ACEs and toxic stresses are any stressful or traumatic events that occur during childhood. Toxic stresses can be singular events, such as an accident or an instance of abuse or violence, or they can be more long-lasting, permanent conditions, such as growing up in a city with a high crime rate or a neighborhood with a lot of pollution. ACEs and toxic stresses aren’t just emotionally or psychologically debilitating—they can actually change children’s neural connections and brain function. The more ACEs and toxic stresses a child is exposed to, the more likely they are to have lower IQs and learning disabilities, violent tendencies, and even significantly shorter lifespans.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)/Toxic Stresses Quotes in What the Eyes Don’t See
The What the Eyes Don’t See quotes below are all either spoken by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)/Toxic Stresses or refer to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)/Toxic Stresses. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11
Quotes
I thought about everything he’d been through, largely preventable, all the toxic stresses: violence, fear, bullet wounds, hospital visits, surgeries, and PTSD, and then the effects of lead poisoning. For many people, life isn’t long enough to recover from a childhood like that.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire What the Eyes Don’t See LitChart as a printable PDF.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)/Toxic Stresses Term Timeline in What the Eyes Don’t See
The timeline below shows where the term Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)/Toxic Stresses appears in What the Eyes Don’t See. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: What the Eyes Don’t See
The negative environmental factors that affect children in Flint are today known as “ adverse childhood experiences ” (often abbreviated as ACEs) or “toxic stresses.” During the most formative years of one’s...
(full context)
Chapter 21: Numbers War
...remedy or easy fix to lead contamination—the treatment is prevention. Even though early trauma and toxic stresses impact children’s development, Mona knew that there were interventions known to mitigate the effects of...
(full context)
