Prince Harry lost his mother, Princess Diana, at the most vulnerable age in childhood. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry lost his mother, Princess Diana, at the most vulnerable age in childhood. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry was just 11 years old when his father came into his room one morning to tell him, with little compassion, that his mother, Princess Diana, had been killed in a car accident.
According to details in the prince’s memoir, Spare, this was the singular traumatic event that impacted the rest of his life.
On today’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me, host Rebecca Haszard and guest host and fellow parent Damien Venuto speak to neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis about how trauma affects children and what parents can do to help a child cope.
Wallis, whose background is in trauma counselling for children, says of Prince Harry’s experience, 11 is the most vulnerable age in childhood.
“If you experience a trauma at 11, you’re statistically more likely to still be medicated in response to that trauma than at any other age.
“At 11, you’re entering puberty; that’s a very vulnerable age. Clearly, there’s something that makes you respond to that trauma in a much more horrific way.”
Neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis discusses how to help a child cope with trauma.
Wallis, a father of four, notes no one, “no matter how sheltered you are, no matter how rich you are … leads a trauma-free life, in a way”.
But when it comes to coping with trauma, it’s the response that is key, he explains, referring to a quote by Hungarian trauma expert Gabor Maté: “You’re never damaged by trauma. You’re damaged by your response to trauma.”
“It’s really your response,” says Wallis. “I find that encouraging, because you’re not really in charge of the trauma, but you do have some control over your response to that trauma. And that’s where the healing path is.
“We talk about, in the literature, rupture and repair. That if you rupture, the bad stuff happens, and repair’s what you do to fix it. If you have rupture and repair, rupture and repair, rupture and repair, you’re resilient.
“If you have rupture, rupture, rupture, that’s when you’re not so resilient. And if you had no rupture at all, you probably wouldn’t learn to develop resilience. So it really is the rupture and repair, which is again, your response. Because you are going to have things that happen traumatically. Everyone’s not going to be the winner all the time. Ten per cent of life is going to suck.”
As much as parents will try to protect their child from experiencing a traumatic event, as Wallis says, there are some things that are out of everyone’s control.
“Everybody is going to deal with death. When you lose your parent and it’s your main parent - it’s different if it was your secondary parent, and probably for Prince Harry, [Diana] was his main parent - there’s very little that is more devastating than that. It’s fundamental to who you are in the world.
“I don’t think there’s anyone that loses their parent during childhood who gets to adulthood and says, ‘Oh no, that doesn’t bother me’. They know it’s had a major impact on who they are.”
But Wallis says: “Children are incredibly resilient and life’s not supposed to be trauma-free, and the trauma is not necessarily going to destroy them.”
“It could actually make them stronger. I would encourage [parents], first of all, that you don’t have to fix everything. If their father died or something, you can’t fix that. And what we talk about in child trauma circles is really about getting it outside the kid’s head.
“Just them talking about it: ‘I miss Dad and I think about him every day.’ You don’t have to fix that. You can’t fix it, but he’s telling you about it and getting it outside of his head. You’re 90 per cent of the way there. We just notice damages when the kid feels like he’s going to upset Mum by talking about Dad, so he doesn’t talk about it and he ruminates it inside his head.”
For more of Nathan Wallis’ tips on helping children deal with trauma, listen to today’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me below
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Want to get in touch with the podcast? Email the team at odytm@nzme.co.nz.
