their child without crushing his or her spirit. Proper discipline is very important at this stage. A child needs to experience unconditional love. Even when a child is disobedient, love is still there for the child to receive. During this stage, a child will test a parent’s love in many ways. One way is by expressing their own desires, which may be different from their parents’ desires. Children need to feel secure enough in their parents’ love to say “No” without the fear of being cut off, shut down, or rejected.
Parents must allow their child opportunities to say “No” when it is appropriate in order to express their independence. Parents should give their children choices so they can learn to determine what they like or don’t like and feel the freedom to exercise choice. This continues to build trust in the parent/child relationship and prepares them to say “No” in adulthood. The adult person who has not learned how to say “No” can very easily be controlled and even abused by others.
Many times parents want their child to be just like them, but God created each child as a unique individual. Children need to have a loving and safe environment to discover who God created them to be. As they discover that they are unique, they need to feel that it is all right to be different from their parents.
Recovery After Brain Injury:
This is also true in the recovery process. There is a time when the survivor begins to realize and embrace the reality of being different from who they were before the brain injury. It is important for parents to support their child who is learning to embrace a new self. Parents can give emotional support as their child learns to say, “Yes, this is what I believe and what I choose” or, “No, this is not me.” By encouraging new preferences, the child starts to build a new identity after the brain injury.
Our son Will loved to ride horses and wear western jeans and shirts before our car accident. However, as his uniqueness was being developed after the accident, he didn’t want anything to do with western wear and our family had to accept the new him. We allowed him the choice and when he said no we respected this new choice. This was especially hard for my husband because he and Will rode horses together and now his “new son” didn’t like horses at all.
The Role of a Parent in this Stage of a Child’s Emotional Development is to:
- Affirm who they are and their differences
- Allow the child to make choices with safe boundaries
- Provide accountability to stay within boundaries
- Set and encourage attainable goals
- Carry out appropriate disciplinary consequences when behavior is unacceptable (see Proverbs 22:6, Proverbs13:1, Proverbs19:18)
- Encourage unique gifting, abilities, and interests
Caregiving after Brain Injury
Now, if you are the caregiver of a child who has had a brain injury, go back over the role of a parent and recognize that this is also your role as a caregiver. A caregiver who does not take this role – to monitor and encourage emotional development – will see the effects in years to come.
The brain can be re-trained, just as a child is trained in right from wrong. A child who is not taught right from wrong and how to choose what is right will become rebellious and will not respect authority. A survivor of a TBI who has not been taught how to make the right choices will flounder in life. They will also have a greater chance of getting into trouble and rebelling against authority later on as they get older. They may try to gain independence in the wrong ways by finding fault with the family as a reason to separate and individuate from them. The right way to gain independence is to have a solid and secure foundation, knowing one is loved and accepted and therefore having a strong self-worth regardless of disabilities.
Article Written By: Denise Boggs
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