Hi, in this video we will explain how to apply psychological first aid to kids from zero to three years. In kids it is very important knowing that the fact of, mostly in the beginning, not being able to verbally express how they feel, we must be aware to other kinds of behaviors or emotional expressions, right? Concretely, from zero to three years what we must do is following five basic steps: contain, calm, inform, normalize and comfort. Let's see how these steps are done. First, contain. Give the kid some safety, show him love so that he feels comforted. Let's try to avoid any clinging behaviors, right? We are holding the kid and he strongly grabs our clothes. No way. Let's take him by the hands, tell him he can't do this. But it's not necessary leaving him on the floor, we can have a hug. Always preventing him from sticking to us. We should control or correct these kinds of behaviors. It is also important giving some space for the kid to cry or yell. We aren't saying the kid can't express himself, right? Contention isn't a non-expression. Contention is expressing in a controlled way. The kid can yell, the kid can cry. But let's be here to correct him if it becomes a damaging or harmful behavior for him. In example, if he begins hitting himself against the floor or a wall. Another thing we must do with kids is calming them down. If you stop thinking about it, they are very normal and logic steps which maybe we would already do in this kind of situations. It's simply taking into account small details of things we shouldn't do. Well, in the case of calming what we must try is helping this kid relaxing. Helping him relaxing, giving him a moment to rest. Helping him by singing, telling them a story, giving them a hot bath. This kind of routines, this kind of behaviors calm our kids down. On another side we must inform them. Obviously with a newborn language isn't developed and the comprehension capacity is a lot harder. However it is important telling him things. Telling him with a calm and slow tone of voice. This step becomes more important as kids grow up. This means a kid of two, three years old that despite maybe he doesn't have expressive language very developed, he can already have advanced comprehensive language. They are kids that understand us. Even sometimes one recommendation is being careful with what we say in front of the kid because they understand much more of what we think. Well, here informing becomes more important, telling them which is the situation, what happened and what is going to happen from now on? Inside this informing point it is very important giving them options so that they can ask and answer them with the truth, without lying to any of the questions they will make us. It's better telling them we don't know something. It doesn't matter, we aren't perfect. It is better telling them we don't know something than telling them something about which we aren't sure and that might not be true, right? This would cause a feeling of chaos or insecurity in kids. The last two things we should do with kids is normalize. Normalize the symptoms, normalize what is happening to them. Making him see he's not the only one with these feelings or reactions. In example, if he sees us crying somehow he will be able to cry as well. Sometimes we try to protect them from our stronger emotional expressions. Avoid them from seeing us cry, prevent them from seeing us suffer. And often this makes them think crying isn't right. I want to cry but no one around is crying, so maybe it's not the time. So we are limiting the kid, he isn't crying, he's keeping it and it's bad for him. It is very important for us to cry and emotionally express what we feel so that they also do it. And finally comforting them, obviously. We must comfort them, we must try to make positive activities with them. We must give them control on small tasks, make them feel useful, make them see that inside an environment adapted to them they still have control on certain tasks. Trying to make daily routines so that they see there's a coherence. Something really serious happened and there has been a rupture in their life, but the rest of things remain unchanged and nothing else will happen. Also the capacity of comforting them is allowing to play or draw what happened to them. We don't ask for it but usually after a critical incident or a traumatic fact, kids replay this fact during the posterior days and weeks. Well, let's let them do it. Don't tell them "no, don't do it, how can you be playing this?" Because maybe it's weird for us seeing a kid playing a funeral, or a funeral parlor, one is the dead one and the other one is holding a vigil. But maybe they need it, they need to integrate this experience in their daily life. And playing is a good tool to help kids integrate all kinds of knowledge, including traumatic experiences. What can we expect? Which reactions can we expect from kids from zero to three years? We can expect, as in adults, problems when trying to sleep. In this case we can expect that they have more problems with going away from they reference adult. Of course, in kids from zero to three years old we are in a stage in which the kid spends a lot of time with us, so it is hard for them to separate from the adults, maybe it is quite hard. But it is true that maybe in other situations the kid could be alone in his crib and after a critical incident he demands us more. He cries more. That every time we go away from his vision field he requires us. When in a normal situation the kid can be alone by himself a few hours entertaining himself without us being there. When they are older, when they are about three years old and we even have been able to take away diapers, after a critical incident maybe some of these behaviors step backward. We might go back to development states previous to the critical incident, previous to the point we had achieved, maybe we lose some control of the sphincter, that suddenly he finds it harder eating with cutlery or that he can't take a lot of time sitting and paying attention. The way of verbalizing or expressing sadness in kids sometimes is a bit different. More than sad they look irritable. When they have the ability to talk, phrases such as "I hate you", "I don't love you", "It's all your fault" can appear. We must think it's a normal way kids have to verbalize this sadness, this pain, this helplessness in front of the lived situation. We don't have to think that what they are saying is real, something they actually feel, that they don't love us. Because we are they reference figure right now in that moment we will be the most important thing for them and the only safe point they will have in front of all the chaos that is being generated. They might cry more, they might have more tantrums than the usual or they might appear in a recurrent way, even if there hadn't been any tantrum before. It is very important that in front of this we are aware that despite we can make some rules flexible the first days, the limits that we have established in the way of taking care of our son, in our educating system, must go on. If we had the limit that if he makes a tantrum I won't pay attention. In this case, maybe the first days we make flexible the rule of looking at him and simply saying "Stand up, please" maybe we will sit next to him and ask, "What's wrong?" Is it because of what happened, is it because grandpa died, is it because of the traumatic incident? And we will wait, we will give the kid an option so that he readjusts his values and behaviors and his answers to the new situation. When this stops being normal, right? Because we are saying we must normalize, we must comfort, we must keep a routine, make some rules flexible but inside a limit. Well, all this isn't normal anymore and must be an alert sign for us after four weeks, we already said this in other videos. This period of approximately one month. All this symptomatology is still strongly present. If the activation levels haven't gone down, if the kid has still important problems to sleep, if he panics, if he is afraid that we disappear from his vision field, if he hasn't been able to integrate back to the nursery school's routine. All this would be our alert sign to consult a specialist, a psychologist specialized in childhood trauma or someone in the field who can give us some guidelines and orientate us to correct this situation. On the other side, it is important remembering, as in all these cases and in the videos you will next see in the different age ranges, how each kid is different and each kid has his way of reacting, and there isn't only one premise we can use for all kids. Maybe a kid has problems to sleep and another one doesn't have any problem to sleep but he has more tantrums. So we always need to be aware that fear, anxiety and sadness reactions variate in kids. They aren't like the ones in adults and they aren't exactly the same between one kid and another.
