Had you asked me two years ago whether U.S. policy would ever promote toxic stress in children, I would have looked at you as if you had two horns growing out of your head.
After all, the U.S. government philosophically for decades has served as a global patriarch — and matriarch! — working to ensure that populations — especially children — have at least a rudimentary standard of living, and that all humans have basic rights.
This column will not serve to inform about what’s currently happening to people seeking asylum in the United States. Anyone paying attention will know that these people are viewed as breaking U.S. law, and are being sent to federal detention centers. And anyone paying attention will know that these people are separated at the border from their children, who are being sent to various shelters throughout the country.
Colleen Kraft is the current president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Kraft recently toured a government shelter for immigrant children in Combes, Texas, and one particular toddler, inconsolable, caught her attention. “She was crying because she wanted her mother …” Kraft told a reporter.
Who knows what damage is being done to that toddler, or an estimated 2,000 other immigrant children being housed in government shelters, away from their parents?
This we know — separation from a parent is an adverse childhood experience, or what we call an ACE. ACEs can involve abuse — emotional, physical or sexual — and they can involve neglect — emotional or physical. ACEs can also involve other severe challenges, such as witnessing a parent, particularly a mother, being treated violently. An ACE could be a child living in a household in which substance abuse or mental illness are rampant. An ACE could be a child seeing a household member incarcerated.
Again, separation from a parent is also an ACE — this could involve divorce, or it could involve children being removed from a dangerous home.
Or it could involve the U.S. government taking children from their parents at border crossings. These separations are a result — a result! — of current U.S. policy.
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Read the full article by KAREN SULLIVAN here: https://mtstandard.com/lifesty...02-774736d95b7d.html
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