The title pretty much says it all, but I’ll repeat again: Do small children experience survivor’s guilt? I know traumatic events can mess them up in all kinds of ways, just as older people are affected, but do they experience this specific symptom? Is it peculiarly modified for them? I’m curious how much an understanding of what has happened is necessary for that specific perception to set in, or whether it can set in later when people are old enough to make sense of their memories of terrible events.
(I feel like I sound too detached about this, what with suffering children being involved. FYI, it’s for a writing project.)
Not a psychologist, but I would expect that “survivor’s guilt” would be correlated with the maturation process…so it would depend upon the age of the child.
My youngest sister died at four - I was nine years old. Yes, I experienced survivor’s guilt - I recall thinking that it should it have been me, not her who died (for no apparent reason - I didn’t think I was a bad kid or anything).
I think it has everything to do with the age/emotional maturity of the child at the time of the event, the others who died, and the nature of the event itself.
For example, lets pretend a bunch of people are running for a boat and the child doesn’t make it on board, so he is left on a beach alone (where he will shortly be rescued by another friendly party, but he doesn’t know that yet.) The boat sails away and is blown up by a bomb, killing everyone on board.
I suspect the kid is less affected if he is 3 than if he is 8.
I suspect the kid is less affected if the boat had all adults on it and he was the only kid, versus if it was a boat of other kids his same age.
I suspect the kid is less affected if the people on the boat are strangers versus friends or relatives of the kid.
The kid will definitely be less affected if the boat blows up somewhere close to the horizon, versus close to shore where he will see (and possibly be showered with) the body parts of the recently dead.
Children use “magical thinking,” especially, when bad things happen. They often believe everything is their fault. They blame themselves for divorce, (I should have behaved better, so daddy would still love me) or the death or injury of a sibling (I shouldn’t have taken the last cookie, and she wouldn’t have gotten sick.)
They are the inventors of survivor’s guilt. Adult underestimate how much children know and feel. No one asks them so they keep it to themselves, since whatever happened was their fault.
I think Tranquilis and picunurse are talking about something other than the OP. They’re talking about “It was my fault”, but the OP is about “I should’ve been the one to get hurt.”