If you’re caring for a child who has been through trauma, you’ve probably heard a lot about therapy, treatment plans, and professional support. And those things all matter. But you as a caregiver play an important role. The relationship you’re building, the safety you’re creating, and the patience you’re showing on the hardest days play a huge role in healing.
Caregivers Are the Key to Healing: You’re Not Just Along for the Ride
As trauma experts emphasize, children don’t exist in a vacuum: they are part of families, neighborhoods, communities, and cultures. In other words – they exist in context. And that context is fundamentally shaped by caregivers who provide emotional teaching. You’re teaching them—sometimes without even realizing it—how to understand their feelings, how to calm down when things feel overwhelming, and what it means to be safe with another person.
Children who have experienced trauma, especially trauma connected to the adults who were supposed to care for them, learned to survive in ways that made sense at the time. Maybe they learned not to trust adults. Maybe they learned to hide their feelings or push people away before they could be rejected first. These responses protected them once, but now they can make it hard to accept the love and care you’re trying to give.
And let’s be honest: that can really hurt.
Sarah Pype, LCSW, is a clinician and trainer at Alaska Behavioral Health. She puts it simply: “Hurt kids can be challenging. Their behaviors make sense in the context of their circumstances but they have an effect on their relationships.”
When a child won’t listen to you but follows everyone else’s rules, when they lie to you, when they pull away just as you’re trying to get closer—it’s natural to feel rejected, frustrated, or like you’re failing. You’re not failing. This is just hard work.
Taking Care of Yourself Isn’t Selfish—It’s Essential
When you’re doing this hard work, one of the most important things you can do for your child is take care of yourself.
When you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, or emotionally drained, it’s nearly impossible to stay calm and patient with a child who’s testing every boundary. You can’t help your child learn to manage their big feelings if you’re drowning in your own.
Fernanda Ruiz, a clinician on AKBH’s Child & Family team, recently worked with a caregiver to come up with some realistic self-care opportunities. They settled on having her morning coffee alone, before any of the kids woke up. This small change made a big difference as she went through her day.
Pype, who teaches curriculum from the Complex Trauma Training Consortium, coaches clinicians and caregivers to develop a toolkit of ways to stay regulated:
- Before the storm: Have a plan for situations you know will be challenging. If homework time always turns into a battle, decide ahead of time how you’ll respond.
- In the moment: When you feel yourself getting angry or overwhelmed, what helps? Deep breaths? Counting to ten? (Pype counts to 37 to make sure she’s calm!) Stepping outside for a minute? Find what works for you.
- After a hard moment: Once things have calmed down, what helps you recover? Calling a friend? Taking a walk? Doing something you enjoy?
- Every day: What are you doing regularly to keep yourself healthy? Sleeping enough? Eating well? Having any time that’s just yours?
From “Why Are They Being Bad?” to “What Are They Trying to Tell Me?”
One of the biggest shifts that helps caregivers is learning to get curious about behaviors instead of just reacting to them.
The caregiver Ruiz works with had been feeling confused and hurt. Were the children trying to make her mad? Did they not want to be in her home?
But as she learned more about trauma, everything started making more sense. She understood that the kids’ behaviors came from their earlier trauma. She got better at being curious about what had happened in their lives that drove the behaviors, instead of being upset about them.
That shift—from “they’re being bad” to “what are they trying to tell me?”—changes everything. Instead of feeling like you need to discipline every challenging behavior, you can start to see what’s underneath.
When a child hoards food, they might be remembering times when they were hungry and no one fed them. When they can’t sleep alone, they might be terrified of the dark because bad things happened at night. When they push you away, they might be protecting themselves from the pain of caring about someone who could leave.
None of this means you ignore behaviors or don’t set boundaries. It just means you’re trying to understand the “why” behind the “what.”
When Culture and Language Add Extra Layers
Cultural and language barriers can make everything more complicated. Ruiz is bilingual and has used her language skills and cultural background to help build bridges between caregivers, kids, and other members of the clinical team.
As she observes, “I think among the Hispanic community, we really do care about how other people view us, whether it’s how people view us as a worker, as a daughter, as a mother.” One caregiver had worried that therapists thought she was doing a bad job. Being able to talk about this fear with someone who understood her cultural context, and being reassured that everyone saw how hard she was working, made all the difference.
Clinician Pype says therapists and other providers need to be aware of potential cultural biases and cultural differences that may affect how providers and families work together to help the kids. Once again, getting curious can help: asking questions helps therapists learn more about the cultural context kids are living in, and builds rapport and trust with caregivers.
What You Can Do Right Now
You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have all the answers. But here are some things that can help:
Get curious instead of furious. The next time your child does something frustrating, pause and ask yourself: “What might they be trying to communicate? What need are they trying to meet?”
Find your calm. Figure out what helps you stay regulated. You can’t help your child calm down if you’re escalated, too.
Do one thing just for yourself. Even if it’s just ten minutes of quiet with your coffee. You matter too.
Connect with other caregivers. Whether it’s a support group, a friend who gets it, or online communities—don’t try to do this alone.
Celebrate small wins. Did you stay calm when you usually wouldn’t? Did your child come to you with a problem instead of hiding it? Did you get through bedtime without a meltdown? Those matter.
Remember: relationship repair is normal. You’re going to have disconnected moments. Times when you lose your patience or say the wrong thing. That’s being human. What matters is that you come back, repair, and keep trying.
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