ACEs & Child Development:

Consequences for Emerging Adulthood

Flower-boy
[Dreamstime, Zaikina 2019]

ACE Scores

When Learning about ACEs, one of the main things you'll encounter are ACE scores. ACE scoring is a way of quantifying how many ACEs someone has experienced, not how many times they've experienced a type of ACE. The original scoring for ACEs identified 10 main types of ACEs, though it has now been expanded to many different forms and types. However, the original 10 item questionaire is the one I'll reference the most because it is the most generalizable for a broad understanding of ACEs. Each question represented one type of ACE.

An ACE score of 0 means you have not experienced any ACEs. Your score goes up by 1 for each type of ACE you have experienced. 10 is considered the maximum score for the original screening test. When looking at probability and outcomes, most figures measure individual outcomes for scores of 1, 2, and 3. Then they group those with ACE scores of 4 or more together in outcomes due to the extreme nature of probability for adverse outcomes.

Breaking It Down

While there are many many ACEs, it can help to distinguish them by categorizing them from one another based on the nature of the experience. ACEs is a broad way to group these events, but these events are innumerable and ever-expanding. for example, the current ACE scoring questionaire does not include experiences like food insecurity, community violence, or living through a pandemic.

It can be helpful to understand ACEs by breaking them down into three categories:

  1. Abuse
  2. Neglect
  3. Household Dysfunction

1.Abuse

There are multiple categories of abuse. Here are a few common categories of abuse in children:

2.Neglect

There are multiple categories of neglect. Here are a few common categories of neglect in children:

3.Household Dysfunction

There are multiple types of Household Dysfunction. Here are a few common scenarios: