ABSTRACT
Central to programme of research is the hypothesis that mothers with violence-related post-traumatic stress disorder may experience their very young child's routine distress as a trigger of pre-existing post-traumatic stress. The toddler's assumptions that mother will share his tendency to appraise his situation based completely on his feelings are developmentally expected for a young child but not for an adult parent. Interventions for the traumatised mothers and children need to focus on helping them tolerate trauma-associated mental states in their children and supporting them read and respond to their children's emotional cues. Given the clear disturbances in many traumatised mothers' caregiving behaviour and the associated disturbances in young children's self-regulation of emotion and arousal, people must ask what people can do as clinician's to help the families. A mother's perception of her child may be negatively skewed by the experience of interpersonal violence and subsequent triggers of post-traumatic stress.
