Adverse Childhood Experiences Quotes

I had a bad background just growing up as a child.

Parents, teachers, and other school staff need the tools to help these young people early in their lives. And the earlier, the better. It is proven that early action prevents problems later in life.

I lived in Complexo do Alemao until I was 12, dealt with domestic violence in my childhood and faced difficulties in life.

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

But I don't think I've grown up to be a damaged adult.

I believe that everybody comes from pain and a certain amount of dysfunction.

I was definitely an at-risk kid growing up.

If a kid is born into a tough situation with no means of dealing with it, you end up with kids who are mentally ill and have no way of reaching out.

I had a very difficult upbringing.

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.

I think so much of my early life, even though I grew up White and middle class, I was completely shattered by the horrifically violent atmosphere I grew up in. I am a consequence of violence. That opened a door to many realities that I would not have experienced had I not survived what I did.

People hear the examples of kids who work when they're young, have bad experiences, and then have a rough life after that, but a lot of it is just about the people around you.

Sometimes I think we're exposed to things we shouldn't be exposed to too early. I think that sets the tone to a person's whole life. Trauma.

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up.

The greater a child’s terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.

Going to a therapist is not something you do when you're growing up as a street kid in Toronto.

Oftentimes, experiencing tragedy very young can strangely give you a kind of equilibrium.

Research has shown that a barren environment is much more damaging to baby animals than it is to adult animals. It does not hurt the adult animals the same way it damages babies.

Ghettos and barrios and abusive homes and trauma wards may produce scarred souls; they can cripple more human spirits than they strengthen.

I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking?

What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me!

If you look at our theories of social pathology and then at the dismal conditions in which children grow up in our ghettos, you would predict that all of them would be on drugs or psychological basket cases. Yet if you use criteria like gainful employment, forming partnerships and life without crime, you will find that most of those kids make it.

I had a very rough childhood and not a happy one and by age 15 I was an old person in many ways. I knew that I had to take care of myself, I um and I always did.

My childhood was absolutely the worst place I've ever been," "It was terrible.