In counseling, we often lean on the ACEs framework, Adverse Childhood Experiences, as a way to understand the lasting impact of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. It’s a useful lens, but it has a blind spot. Not every hard or painful experience a child goes through is trauma. Some adversities, though they sting in the moment, are the very things that build resilience, character, and grit. They are growth experiences. Without them, we would be less prepared for the inevitable blows of life.
I learned this early. At age eleven or twelve, I ran a paper route for the Phoenix Gazette and on Sundays, the Arizona Republic. My route had over fifty houses, and on weekends, the papers could weigh several pounds each. The Sunday edition was sometimes so thick I couldn’t carry it on my bike. My dad welded a wagon together for me so I could pull it behind me to handle the load. I’d rise at four or five in the morning, sometimes with my mom’s help, pedal through dark streets, fold and band the papers, then set off. It was grueling at times, especially for a kid. But it taught me discipline. It gave me pride. It gave me stories, like fashioning rubber-band guns from the endless supply of bands, that made me feel resourceful and powerful in a world full of neighborhood bullies. That paper route was an adversity, yes. But it was a productive one.
Other experiences were sharper, more painful. When we moved back to Arizona after a few years in Kentucky, we brought our beloved German Shorthair dog, Moses. We had found him as a puppy in a gutter, water rushing around him, and named him after the story of being drawn out of the water. In Kentucky, he roamed free across acres of land, but Arizona was different: city streets, cars, and danger. One day, Moses slipped out, wandered too far, and was struck by a car. His body was broken. My father took him to the backyard and, with a pistol, ended his suffering. I still remember the sound of the gunfire. It was brutal, and we were all devastated. But even that experience carried a lesson. It was one of my first intimate brushes with loss, a preparation for the harder deaths that would come later: my father, close friends, others I loved.
Neither of these stories belongs in the ACEs category. They were adverse, yes. They hurt, yes. But they also prepared me for life. They inoculated me against the idea that hardship is always toxic. They became the soil where resilience grew.
As therapists, we often blur these lines. We are quick to label every struggle as trauma, and in our zeal to advocate for children, we sometimes rob them of the very experiences that might prepare them for adulthood. We elevate children’s desires above parents’ ambitions, assuming that any stress or disappointment must be prevented. But childhood without challenge is a fragile foundation. If a young person never learns to face loss, work, or disappointment, how can they stand when a marriage collapses, when a parent dies, or when life deals one of its inevitable blows?
The difference is this: true trauma overwhelms a child’s capacity to cope. Growth adversity stretches it. Trauma isolates. Growth adversity often happens with some buffer of family or community, such as when my mom came along, helping me on Sunday mornings when the papers were so heavy. Trauma shatters meaning. Growth adversity, though not always in the moment, eventually reveals itself.
We need to remember that children are not made fragile by every struggle. They are made stronger if the struggle is within reach of their developing strength. The paper route. The loss of a beloved dog. These were not traumas to be erased. They were early lessons in work, in grief, in endurance. They were part of the training ground of becoming fully human.
Dr. Martin C. Wesley