Children may experience anxiety, stress, and fear that adults may not initially identify or connect to these traumatic situations.
Parents might expect that their children will present with anticipatory anxiety leading up to a family trip that may include a mixture of increased excitement and worry about the upcoming vacation. However, children struggling with traumatic events may (a) have higher levels of anxiousness; (b) exhibit disturbances in their typical sleep patterns such as having nightmares; (c) feel physically ill, exhausted, or have headaches; and (d) be highly irritable.