This study aimed to understand parents’ process of centering their child’s interpersonal traumatic event in their lives post-disclosure. Specifically, how it informed their understanding of themselves, their lives, and the world. This phenomenon of centering a traumatic event in one’s life is termed event centrality and has not been previously applied to qualitative research or this population. Participants were 17 primary caregivers (14 maternal caregivers and 3 paternal caregivers) of 27 victims of child interpersonal trauma (14 males and 13 females) located in Canada. The age of participants ranged from 35 to 75 years (average = 54.5 years) and majority self-identified as Caucasian (70.6%). Grounded theory was used to analyze the data. The resulting model was labeled Vicarious Event Centralization and Decentralization, indicating that parents center their child’s interpersonal trauma across many areas of their lives, which orients them to focus on protecting and healing the child. After the child’s functioning improves, parents are then able to reorient to life beyond the trauma, representing decentralization. The grounded theory consists of three phases: Centralization, Decentralization Gateway, and Decentralization. These results illustrate that parents’ centralization of the trauma may be an adaptive mechanism that promotes child recovery, which in turn allows parents to begin to decentralize the trauma and move toward recovery. This study supports that parents are affected by their child’s trauma in a myriad of ways and require unique services to address their needs. This study can help practitioners understand the post-trauma experience for parents and target areas likely to increase recovery.

中文翻译：

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父母的替代事件是孩子人际创伤的中心

本研究旨在了解父母在披露孩子的人际创伤事件后将其置于生活中的过程。具体来说，它如何影响他们对自己、生活和世界的理解。这种将创伤事件集中在一个人的生活中的现象被称为事件中心性，之前尚未应用于定性研究或该人群。参与者是加拿大 27 名儿童人际创伤受害者（14 名男性和 13 名女性）的 17 名主要照顾者（14 名母亲照顾者和 3 名父亲照顾者）。参与者的年龄从 35 岁到 75 岁不等（平均 54.5 岁），大多数人自认为是白人（70.6%）。使用扎根理论来分析数据。由此产生的模型被标记为替代事件集中和分散，表明父母将孩子的人际创伤集中在他们生活的许多领域，这使他们能够专注于保护和治愈孩子。当孩子的功能得到改善后，父母就能够超越创伤重新适应生活，这代表着权力下放。扎根理论分为三个阶段：中心化、去中心化网关、去中心化。这些结果表明，父母对创伤的集中可能是一种促进孩子康复的适应性机制，这反过来又使父母开始分散创伤并走向康复。这项研究表明，父母会以多种方式受到孩子创伤的影响，需要独特的服务来满足他们的需求。这项研究可以帮助从业者了解父母的创伤后经历以及可能促进康复的目标领域。