Harry Potter and the Adverse Childhood Experiences
Jennifer Beall My daughter, April, works at an after-school program that has theater games classes in addition to dance and piano. She recently told me that one of the games included kids quoting Ron Weasley (in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie) saying to Harry “Not me. Not Hermione. You!” The quote is from the scene with the live-action, potentially deadly game of wizard chess that Ron, Hermione, and Harry were playing. It had been a long time since I’d watched the movie, so I decided to re-watch that scene. I watched Ron assign roles to Harry and Hermione, choose the role of knight for himself, then put the opposing king in check, knowing that the queen would strike him down. It was the first movie in the Harry Potter series, so Harry, Ron, and Hermione were VERY young. It would be hard enough for an adult to risk his life like that, let alone a tween boy like Ron. If you’re familiar with Harry Potter, you know that this was the pattern throughout the series: kids risking their lives with (in most cases) no adults around to help. The students at Hogwarts also experienced non-magical traumas, of course. Draco Malfoy and his associates Crabbe and Goyle were bullies. Hermione was made fun of because her parents weren’t wizards. Harry lost his parents and, later, his godfather, who had become like a father to him. In my decades as a psychotherapist, I’ve heard many stories of the traumas my clients endured as children, both at school and at home. And just as often as I’ve heard those stories, I’ve heard my clients wonder why no adult was there to help them. They’ve often pointed out that there was evidence that should have let teachers or other adults know that something was wrong, and yet nobody came to their rescue. From 1995 to 1997, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente conducted an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study[i] to see what long-term negative mental and physical health effects abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction might have on children. The study found that the more ACEs a person had, the more likely they were to develop habits (including smoking, lack of physical activity, and substance abuse) that could lead to health problems. A higher ACE score increased the probability of many mental and physical health problems, including cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, among others. Here is a quiz that assesses some of the possible adverse experiences a child might experience; it is much less comprehensive than the original study, but it covers the main points. [ii] [i] https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html [ii] https://www.acesaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ACE-Questionnaire-for-Adults-Identified-English-rev.7.26.22.pdf If you’re like most of my clients, you probably added up the number of ACEs you experienced and judged your right to feel traumatized accordingly. Many people think that they don’t have any right to feel traumatized because they don’t believe what happened to them was serious enough. That isn’t helpful, and it isn’t true. In fact, the accumulation of seemingly minor traumas over time is much more harmful than you might think. No matter how many ACEs you did or didn’t have, you deserve to heal, and I would like to help you to do that. You can fill out a contact form, book a free 15-minute phone consultation, or call or text me at 410-888-0590 to discuss what that might look like.