Good parents and their kids tend to be very comfortable being physically close to each other. They exchange lots of hugs and perhaps kisses, of course depending on the age of the kid. A quick pat on the shoulder or the head happens all the time. Fooling around with lots of physical touch (like playing horsee, or tickling) is a favorite of many kids, and their parents.

That may not be true for kids with a difficult past. In fact, it may be the opposite, for two reasons: attachment issues, and past trauma.

Let’s talk about the trauma first. Imagine you have been severely beaten, again and again, by a previous “parent” (such as a birth parent or their boyfriend). Now this new parent, while horsing around, grabs your arm and pulls you close. Although you are having a great time right now, your brain instantly recalls events in the past that were similar: your old parent always used to pull you close just like that, and a severe beating followed. Depending on the severity of the trauma, the kid may end up with a full-fledged panic attack within seconds, and you, the parent, will completely at loss what just happened. (You can’t find out from the kid because they likely won’t be able to talk about the trauma.)

Here’s another example: you pull your kid on your lap, perhaps like you have done many times before. This time, however, the kid goes rigid and starts sweating. What you may not know is that sexual abuse in the past started with the abuser having the kid sit on their lap, and this time, the memory suddenly popped up and took over your kid’s entire consciousness. Oops. (I’ll have more to say about how trauma recall looks like in children, and how to deal with it in a future post.)

You may have heard from the social workers what kind of maltreatment the kid was exposed to in the past. However, very rarely do social workers know the whole story, so a lot more bad things might have happened than they know. And of course they don’t know the details. So it’s very unlikely that you will be able to avoid triggers just by avoiding what the social workers told you.

What can you do about it?

• First of all, be aware: if the kid suddenly withdraws, or completely overreacts (in your view) to a physical movement you made, you might have triggered a traumatic memory.
• Once a traumatic memory has been triggered, do not make it worse. In other words, give the kid plenty of space. No touching, no hugging: it will not help the kid feel better but instead increase the recall and make them feel even worse! If the kid wants to hide in their room or behind the couch, let them. They need to re-establish safety, and that means, for a time, to be away from people who are associated with the trauma, or the trigger (that includes you)
• As soon as the kid is receptive, apologize profusely. “I’m very sorry that I pulled you on my lap, I saw that this was really scary for you, and I really don’t want to scare you. I’m so sorry that happened, and I will try hard not to do it again. If I ever do something that really scares you, could you tell me so I won’t do it, because I want you to be happy not scared.”

And then there is attachment. Pretty much all kids whose childhood was disrupted have attachment issues or full-fledged reactive attachment disorder (RAD). One of the consequences of this is that they will have a lot of negative emotions about physical contact, particularly with a parent. You may notice this if the kid never really seems to want to be close to you, gets up when you sit down next to them and things like that. There is nothing wrong with you, it’s just one of the signs of attachment issues that the kid has from the time before they were with you.

There are many approaches to attachment therapy, some of them highly controversial (if you do a web search, you can find plenty of scary stories ). But there are also rather good attachment therapies and therapists. Once you are in phase 3 or 4 of your relationship with your kid, I strongly recommend you find a therapist who has had specialized attachment training, and work with them. It will be beneficial for your kid, and probably for you as well (all attachment therapy includes the parent in every session) as it will help improve the emotional relationship between you and the kid. It requires a therapist who has had specialized attachment training; this is not taught in regular therapy curricula and I doubt that it is something they can pick up on their own without training.

What this all means is that you need to give your kid plenty of space. We don’t think of kids, particularly little kids, as having any kind of “personal space” with respect to the parent. But for our kids, we need to. Make sure the kid is permitting you to enter their personal space, particularly if your relationship to the kid is fairly new. You really want to avoid triggering trauma recall, and you don’t want the kid to associate the negative feelings they have when somebody comes too close with you either, due to attachment issues. However, when the opportunity presents itself, by all means have as much touch and physical closeness with your kid as possible. Touch actually helps reduce attachment issues — if it can be done without triggering the kid. Cuddling on the couch while watching a movie sometimes is a good situation to try.

This is also important as part of the message you want to send to the kid that you are safe. If they know that you respect their personal safety zone, they will have more confidence that you will not suddenly do bad things to them. Which may be a new experience for some kids who have never been in a place where they were safe.