Helping Children Feel Safe
We are concerned with how the devastation of recent natural disasters is affecting families, and children in particular. We hope that the Circle of Security (COS) graphic might be helpful for caregivers and children whose world has been turned upside down by traumatic events like the ongoing Los Angeles fires and the recent flooding in the Southeast.
During traumatic events, children experience heightened fear and helplessness, instinctively seeking comfort and safety from their attachment figures. This disrupts their ability to explore and learn. At the same time, parents can feel overwhelmed and confused, potentially helpless and fearful. In this state, it can be difficult for a parent to be confident in how to support their children and to find ways to be Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kind.
Part of the reason parents the world over have found the Circle of Security to be a valuable resource is the simple clarity it provides for tracking children’s needs and for offering guidance as to our role as parents, caregivers and teachers. With this in mind, we’ve made available a resource for thinking about the Circle of Security to help support families during traumatic events. The Circle of Security: Following a Traumatic Event graphic was designed to offer parents and professionals direction and clarity about how essential caregivers are to children during times of crisis. The goal is to give caregivers a sense of clear direction and sound encouragement in offering themselves as a valuable resource.
Children need to know their parent is a resource – a Bigger, Stronger, Wiser and Kind figure who can offer availability and a sense of clear direction and guidance. Children need help to understand the uncertainty happening in their world and what this means for them (Top of the Circle) and comfort and soothing in response to a sense of fear and helplessness (Bottom of the Circle). Rather than problem solving, what is needed is the caregiver’s willingness to simply be available and Be With.
Helping Children Deal with Feelings of Fear and Helplessness
One of the biggest problems for children in the face of any traumatic event or life stressor is dealing with their sense of fear and helplessness.
- Children experiencing fear is not dangerous. However, when fear is not recognized and regulated by a safe and secure caregiver, children can become overwhelmed.
- A child's sense of fear, when it is unattended to by a caregiver, can move in the direction of terror.
- A child's sense of helplessness, when unregulated by a caregiver, moves in the direction of despair.
- Terror (unregulated fear) and despair (unregulated helplessness) become overwhelming for children primarily because it feels like they cannot be shared with and organized by someone who is Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kind. ("I'm all alone in this worry and despair with no one with whom I can share it.")
- Hence, the goal is to find a way to give caregivers a sense of clear direction and sound encouragement in offering themselves as a resource for the management of fear and helplessness.
- The Circle of Security: During a Traumatic Event graphic was designed to offer parents and professionals direction and clarity about how essential caregivers are to children during this traumatic event. Attachment research fully supports how valuable caregivers are in times of crisis or prolonged stress—even when those caregivers are unsure of their usefulness and value.
- More than anyone else during traumatic events, a child's primary caregivers are the center of that child's world and are the resource who can make all the difference.
Download the Circle of Security Following a Traumatic Event Circle.
