Consequences of Stress on Children's Development
The stress of a two year old boy that shaped his life forever

 That two year old boy had a mom and a dad who were never married and chose not to be together anymore. He lived with his mom in New York and his dad lived somewhere else. Both of his parents decided they needed to do something with him, as his mother couldn't afford to take care of him and his father didn't want to. So they decided that they would send him to Georgia to live with his father's adoptive parents, his grandparents, from whom his father had run away from because they had abused him. He was well aware of the environment in which he was sending his son into. So they put this two year old boy on a train by himself with his bag and sent him to Georgia. The pullman porter looked after him on the train until they arrived at his destination. Two men greeted the boy at the station, his Grand dad, whom he grew up to know as Dad, and a man named Red. He remembers going with them and them saying he had to go to the doctor. He remembers them putting him up on a metal table and struggling to get down. He heard them saying, "you've got to hold him down." and "he's strong." He remembers a doctor coming at him with what looked like a big long rounded syringe, then he felt pain. Twenty years later, this boy, now a man, asked his Grand dad about that day. His Grand dad was surprised the boy even remembered it. Grand dad explained that when they got him off the train the pullman porter told them that he could not go to the bathroom and his stomach was hurting. So they took him to the doctor for an enima.
To this day this little boy, now a man, is afraid to go the doctor. He will treat himself rather than risk going into the doctor's office. This boy, now a man, does not easily trust anyone. This happened in 1961, and the little boy is my father. The years of fear and abuse my father endured were nothing short of horrendous and as my father explained, he never dealt with it until he came to know Jesus Christ. A healing process had to take place of forgiving those who wronged you and telling them so- even if they never acknowledged the wrong they did. Growing up my father had a issue with trust and with self-esteem stemming from many more things that happened in his childhood. But the stress and trauma of being two and sent on a train by himself to an unknown place in unknown company and the stress of being held down against your will and  then feeling pain, was severe enough for him to remember even at the age of two.

Children in Sri Lanka, affected by war, violence, and abuse coupled with the recent natural disaster (Asian tsunami) has resulted in predictors of PTSD in children. This website shows evidence of the effects of cumulative stress on children's mental health with an article titled Family violence, war, and natural disasters: A study of the effect of extreme stress on children's mental health in Sri Lanka  http://www.biomedcentral.com
My best friend recently went on a mission trip to Sri Lanka. At the time she arrived the 25 year (1983-2009) civil war had only been declared over for about two years. There were armed guards walking around all over the place and it was scary and intimidating. She went with a medical team from Hand of Hope Mission to bring medical and dental care to the families of Sri Lanka. The children were malnutritioned and diseased, they had no clean water to drink and no access to healthcare or school. The families they helped lived in high rise buildings issued by the government with one room apartments. Down the middle of the building was a huge trash chute where all the trash went, but that is where it stayed. There were flies in the homes and the stench was tremendous. Disease was rampant. Most of the families and children beginning at age one or two worked in brick making plants to make a very small paycheck. The most alarming thing to my friend, who is also an early childhood educator, was that no one smiled- not even the children. And when she smiled at them they looked at her with the most puzzling look as if they had never seen a smile before. Maybe they hadn't.