Poverty, Neglect, and Trauma from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

In Graham Music’s book, Nurturing Natures: Attachment and Children's Emotional, Sociocultural, and Brain Development, Music explains to the reader how poverty, neglect and trauma can be associated with PTSD, posttraumatic stress disorder, and how PTSD can develop into long term psychiatric and even physical medical conditions. Neglect of a child can affect them later in life and affect their learning, social, mobile and regular everyday functions and activities. Music also shows the reader how early childhood experiences can impact attachment between mother and child. In addition, while neglect can occur at anytime during development, children are most vulnerable because of their reliance on adults in order to survive. He shows the reader that often neglected and traumatized children are hard to identify because they are fearful to come forward.
From birth, children are dependent on parents for survival and safety. Infants need this attachment in order to survive. Basic needs like shelter and food are things in that all human beings need; but for infants and children, in particular, they cannot survive independently without parents and guidance. Furthermore, as children grow, the parent-child attachment is not just physical, but it is also psychological. Adults who care for children through unconditional love and acceptance, provide positive living environments and self confidence which helps the child grow independently into an adult. Failure in this child-parent relationship in the form of long term neglect or trauma can have consequences in a child’s development physically and psychologically.
The parent-child relationship is critical to the physical and brain development of a child. In its most literal sense, ‘trauma’ means a...

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...o grow up in home where there is neglect, abuse and trauma often miss out on a normal development with attachment and trust. Without that attachment and trust, neglected children are at risk and vulnerable to suffer consequences and risk physically, emotionally, psychologically, educationally, interpersonally that can have a damaging effect on the child’s life and development and can develop into PTSD. However, under certain circumstances, given an opportunity to attach to healthy adults in a positive way, children can overcome even brutal childhoods and injuries. Lastly, it shows how an adult or parent who is willing to attach, trust, help and work with a child, can radically change the course of that child’s life by acting as an advisor, detecting and solving problems, and being there even in the middle of conflict and eventually helping the child succeed in life.