‘Life should go on’: a qualitative inquiry of parental reactions, experiences, and perceived needs following adolescents’ recent traumatic exposure

Background: Parents have a significant role in supporting children who have been exposed to traumatic events. Little is known about parental experiences and needs in the wake of traumatic exposure, which could help in designing tailored early interventions. Objective: This qualitative study explored experiences, perceived needs, and factors impacting those needs being met, in parents of adolescents aged 11–16 years who had been exposed in the past 3 months to a potentially traumatic event, in the city of Montpellier, France. Method: We purposively sampled 34 parents of 25 adolescents aged 11–16 years meeting the inclusion criteria and used semi-structured in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was applied using a multistage recursive coding process. Results: Parents lacked trauma-informed explanations to make sense of their child’s reduced functioning. They experienced stigma attached to the victim label and were reluctant to seek help. School avoidance and lack of collaboration with schools were major obstacles experienced by parents. Parents trying to navigate conflicting needs fell into two distinct categories. Those who experienced distressing levels of shame and guilt tended to avoid discussing the traumatic event with their child, pressuring them to resume life as it was before, despite this perpetuating conflictual interactions. Others adapted by revisiting their beliefs that life should go on as it was before and by trying to come up with new functional routines, which improved their relationship with their child and helped them to restore a sense of agency and hope, but at the cost of questioning their parental role. Conclusions: Key domains of parental experiences could provide potential early intervention targets, such as psychoeducation on traumatic stress, representations about recovery and the victim status, parent–child communication, and involvement of schools and primary caregivers. Further research is needed to validate the impact of these domains in early post-traumatic interventions. Parents of teenagers exposed to traumatic events struggle to understand trauma and feel isolated.Parents feel pressured to resume life as it was before, leading to conflictual child–parent interaction.Psychoeducation, stigma, and school involvement could be early intervention targets. Parents of teenagers exposed to traumatic events struggle to understand trauma and feel isolated. Parents feel pressured to resume life as it was before, leading to conflictual child–parent interaction. Psychoeducation, stigma, and school involvement could be early intervention targets.