Just because a person doesn’t have a memory of a traumatic event doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them. Kids can have lasting trauma effects even from things they were too young to remember.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

That's true. But I imagine a lot has to do with how they are received and how they deal with it. If the adopting parents handle it gracefully, then the child is in a good place to deal with their trauma, whether it's consciously or subconsciously. At least I hope.

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

During the communist regime in Romania there was a ban on abortion and the state encouraged people to have lots of kids (sound familiar?). This lead to A LOT of kids in orphanages and not enough resources to properly care for them. Conditions were atrocious, to say the least.

But, that lead to a lot of research data by following the lives of kids who got adopted from those orphanages. It was determined that 4 month old was the cut-off point from where kids can still recover from traumatic experiences. Kids adopted younger than that did fine, but kids adopted after that age were affected for the rest of their lives. The fact that they didn't actually remember things consciously did not matter.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

That's very interesting. I'm curious about how it affected their lives.

(And yes, sounds very familiar... 🚩🇺🇸🚩)