Don't Know Why Your Kid Has Behavioral Problems? Your Own Childhood May Hold Clues
By Diana Hembree
If you’ve been to your doctor lately, you may heard about the ACEs quiz, a simple tool to measure childhood trauma.
Such trauma includes abuse, neglect, and other severe stresses that researchers call “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACES, which are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, depression, and other health problems as children get older.
But the impact of such trauma doesn’t stop there. Recently scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles found that severe stress during parents’ own childhood makes it more likely they’ll have children with behavioral health problems.
The study was the first to find that the long-term behavioral health damage from ACEs “extends across generations from parent to child,” said Dr. Adam Schickedanz of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
The study, published in Pediatrics, examined data on thousands of parents and children who took part in a 2014 supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the longest-running household survey of its kind in the world.
In parents with four or more ACEs, Schickedanz and his team found their children had double the risk of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) than parents with no ACEs. They also found parents with four or more ACEs had children with more than four times the risk of developing emotional disturbances, which, Schickedanz explained, “is shorthand for depression and anxiety and conduct disorders.”
Trauma’s echoes across generations
How was the behavioral health damage from ACEs was passed down? “Well, that is the $64,000 question,” Schickedanz said in an interview with Stress Health. “The possible mechanisms include behavior, biology, parenting practices, and some epigenetics and environmental cues…The big answer is ‘all of the above.’”
The team found that parents with a history of childhood trauma were more likely to report higher levels of aggravation and frustration as parents and to experience mental health problems, Schickedanz said. Interestingly, a mother’s childhood experiences had a stronger negative effect on a child’s behavioral health than the father’s.
What links the findings of parents’ emotional distress and aggravation, he said, “is they’re all disruptive to connections early in life, particularly connections with caregivers.” (However, these mechanisms explain only about 25% of the effect on children's behavior and mental health, he noted; more study will be needed to figure out the rest.)
By screening for ACEs early on, Schickedanz said, health providers can help identify high-risk children and parents and get them help sooner. "It’s a huge opportunity to interrupt the intergenerational cycles of adversity and inadequate parenting that are really self-perpetuating," he said.
Adam Schickedanz, MD, of UCLA
Schickedanz, a pediatrician, is sympathetic to struggling parents. “It’s hard if you grow up without having a clear and healthy model of what healthy parenting looks like," he said. "Without knowing how to be an effective caregiver, parenting can be really frustrating, confusing and aggravating – at least more so – for parents who didn’t have healthy models.”
One of the most important things parents can do, he said, is to think about where their parenting style comes from. “Often a stress situation will elicit a deep-seated pattern of behavior" that may not be what the parent wants, he said. "We know our experiences so well - we return to our family playbook. We need to seek out other options." (For more on the study, see this sidebar.)
Parenting with ACEs
If you have ACEs, you may find it harder than other parents to stay calm when your kids are acting up or you're under stress. Here is some evidence-based counsel:
--Consider a peer-to-peer parenting coach. “We found this really promising,” Schickedanz said. "It helps break down the barriers to trust. When it’s someone from your community or social network, it’s much easier to trust them.” Ask your health provider about parenting coaches in your area.
--Visit a parenting class or workshop. "It's important to realize that when it comes to parenting, not one size fits all," says Dr. Barbara Greenberg, a clinical teen psychologist licensed in Connecticut and New York. "If the class doesn't feel right to you, try a different one."
-- Take some deep breaths when you're stressed out. Stopping what you’re doing for a few minutes to breathe interrupts the stress response.
--Build in some daily rituals. Scientists say that routines and rituals are critical for healthy child development. Cooking and eating together, playing board games, reading to your kids at bedtime, even sorting clothes together – all these “anchoring” rituals can help create closer, more loving relationships with your children, according to Greenberg.
-- Get more support. If you're depressed or find you’re continually on the verge of a meltdown, consider seeing a mental health professional for help.
-- Diana Hembree is a science reporter at the Center for Youth Wellness. She has written and/or edited for many other news outlets, including Time Inc. Health, Hippocrates magazine, and HealthDay, the country’s leading health and medical news service.
References
Schickedanz A, Halfon N, Sastry N, et al. Parents’ Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Children’s Behavioral Health Problems. Pediatrics. 2018;142(2)
2014 Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study Special data set supplement to The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: A national study of socioeconomics and health over lifetimes and across generations. The Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
2014 Child Development Supplement (CDS). Special data set supplement to The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: A national study of socioeconomics and health over lifetimes and across generations. The Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
Panel Study of Income Dynamics. (n.d.) Institute for Social Research. Survey Research Center. Retrieved from https://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Guide/FAQ.aspx?Type=2
