What it is
Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are what the CDC calls “preventable, potentially traumatic events” before age eighteen. The standard survey counts eight kinds, one point each: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, witnessing violence between partners, substance abuse at home, mental illness at home, parents separating or divorcing, and a household member in prison.
In survey data from 2011 to 2020, 63.9% of U.S. adults reported at least one, and 17.3% reported four or more.
The limit matters: a point means something happened, not that it left a wound of a certain size. People with the same score can carry very different things.
How it shows up for me
It helped me to see how common this is. Most people around me are carrying at least one point, and that makes me a little gentler with them, and with myself. It also makes me pay attention to the ones my own kids could be collecting right now.