BLOG PODS #42 - Trauma & Children with Learning Disabilities - #1: Fundamentals

INTRODUCTION

Through my work with colleagues at TRM Academy, trauma is a major part of my working world. Lately, though, the intersection of trauma with learning disabilities has come to the fore. So the next two blog posts are going to examine this conflation.

Now, I’m not an expert in learning disabilities (LDs), but have worked with this quite a bit over the years. Having read around it a lot recently in relation to some cases I’m involved with, I thought I’d share some thoughts about how trauma can be uniquely impactful in the context of LDs.

Developmental Trauma and Children with Learning Disabilities

Childhood trauma has profound and lasting effects, shaping kids’ emotional, social and cognitive development - this much is obvious; like humans of any age, these kids carry the ‘wound’ (‘trauma’ means ‘wound’) with them long after the triggering event or events have passed.

But when children with learning disabilities (LDs) experience trauma, the impact is even more layered and complex. I’ve split thinking on this into two posts:

- Fundamentals: This post explores how developmental trauma might affect children with LDs and some differences in trauma presentation between children with and without LDs.

- How to help: The next post will examine a few general approaches and practical strategies for helping them heal and thrive.

As always, this is a summary of the issue - nowhere near a thorough coverage…

What Is Childhood Developmental Trauma?

First things first…

Childhood developmental trauma occurs when children experience repeated or severe adverse events during their early years; things like:

Abuse (physical, emotional or sexual)

Neglect (omission of necessary positives - e.g. affection, stimulus, food, medical care)

Witnessing violence (e.g. domestic violence, emotional coercion, threats, war)

Chronic stress (e.g., living in poverty, experiencing discrimination)

Trauma in early childhood disrupts development; not least, young brains that are highly malleable are impacted by such experiences, which in turn can alter how children process emotions, form relationships and learn.

As Dr. Bruce Perry is credited with saying, a child growing up in trauma has a brain that has developed as if it were locked in a jar of toxic chemicals’ (paraphrasing from memory).

For children with LDs—who already face challenges with memory, language, information processing and/or problem-solving (to name but a few)—trauma compounds these difficulties, creating unique challenges that may require specialist support.

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How Trauma Affects Children with Learning Disabilities

Here are a few broad-brush issues that set the scene for how trauma impacts uniquely when laid over pre-existing LDs.

1. Heightened Vulnerability

Children with LDs are often more vulnerable to trauma for several reasons, for example:

They may struggle to express themselves, making it harder to report abuse or neglect, or to ask for help when they need it. This can range from big things like telling someone they’re being abused, through to simply making it known they’re in pain.

They’re more vulnerable to bullying or abusive adults due to being different. Essentially, they are ‘easy’ targets and being less likely and less able to speak up. This is the double whammy of LDs - the child is both an easy target for negative attention and more easily missed as a potential victim - laying them open for exploitation and mistreatment of all kinds.

Communication delays or cognitive difficulties can make it harder for them to understand, process and communicate traumatic events. The notion that kids should ‘just tell someone’ presumes they have the wherewithal to know what’s happening to (cognition) them and that speaking up is the appropriate response (communication) - never mind that they have the ability to do so!

In these ways, vulnerability is at the core of any trauma wound where LDs are concerned.

2. Compounding Challenges

Trauma affects emotional regulation, behaviour and attention—areas that many children with LDs already find challenging. For example:

- Hypervigilance: Traumatised children may feel perpetually on edge, interpreting neutral or benign situations as threatening, over-reacting to mild stimuli and/or seeing danger where there isn’t any. Obviously, this can heighten anxiety, agitation and/or distractibility in children with LDs.

- Difficulty learning: Children have to be settled in order to learn. Safety and physical homeostasis is essential in order for the cognitive faculties to do their thing. Trauma interferes with the ability to focus, retain information (particularly in working memory) and solve problems. So, children with LDs, who often struggle with these areas as a result of traumatic experiences, will find school even more challenging.

- Social difficulties: Both trauma and LDs can make it hard to connect with peers, leading to increased isolation and low self-esteem. If your early years are spent in the turmoil of violence, neglect or abuse, your sense of self (internal working model) and ability to trust others (attachment) are compromised too. This effects the interpersonal world in a way that undermines the child’s ability to connect easily and safely with others.

3. Delayed Development

For children with LDs, trauma may lead to further developmental delays. For example:

- A child with a language delay may regress in their ability to communicate after a traumatic event. This makes speaking up difficult, if not impossible, compounding the inner, subjective confusion further still, and triggering externalising behaviour that can distract supportive adults from what’s really going on.

- A child with attentional challenges may become even more hyperactive or unfocused. The overlap of LDs, attachment insecurity and post-traumatic symptoms like hypervigilance, agitation and a heightened startle response can be nye on impossible to interpret easily. Children can be tagged as being stroppy, pegged with an ADHD label or as just being in a bad mood - none or all of which might be true. It might be assumed that they’ve reached a developmental peak - gone as far as they can and the presentation indicates we shouldn’t push them any more to grow and learn. Again, this might be correct. But it might not be!

- A child with a negative self-concept or poor self-esteem may feel even worse. Navigating the world as a child with LDs is hard enough; trauma adds a huge negative influence on the developing sense of self, making it doubly difficult to process, move passed and get back on track developmentally. It’s an uphill battle for a child with LDs to build a positive personal script and/or internal working model, trauma doubles-down on these challenge further still.

Differences Between Traumatised Children With and Without LDs

Trauma often manifests differently in children with LDs compared to their typically developing peers. While both groups experience emotional, behavioural, psychological and physical symptoms, children with LDs may show unique patterns and/or express them differently.

For example:

1. Emotional Regulation

- Typically developing children: May display mood swings, withdrawal or irritability as a response to trauma.

- Children with LDs: Emotional outbursts or shutdowns may be more intense and frequent or feelings may turn inward just the same, but the expression may be very different.

2. Communication of Trauma

- Typically developing children: Might verbalise their trauma through storytelling, explaining their fears, talking about ‘a friend’ or just coming straight out with it.

- Children with LDs: May rely more on non-verbal behaviours and presentations that are observable by others (e.g. aggression, clinginess, school refusal, self-harm) to express their trauma, especially if they have limited verbal skills.

3. Behavioural Changes

- Typically developing children: Behaviours like avoidance, aggression or regressed play are often context-specific (e.g. tied to reminders of the trauma or clear triggers).

- Children with LDs: The LD child is much less likely to be conscious of any cause and effect association and so may react in an even less directed or obviously connected way. Behaviours may seem unrelated to triggers, as cognitive difficulties can make it harder for them to connect cause and effect, and harder for others to detect.

4. Trauma Processing

- Typically developing children: Can often engage in talking therapies and cognitive approaches (particularly older kids) to process trauma. Or they may speak tangentially about things or draw pictures that gives clues to the adults around them.

- Children with LDs: can do exactly the same but will need access to non-verbal therapies like art or play, that allow some expression and processing whilst also tailoring to their communication and cognitive needs. And will definitely need very observant adults to pick up on things in ways unique to each child.

FINAL THOUGHTSs

Of course, all of the above is a desperate simplification of an immensely complex pantheon of challenges. But that, in itself, makes the material point here: that those of us tasked with caring for and supporting these children have our work cut out.

It starts with embracing one fundamental idea - that children of all kinds suffer trauma, feel the after-effects and need the safe people around them to be switched on and proactively focused on their needs, so when things change or the time is right to let someone know, we’re ready.

I hope this post has at least underlined this challenge and some of the reasons for and ways in which children with LDs experience trauma and go on to respond to and indicate their need for help. In our next post we’ll take a look at a few things we can do to help.

See you the next one!

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More information:

See Jonny’s temporary website - here

WEBSITE: ACEs Hub Wales (link) has loads of resources available

WEBSITE: Traumatic Stress Wales (link) also has a resources section as well as links to various events, a treatment and recovery section as well as information on prevention

BOOK: Settling to Learn: Settling Troubled Pupils to Learn - Why Relationships Matter in School by Louise Bombér (link)

BOOK: Navigating Autism: 9 Mindsets For Helping Kids on the Spectrum (link)

BOOK: Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development by Ann Masten (link)

PAPER (2025): Trauma-Informed Practice for Children and Young People with Intellectual Disabilities - A Scoping Review (link)

PAPER (2009): Assessment of PTSD in Individuals with Intellectual Difficulties (link)

PAPER (2008): Responding to the Mental Health Needs of Young People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities and Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Issues & Challenges (link)

For colleagues in the U.S. (though information is useful regardless):

WEBSITE: Child Mind Institute

WEBSITE: National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

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