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CIE0010.1177/2043610619846319Contemporary Issues in Early ChildhoodVericat Rocha and Ruitenberg

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Global Studies of Childhood

2019, Vol. 9(2) 132­–144
Trauma-informed practices in © The Author(s) 2019
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and ethical considerations

Áurea M Vericat Rocha

University of British Columbia, Canada

Claudia W Ruitenberg
University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract
While it should be obvious on moral grounds that abusing children in any shape or form is wrong,
biological, medical and economic arguments have been necessary to bring attention to the long-
standing impact of early childhood trauma. In particular, stemming from the mental health field,
a trauma-informed approach seems to have become a privileged way to understand and attend
to children exposed to an array of traumatic experiences. However, the introduction of such an
approach is relatively recent and its implementation still needs to be explored. In this article, the
authors describe some of the possible contributions and limitations of a trauma-informed approach
to early childhood educators’ practice. They highlight the risks involved in privileging children’s
socialization to the detriment of their subjectification and underscore the need to broaden dominant
approaches to early childhood trauma by assuming an ethical responsibility towards children. To
guide educators in the necessary endeavour of encountering each child as an infinite Other, the
authors found inspiration in the work of Lithuanian-French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

Keywords
Children’s mental health, early childhood education, Levinas, trauma-informed

Introduction
The recent immigration crisis at the US border has heightened public awareness of the long-lasting
traumatic effects of family separations. Paediatricians have spoken out in public media against
such separations, often highlighting the repercussions of early childhood trauma. For example,

Corresponding author:
Áurea M Vericat Rocha, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4,
Canada.
Email: [email protected]
Vericat Rocha and Ruitenberg 133

Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was quoted in The Atlantic about
the effects of stress hormones on the brain development of the young child (Khazan, 2018), and the
Associated Press published a summary of scientific research findings on the same topic of toxic
stress and infant brain development (Tanner, 2018).
While the recent family separations are an egregious example of early childhood trauma, such
trauma is, of course, not a new phenomenon. Indeed, children aged ‘birth to 5 years have dispro-
portionately high rates of maltreatment’ (Osofsky and Lieberman, 2011: 120), with inflicted and
accidental injuries and exposure to interpersonal violence being the most frequent forms of trauma.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study (Felitti et al., 1998) evidenced trauma’s perva-
siveness and contributed to a growing awareness of the incidence and effects of traumatizing expe-
riences during a child’s early years. Early experiences of war, sexual and physical abuse, domestic
violence, forced separation from family and other types of trauma can affect a child’s development
well into adulthood (Shonkoff et al., 2012).
In response to early childhood trauma, trauma-informed approaches have been developed
(Hodas, 2006). Such approaches provide early childhood carers and educators with the awareness
that some behaviours, such as social withdrawal, anger or hypersociality, can be expressions of
early childhood trauma that call for opportunities to heal rather than behavioural correction.
There are, however, possible limitations to trauma-informed approaches to care. A focus on
socializing children risks standardizing and pathologizing emotions rather than encouraging their
expression. Despite almost 50 years of early interventions yielding rather modest results (Duncan
and Magnuson, 2013; Farran, 1990, 2000; Tanner et al., 2015; Wastell and White, 2017), brain sci-
ences are renewing the interventionist urge. When driven solely by economic interests, such inter-
ventions seem to conceive children as an ‘investment’ in the future workforce (Knudsen et al.,
2006) rather than addressing in broader and more sustainable ways issues of poverty, racism and
discrimination, which are often at the onset of trauma.
Much as we appreciate the attention that trauma-informed care approaches have brought to
early childhood trauma, its pervasiveness and its potentially lifelong implications, we are con-
cerned that if care is informed too strongly by trauma, this ‘information’ can overshadow recep-
tiveness to the singularity of the child. In this article, we begin by outlining the principles of a
trauma-informed approach to care. Following a description of some of its possible limitations, we
propose the work of Lithuanian-French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to guide an approach in
which the ‘traumatized child’ is received first and foremost as an individual child and never only
as an example or case of the category ‘early childhood trauma’. We highlight the need to articulate
a broader response to early childhood trauma – one which foregrounds ethical principles and sup-
ports educators in distinguishing the technical aspects of a trauma-informed approach from the
lived experience of embodying it. In doing so, we encourage educators to go beyond the occur-
rence of trauma, and the prescriptions to manage it, to instead embrace the responsibility of encoun-
tering and responding to the child as an unbounded individual.

The development of trauma-informed approaches to care

Considered landmark epidemiological research, the ACEs Study seems to have been the tipping
point that finally succeeded in attracting public and political attention to address the issue of early
childhood trauma. Based at Kaiser Permanente’s San Diego Health Appraisal Clinic, Felitti et al.
(1998: 245) defined ACEs as ‘psychological, physical, or sexual abuse; violence against the
mother; or living with household members who were substance abusers, mentally ill or suicidal, or
ever imprisoned’. Using the survey responses of 17,337 patients, they explored the presence of
ACEs in the household environment and assessed their long-term impact on adults’ health
134 Global Studies of Childhood 9(2)

outcomes. They discovered that ACEs are pervasive. Almost 64% of the study’s participants
reported having experienced at least one ACE, and more than one in five had experienced three or
more. The cumulative effect of ACEs was found to be especially serious. For instance, participants
with four or more ACEs compared to those with none

had 4- to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt … a
graded relationship [was also found] to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease,
cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures and liver disease. (Felitti et al., 1998: 245)

The ACEs Study also demonstrated that early adversity cuts across socio-economic variables.
Critically, it linked the occurrence of early childhood trauma with rising health costs, leading chil-
dren’s advocates to contend that early childhood trauma represents ‘a public health problem’
(Schilling and Christian, 2014: 309; Walker et al., 1992) and a ‘hidden epidemic’ (Lanius et al.,
2010) which requires an urgent response. Indeed, some scholars argue that ‘the cumulative burden
of multiple risk factors early in life may limit the effectiveness of later interventions’ (Shonkoff
et al., 2009: 2255), so intervening early has been hailed as the most cost-effective investment of all
(Heckman, 2008).
In order to implement such interventions, the idea of ‘trauma-informed’ care, stemming from
the mental health field, proposes that the different service providers (e.g. nurses, paediatricians,
therapists, social workers, educators, judges and policymakers) working with children who might
have experienced trauma offer care explicitly shaped by the awareness of trauma, and act in a
coordinated manner. Among these professionals, childcare providers and early childhood educa-
tors represent ‘a significant point of entry for intervention’ (Lieberman et al., 2011: 407) because
they have extensive opportunities to observe and identify trauma symptoms and support referrals
(Chu and Lieberman, 2010). Their participation is also considered critical because, in contrast with
the significant gap between the need and provision of mental health services worldwide (World
Health Organization, 2013) and the limited time that a therapy session usually lasts, educators have
daily opportunities to support children’s emotional rehabilitation, and thus can enhance their men-
tal health in consistent and powerful ways.
Considering that the origin of trauma and its remediation are typically related and dependent on
relationships (Ludy-Dobson and Perry, 2010), a trauma-informed approach foregrounds the impor-
tance of providing children with dependable and nurturing care, in environments that are physi-
cally and emotionally safe and offer predictable routines (Sciaraffa et al., 2018). Creating such
environments implies a schoolwide change away from coercive behavioural methods that focus on
obedience and control, punish children, and tend to interpret so-called ‘challenging’ or ‘disruptive’
behaviours as attention-seeking, manipulative or goal-oriented (Phifer and Hull, 2016). It involves
the implementation of routine screenings to identify trauma’s behavioural and affective manifesta-
tions, and a strong focus on developing and supporting children’s self-regulation and coping skills
(Milot et al., 2015).
Educators trained to be trauma-informed strive to be ‘emotionally attuned’ (Dalli and White,
2015: 41) with children to validate their emotions and experiences. They know that some behav-
iours and strategies appear to be maladaptive when taken out of the context where they helped
children survive (Hodas, 2006), and recognize that these are often the re-enactment or representa-
tion of something that the child cannot articulate or express verbally (Gaensbauer, 2004). Although
such re-enactment usually takes the form of an outburst, trauma might also be expressed with, for
instance, numbness, withdrawal or compliance (Cook et al., 2005). Thus, trauma-informed educa-
tors become keen observers of the child to identify trauma triggers and avoid retraumatization.
They are aware of past or ongoing occurrence of trauma, so, when faced with a child who might be
Vericat Rocha and Ruitenberg 135

‘acting out’, instead of asking ‘What is wrong with you?’ they approach the child with curiosity
and the willingness to know what experience shapes their behaviour (Lieberman, 2015). Considering
that caring for children exposed to trauma is often stressful or triggering, educators are encouraged
to engage in self-care and reflective and ‘mindfulness’ practices to have better coping skills and
preserve their own mental health (Dym Bartlett et al., 2017: 12).

Limitations and critiques of trauma-informed approaches to care

The proposal of a trauma-informed approach to care acknowledges that emotions belong in edu-
cational contexts and suggests that schools can function as a ‘safe haven’ for emotional expres-
sion and healing. A quick review of the basic tenets of trauma-informed approaches to care
shows, however, that the main focus seems to be on regulating and controlling emotions rather
than exploring and expressing them (see also Ritchie, 2016: 119–120). In fact, a main concern is
how ‘negative’ emotions interfere with cognitive development, behavioural expectations and
academic achievement, so trauma-informed approaches typically seek to yield children who are
better at self-regulating, less prone to react impulsively, and have strategies to cope with adver-
sity. In that sense, the role of early childhood education in relation to early childhood trauma
seems aligned with ‘the plethora of evidence that supports quality child care as significant in
promoting the socioemotional wellbeing of infants and toddlers’ (Mortensen and Barnett, 2016:
74). Accordingly, the main focus is on normalizing and standardizing emotions and behaviours
– in other words, on socializing children.
While socialization is a legitimate function of early childhood centres and other educational
institutions, we argue that it ought not to be the only function. As Biesta (2009) explains,
‘education’ – which he uses here in the sense of ‘schools and other educational institutions’ –
‘generally performs three different (but related…) functions,’ which he calls ‘the qualification,
socialisation and subjectification function of education’ (39). The qualification function refers to
the role education plays in preparing people to do particular kinds of things, including work, but
also, for example, pursuing further education. The socialization function refers to the role educa-
tion plays in preparing people to be ‘part of particular social, cultural and political “orders”’
(40). People are socialized into a host of conventions that keep society running smoothly, includ-
ing everything from gender conventions to knowing that red means ‘stop’ and green means ‘go’
at the crosswalk. Qualification and socialization are fairly straightforward functions, and most
people have a sense of what it means to say that a person is qualified or not qualified to do some-
thing, or to say that a child is or is not well socialized. Subjectification, however, is less straight-
forward. Biesta writes:

The subjectification function might perhaps best be understood as the opposite of the socialization
function. It is precisely not about the insertion of ‘newcomers’ into existing orders, but about ways of
being that hint at independence from such orders; ways of being in which the individual is not simply a
‘specimen’ of a more encompassing order. (40)

In other words, schooling fulfils a subjectification function if it enables students to ‘come into the
world’ as unique persons (Biesta, 2006: 100). Different kinds of schooling will place a different
emphasis on these three functions; it is uncontroversial, for example, to say that medical education
should place a greater emphasis on qualifications than early childhood education. However, as
Ruitenberg (2016: 14) argues, ‘schooling’ – in which we include institutionalized early childhood
education – ‘must perform a subjectification function to claim it is educating at all and not only
training or socializing’. This means that, if early childhood education becomes so focused on
136 Global Studies of Childhood 9(2)

socialization – including through the regulation and normalization of emotions and behaviours –
that it leaves little room for subjectification, it can no longer call itself early childhood ‘education’.
Moreover, in contexts with histories of colonization, the emphasis on socialization entails the risk
of ‘perpetuating the ongoing trauma of historical colonization’ (Ritchie, 2016: 114) by seeking to
insert newcomers into a social order shaped by the dominant settler society, and misrecognizing
‘the harms of colonialism [through] the frame of trauma’ (Clark, 2016: 6). As Ritchie (2016: 114)
describes in the context of the education of Māori children in New Zealand, ‘Western behaviourist
programmes such as the “Incredible Years” [a US-developed programme for parents and teachers
of children aged three to eight] focus on modifying children’s conduct, rather than modelling sensi-
tive, respectful, compassionate, empathic relationality’.
Notwithstanding the importance of supporting children’s cognitive development, a focus on
universalizing and controlling emotions rather than on supporting their expression and attending to
the structural causes of trauma supports the ‘farsightedness’ of the western paradigm which con-
ceives the child as ‘not-yet-an-adult’ rather than as ‘already-a-child’. Inscribed within this perspec-
tive, by projecting the ‘damaged’ child into the future, a trauma-informed approach risks
overlooking the ‘present child’. It might easily dismiss the unique ways in which a child acts and
responds within and beyond trauma, the coping strategies that a child intelligently develops, and
the different ways in which a child asserts themself and acts in the world if we make the space for
them to do so. We argue that, if a trauma-informed approach remains focused on children’s brains
rather than minds (Burman, 2017), unconcerned with the actual child and occupied with their
future performance as an adult, it risks missing out on meeting the budding subject who, as an
Other, is facing us in the here and now within and beyond the occurrence of trauma. In other words,
as Marlowe (2010) points out, an exclusive trauma-focused understanding often results in conflat-
ing with trauma the whole identity of those affected by it, thus eclipsing critical aspects and mani-
festations of the self. In this sense, a trauma-informed approach to care risks inscribing children,
parents and mothers in particular within a deficit framework that furthers their classification, nor-
malization and surveillance. Likewise, by using labels like ‘traumatized’ or ‘dysfunctional’, and
conceiving children as ‘broken’ or ‘damaged’, trauma-informed approaches risk imposing further
harm by pathologizing children and their families.

The economic focus on early childhood trauma

Based on the economic arguments first advanced by Heckman and Carneiro (2003; see also Cunha
et al., 2010; Heckman, 2006), early interventions have come to be considered the most cost-effec-
tive investment of all. Recently, however, ‘the earlier the better’ principle has been debunked
regarding parenting interventions (Gardner et al., 2019), adding to the existing criticisms of the
dominance of economic interests (Burman, 2017; Howard-Jones, 2014; Vandenbroeck et al.,
2017). About Heckman’s work, Wastell and White (2017) argue that despite its ‘mathematical
sophistication’ (134), it has significant explanatory limitations and provides a ‘reductionist’ and
‘impoverished account of the world’ (137) that does not effectively support or recognize the
broader needs of marginalized families (see also Howard-Jones, 2014).
Further underpinning the economic argument, the engagement and fascination with neuroscience
and epigenetics has been remarkable. For instance, echoing the ‘infant determinist paradigm’ (Kagan,
1998) and resultant interventionist discourses, Van den Heuvel and Thomason (2016: 934) claim that,
using foetal functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, they can predict behavioural and emo-
tional issues prenatally with ‘huge implications for the burden on families and cost for society’. As
Wastell and White (2017: 37) detail, this drive to find correlations between behaviours, psychological
processes and the functioning of the brain is not new. The latest metaphor coined to that end – that of
Vericat Rocha and Ruitenberg 137

the brain working as an ‘information processing machine’ – was likely inspired by the computer and
the brain’s internal structure and its ‘network’ appearance. Its acceptance has been fuelled by the
‘seductive allure of neuroscience explanations’ (Im et al., 2017: 518) and colourful brain images that
claim to depict mind–brain relationships. This allure easily leads us to forget that the distinct biogra-
phies of each individual and ‘the sheer complexity of the brain, with billions of neurones and uncount-
able connections, [makes] the characterisation of its “state” at any time a formidable, if not an
insuperable, computational challenge’ (Wastell and White, 2017: 39).
Disregarding these explanatory limitations, neuroscience and epigenetics are being used to
intervene in families’ rearing practices and to politicize parenting (Macvarish et al., 2014: 795).
They are politically useful because they are appealing to the public, do not appear to be moralizing
and serve to divert attention from ‘the absence of consensus about what is right and wrong in fam-
ily life’ (Macvarish et al., 2014: 796; see also Kagan, 1998). Underpinned by neuroscience, politi-
cal arguments are presented as being neutral, objective and compassionate (for a critique of such
governmental intrusion from the Foucauldian perspective of biopower, see Wells (2011)). Gillies
(2013: 6) argues, however, that brain-based interventions are not only ‘deeply moralizing’; their
presumed neutrality deflects attention away ‘from broader structural and economic risks facing
families’. In other words, more often than not, ‘what might be seen as a brain disease may, in fact,
be better described as diseases of poverty, racism, or other forms of marginalization’ (Sparks and
Duncan, 2004: 34).
Conceiving mental health primarily as a biological and brain-related issue often results in the
pathologization of ‘undesirable’ emotions and the ‘medicalization of social suffering’ (Maxwell,
2014). An alarming consequence of this has been the attempt to manage children’s affective and
behavioural manifestations with a plethora of psychotropic medications (Sparks and Duncan,
2004), despite ‘the limited knowledge base that underlies psychotropic medication use in very
young children’ (Zito et al., 2000: 1028; see also Anderson and Phelps, 2009).
Further evidencing the possible limitations of a medicalized and interventionist approach to
trauma is the issue of diagnosis. Commenting on the classification of mental health and develop-
mental disorders of infancy and early childhood proposed by the US organization Zero to Three
(DC: 0-5), Von Klitzing (2017) notes the controversy that still exists over the appropriateness of
categorizing infants’ mental health problems using psychiatric diagnoses. While highlighting that
‘infants do contribute actively to relationships and are not merely passive “victims” of detrimen-
tal environments’, Von Klitzing points out a significant fact. Taking the example of ‘Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (starting from age 36 months) and Overactivity Disorder of
Toddlerhood (age 24 to 36 months)’, both included in DC:0–5, he notes that ‘[a]ll the behavioral
phenomena described as diagnostic criteria are related to social and cultural expectations’ (our
emphasis) and states:

Put bluntly, the fact that the prevalence rate of the disorder has increased to 6% in school children does not
tell us whether this is due to an increase in disordered children, or whether clinicians have become more
alert to the symptoms, or whether social norms have changed over time with less tolerance towards
children’s needs for movement and impulse expression.

As early childhood educators become knowledgeable about early childhood trauma, they will
likely be more alert to the symptoms associated with it. It is still unclear, however, to what extent
this knowledge will bias or enrich their understanding of each child. By exploring some of the pos-
sible limitations of trauma-informed approaches to early childhood education, we do not want to
dismiss the foundational character of early childhood, and even less so minimize the consequences
of early childhood trauma. Rather, we seek to contribute to children’s mental health and well-being
138 Global Studies of Childhood 9(2)

by broadening the dominant approaches that seek to address it, particularly by highlighting the
need to assume an ethical responsibility towards each child as a unique individual.
The legitimate concerns with which we opened this article, about the effects of stress hormones
on the developing brain, flow from research in neuroscience and epigenetics. Our concern, then, is
not whether neuroscience or epigenetics can contribute to our collective knowledge about the
developing brain, as it is quite clear that they can; our concern is with too singular a focus on the
brain and the reduction of the child as a whole person – an Other, as we discuss later – to the brain
and its biological development. Indeed, following the English neuroscientist Steven Rose (2011:
69), we argue that such ‘increased knowledge [cannot] replace or diminish the insights into what it
is to be human that come from philosophy, the social sciences or the humanities’.

Levinasian ethics in early childhood care and education

Our work builds on that of others who have drawn inspiration from Levinas’s ethics for a consid-
eration of adults’ responsibility to young children. One of Levinas’s central contributions to phi-
losophy has been a critique of the centrality of epistemology in philosophy and a foregrounding of
ethics that does not rely on knowledge. A dominant assumption, especially in western ethics, has
been that our ability to respond ethically to another person depends on us knowing enough about
that person: what they need, what they have done, what their intentions were, and so forth. This
assumption goes back to Descartes’s search for the one thing he could be certain about, from which
he thought experience could begin. Descartes sought this certainty in knowledge or, more specifi-
cally, in the only thing he could know with certainty – namely, that he was the knowing subject
(cogito). Levinas critiques this focus on certainty in knowledge and puts in its stead an ethical
receptivity to the Other – a susceptibility to the vulnerability and suffering of another person, about
whom we may not know anything.2 He writes:

The I in the negativity manifested by [Cartesian] doubt breaks with participation but does not find in the
cogito itself a stopping place. It is not I, it is the other that can say yes. From him comes affirmation; he is
at the commencement of experience. (Levinas, 1969: 93)

Levinas rejects not only Descartes’s scepticism and rationalism, but also his focus on the self; it is
not the self who initiates experience, but the Other. Descartes’s ‘I think, therefore I am’ is replaced
by ‘The Other calls me, therefore I am’. More specifically, it is the face of the Other that calls me
and in which the vulnerability of the Other reveals itself: ‘The face is the evidence that makes
evidence possible – like the divine veracity that sustains Cartesian rationalism’ (204).
The idea of the ‘face’ in Levinas’s work is not self-evident, as it refers not literally to a person’s
face but rather to the surface of the Other that presents and expresses itself to me. Levinas explains:

The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face.
This mode does not consist in figuring as a theme under my gaze, in spreading itself forth as a set of
qualities forming an image. The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image
it leaves me. (50–51; original emphasis)

The way in which the Other presents himself is unique and cannot be categorized according to the
‘set of qualities forming an image’. In other words, the Other presents herself to me not as a face
with a button nose and freckles, or as a face with scars, or as a face that reminds me of my Aunt
Minnie; no, it presents itself, full stop. ‘The face is present in its refusal to be contained. In this
sense it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed’ (194).
Vericat Rocha and Ruitenberg 139

Apprehending the face of the Other does not mean assessing a person’s specific needs or vulner-
abilities so that I can then decide what a reasonable response would be to meet those needs or miti-
gate those vulnerabilities. Rather, it means being compelled to respond before knowledge about the
person has been gathered. Receiving and apprehending the vulnerability of the Other means being
compelled to respond to it.
Inspired by his Judaism, Levinas sees the encounter with another person as a mitzvah or
call to which we must respond. The needs of the Other, for Levinas, must take priority over
my own:

The Other does not only appear in his face, as a phenomenon subject to the action and domination of a
freedom; infinitely distant from the very relation he enters, he presents himself there from the first as an
absolute … the face summons me to my obligations and judges me … my position as I consists in being able
to respond to this essential destitution of the Other, finding resources for myself. The Other who dominates
me in his transcendence is thus the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, to whom I am obligated. (215)

Some Levinasian scholars discuss the figure of the infant as the paradigmatic figure of the vulnerable
Other to whose call we ought to respond. The mother’s surrender to the needs of her child becomes
the model for any human being’s moral surrender to the needs of the vulnerable Other. For example,
Strhan refers to the infant to explain the idea that the Other has ‘mastery’ over the self:

The mastery of the Other stems not from a relation of institutional power, but in a sense from his very
vulnerability: that vulnerability gives his interpellation an urgency that undoes my self-sufficiency and
places his need before my own. This could be illustrated in the way an infant might be seen to have
‘mastery’ over its mother. The mother will put the infant’s needs before her own, where mastery resides in
the power of this vulnerability’s appeal. The Other is not a specific person, but their mastery resides in the
appeal of the face that, as in this illustration, assumes an authority in vulnerability as potent as that of an
infant. (Strhan, 2012: 39)

Similarly, Katz describes how the mother’s relation to the infant – not a particular mother to a
particular infant but the figure of the mother to the figure of the infant – is exemplary for the
responsibility of the self to the Other:

In order to illustrate the ethical relationship he has in mind, Levinas turns to the maternal figure. In his
view, the maternal exemplifies that which is held hostage ethically by the other and which gives itself over
to the other completely. (Katz, 2003: 133; see also Astell, 2004)

Like with the concept of ‘mastery’ in Strhan’s account, Katz’s reference to the concept of ‘hostage’
illustrates the inversion of the typical power relationship between adult and child: while the adult
is, of course, physically, socially and politically more powerful than the child, Levinas’s perspec-
tive assigns to the child (and to the Other more generally) the ethical power to issue a call to which
the adult (the moral self) must respond.
The most influential authors to have discussed the work of Levinas in relation to early child-
hood education and care are Dahlberg and Moss (2005). While the connections between Levinas’s
ethics and care ethics are perhaps less straightforward than what Dahlberg and Moss make them
out to be (e.g. see Diedrich et al., 2006), they offer a good insight into the way in which Levinas’s
ethical perspective resists the common tendency in early childhood policies and practices to solve
determined problems and work towards predetermined developmental and educational outcomes.
Seen through the lens of Levinas’s ethics, they write: ‘the child becomes a complete stranger, not
a known quantity through classificatory systems and normative practices whose progress and
140 Global Studies of Childhood 9(2)

development must be steered to familiar and known ends’ (Dahlberg and Moss, 2005: 93). In the
context of our discussion in this article, this means that the child who has experienced early child-
hood trauma can – the seriousness of trauma notwithstanding – still be encountered as a stranger.
The child is never to be regarded only as a ‘traumatized child’, a child perennially identified
through the known and knowable category of ‘trauma’, but always also as an unknowable Other.
For Levinas (1969), the categories with which we comprehend and classify the Other are part of
the institutional realm that imposes universal criteria and disregards uniqueness. He writes:

In the measure that the face of the Other relates us with the third party, the metaphysical relation of the I
with the Other moves into the form of a We, aspires to a State, institutions, laws, which are the source of
universality. But politics left to itself … deforms the I and the other who have given rise to it, for it judges
them according to universal rules, and thus as in absentia. (Levinas, 1969: 300)

The challenge is that Levinas’s ethics demands not a response that can be easily added to the more
common educational and therapeutic models that rely on knowledge about the child. Rather,
Levinas’s ethics demands an interruption and suspension of such models; the adult is stripped of
labelled professional duties such as ‘care’ and ‘education’ and becomes a site of passivity and sus-
ceptibility to the alterity and vulnerability of the child. This stance honours the subjectification
function of education that we discussed earlier: an early childhood educator who can receive and
be susceptible to the child also assumes and witnesses the child’s subjectivity. As Biesta (2009)
explains, in the socialization and qualification functions, the adult imposes systems and structures
on the child; subjectification happens when the child can exceed those systems and structures, and
comes into the world as a unique being.
Working with Levinas’s perspective to provide a critical response to Australian early childhood
education policy, Cheeseman et al. write:

We examine closely how the systemisation of education for infants might be based on a particular
‘knowing’ of the infant and how this ‘knowing’ might define the experiences of infants as they increasingly
encounter written representations of learning in the form of government produced curricula. (Cheeseman
et al., 2015: 823)

Cheeseman et al. do not address specific policies or curricula for children who have experienced
early childhood trauma, but we would frame our concern about such policies and curricula in terms
similar to theirs: trauma-informed care approaches tend to be based on a particular ‘knowing’ of
the infant and insist on the need to train educators about early childhood trauma. They thus entail
the risk that the unique otherness of the particular infant is subsumed in categories of knowledge,
and that the unsatisfiable responsibility to the Other is misunderstood as a satisfiable responsibility
to meet identified needs and diagnoses.
The French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur captures the demand on early childhood car-
ers and educators particularly well when he describes the situation of a person entrusted with the
responsibility for a fragile other:1

We are rendered responsible by the fragile. Yet what does ‘rendered responsible’ mean? When the fragile
is not something but someone – an individual, groups, communities, even humanity – this someone
appears to us as entrusted to our care, placed in our custody. Let us be careful, however. The image of
custody, or the burden which one takes upon oneself, should not render us inattentive to the other
component emphasized by the expression ‘entrusted to our care’ – the fragile as ' ‘someone’ who relies on
us, expects our assistance and care, and trusts that we shall fulfil our obligations. (Ricœur, 1995: 16; our
emphasis)
Vericat Rocha and Ruitenberg 141

The phrase ‘rendered responsible’ describes powerfully how the encounter with the child positions
the early childhood educator as the one responsible for the fragile Other. While the early childhood
educator can benefit from reading the case notes about the child or studying research on early
childhood trauma, neither the case notes nor the research on early childhood trauma can render the
early childhood educator responsible. It is only in meeting the child as a person that the early child-
hood educator can, as Ricœur puts it, ‘feel that we are rendered responsible for, and by, someone’
(16; original emphasis).

Conclusion
We have emphasized the idea that the fragile Other is ‘someone’ – a person to whom we are respon-
sible. In other words, we are responsible not to a what but to a whom, not for something about the
Other but to the Other as a whole, singular and ultimately unknowable person. The biological and
clinical knowledge we have gained about early childhood trauma has served to confirm and recog-
nize that young children not only do remember traumatic experiences but can be profoundly
affected by them. Early childhood trauma has neurobiological, cognitive, socio-emotional and
behavioural consequences that can potentially reverberate throughout the lifespan of the individ-
ual. Insofar as this knowledge is fuelling the development of political, social and therapeutic
actions to support the mental health and well-being of young children, we are undoubtedly moving
forward in curtailing the consequences of early childhood trauma.
We have argued, however, for the need to bring ethical considerations to the fore to reposition the
child within the trauma-informed approach not solely as a victim but first and foremost as a whole
Other. Our concern is that the powerful knowledge that continues to develop around early childhood
trauma risks overpowering the encounter with the uniqueness of each child. We have also noted that,
by focusing on intervening early at the level of children and families, systemic inequalities are indi-
vidualized and continue to be insufficiently addressed. This tendency follows the logic of an econo-
mistic ‘investment’ discourse that focuses on the child as a potential future adult rather than as a
person in the here and now. Rather than developing interventions focused on managing and ‘normal-
izing’ children’s ‘undesirable’ emotions, the historical and current violence and trauma that young
children continue to experience worldwide compel us to revise the predominance of the rational over
the emotional, and highlight the need to engage with children’s emotions as well as with ours. The
early childhood educator faced with a child who has experienced early childhood trauma may well be
capable of and responsible for repairing and redressing some of the damage the trauma has done but,
ultimately, the greatest demand is that of being responsible to the child as a singular person.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. While Ricœur’s work has not always been fully aligned with that of Levinas, Ricœur’s writing on ethics
towards the end of his career more closely approached Levinas’s perspective.
2. The uses of ‘other’ and ‘Other’ can be confusing in the English translations of Levinas’s texts. Most
commonly, ‘other’ appears to be a translation of ‘l’Autre,’ whereas ‘Other’ appears to be a translation of
‘l’Autrui.’ For our purposes, we have capitalized ‘Other’ whenever referring to a person.

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Author biographies
Áurea M Vericat Rocha is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of British
Columbia, and a Montessori early childhood educator. She works in collaboration with Indigenous early
childhood educators to inform the development of Indigenous early childhood professional development edu-
cation, particularly around early childhood trauma.
Claudia W Ruitenberg is professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British
Columbia. She is author of Unlocking the World: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality (2015), co-editor of
Education, Culture and Epistemological Diversity: Mapping a Disputed Terrain (2012), and editor of (i.a.)
Reconceptualizing Study in Educational Discourse and Practice (2017).