3.1 Childhood – early life influences
‘Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be.’
In the previous section, you learned about Jemma and her experience of care and potential trauma.
Experience of trauma can overwhelm an individual's capacity to handle everyday situations, impacting their sense of safety, ability to self-regulate, and approach to forming relationships. Everyone’s upbringing, including their experiences of trauma, influences the relationships they have both in childhood and later in life.
Traumatic events in early childhood can influence not only the attachment style of the child but also their adult attachment style. Attachment styles describe the patterns of behaviours and expectations an individual demonstrates in relationships, and can affect the ways in which intimacy, trust, separation, and communication are handled.
The role of relationships