Why Abuse Sets a Child to Running
Children don’t run because they are dramatic. They run because something in their world has become unbearable. When a child flees — physically, emotionally, or inwardly — it is never a mystery. It is a message. And like most messages from children, it arrives without punctuation, without explanation, without a tidy narrative arc. It arrives as behavior. Running is one of the clearest. 1. Running is the body’s first language Long before a child can articulate fear, their nervous system speaks for them. Abuse — whether physical, emotional, verbal, or neglectful — activates the body’s survival circuitry. The child doesn’t think I should escape . The child becomes escape . Running is biology, not rebellion. A child’s brain is still wiring itself. Safety is the foundation of that wiring. When safety collapses, the body takes over. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn — these aren’t choices. They’re reflexes. And “flight” is the one that looks like a child sprinting down a hallway, hiding in a ...
