“Almost all children in Aotearoa, New Zealand (87 percent) have experienced significant trauma by the time they are eight, far more than earlier thought, according to new research.”
Trauma is what I expect refugee children from war-torn countries to have experienced. Turns out though trauma can now include a child answering ‘yes’ when asked, "Do other children put you down, call you names, or tease you in a mean way?"
The researchers (funded by the taxpayer via an MSD grant) used the longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand cohort and assessed experience of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) by age eight. Some of the experiences are serious, for example, having a parent sent to prison, but others are just part and parcel of being a child. Being shouted at by Mum for being naughty or having a Mum who believes she’s been treated unfairly because of her ethnicity.
To describe the latter two as experiencing trauma destroys the word’s meaning.
NewstalkZB host Tim Beveridge interviewed the lead researcher and was justifiably skeptical. He later observed that academics risk losing the public when they over-dramatise their press releases; that the public may switch off at that point and miss any important findings which may follow.
What bothers me even more is the bastardization of a rich language abundantly capable of intricate and nuanced description. It has happened with many words beyond trauma. For instance, words like ‘assault’ and ‘violate’ get regularly employed in totally overblown and inappropriate ways. Guilty parties risk being accused of ‘crying wolf’ – a timeless adage that describes how repeated exaggeration will only result in them being ignored or worse, laughed at.
When it comes to children, New Zealand has enough real problems without manufactured crises.
Money spent on more of this melodrama is money misdirected.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
The researchers (funded by the taxpayer via an MSD grant) used the longitudinal Growing Up in New Zealand cohort and assessed experience of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) by age eight. Some of the experiences are serious, for example, having a parent sent to prison, but others are just part and parcel of being a child. Being shouted at by Mum for being naughty or having a Mum who believes she’s been treated unfairly because of her ethnicity.
To describe the latter two as experiencing trauma destroys the word’s meaning.
NewstalkZB host Tim Beveridge interviewed the lead researcher and was justifiably skeptical. He later observed that academics risk losing the public when they over-dramatise their press releases; that the public may switch off at that point and miss any important findings which may follow.
What bothers me even more is the bastardization of a rich language abundantly capable of intricate and nuanced description. It has happened with many words beyond trauma. For instance, words like ‘assault’ and ‘violate’ get regularly employed in totally overblown and inappropriate ways. Guilty parties risk being accused of ‘crying wolf’ – a timeless adage that describes how repeated exaggeration will only result in them being ignored or worse, laughed at.
When it comes to children, New Zealand has enough real problems without manufactured crises.
Money spent on more of this melodrama is money misdirected.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
Nek minnit, will: losing one's teeth; stubbing a toe; going to hospital to have something fixed or removed, also be a trauma?
Yes, Lindsay, you're right, but in a world where terms like 'genocide' and 'holocaust' get daily bandied about, it's hardly surprising. There also seems a definite desire by woke academics to see everyone turned into snowflakes. And then, of course, there's climate change - yet more trauma.
Research? What a waste of time and money.
Well said, Lindsay and anonymous !
A good book to read on this rubbish is Abigail Shrier's ' Bad Therapy'.
She is also on u tube in interviews.
This stuff is psychologically driven and coming to your school any day soon. It is called SEL-Social Emotional Learning.
What is so bad about it is that it makes the child focus on themselves and makes them less able to cope with any problem they may actually have. This is true for adults as well. It also leads to criticism of the parents since they are supposed to be more attentive to the child which leads to break down of parent- child relationships in a family.
Almost anything can be trauma from climate change to being coloured.
If you want to break kids down and make them less resilient , this craziness will do it , according to Shrier.
Thank you Lindsay for highlighting this diabolical stuff.
At age eight does realisation that we are poised to be controlled by maori constitute trauma? And/or that expected to suffer te reo?
Worth bringing up Lindsay.
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