Brannan and Katie’s teacher have conferenced about Katie’s behavior many times. Brannan’s not surprised she’s picked up overreacting and yelling—you don’t have to be at the Vines residence for too long to hear Caleb hollering from his room, where he sometimes hides for 18, 20 hours at a time, and certainly not if you’re there during his nightmares, which Katie is.

Katie’s symptoms are a direct link to trauma caused by witnessing her father’s PTSD outbreaks, which the author explains as a causal claim.

“She mirrors…she just mirrors” her dad’s behavior, Brannan says.

The author explains that Katie is copying her father’s behavior unintentionally, which is an evaluative claim. (The behavior that Katie shows is from the PTSD.) 

She can’t get Katie to stop picking at the sores on her legs, sores she digs into her own skin with anxious little fingers.

The quote is an analogy claim/categorical claim; Katie is inflicting pain to herself caused by the PTSD. The mother mentions these similarities that people with PTSD cause to themselves.

Different studies of the children of American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam vets with PTSD have turned up different results: “45 percent” of kids in one small study “reported significant PTSD signs”; “83 percent reported elevated hostility scores.” Other studies have found a “higher rate of psychiatric treatment”; “more dysfunctional social and emotional behavior”; “difficulties in establishing and maintaining friendships.”

The text could be a factual claim, or comparative claim; the author explains that children have an increase in hostility due to the PTSD. 

The author is also comparing different studies to learn about the children’s mental health. (To find a treatment for the PTSD.)

But then in 2003, a team of Dutch and Israeli researchers meta-analyzed 31 of the papers on Holocaust survivors’ families, and concluded—to the fury of some clinicians—that when more rigorous controls were applied, there was no evidence for the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

The data concluded from a study in 2003, that show’s children suffering from PTSD, correlates to the condition of the parents. (The study shows how parents’ PTSD can affect their children’s behaviors.) The author explains the evidence as a factual claim.

I asked the lead scientist, Marinus van IJzendoorn of Leiden University, what might account for other studies’ finding of secondary trauma in vets’ spouses or kids. He said he’s never analyzed those studies, and wonders if the results would hold up to a meta-analysis. But: “Suppose that there is a second-generation effect in veterans, there are a few differences that are quite significant” from children of Holocaust survivors that “might account for difference in coping mechanisms and resources.”

The quote above is a proposal claim; Lead scientist, Marinus van IJzendoorn discusses a different outlook on children of veterans and Holocaust survivors. (However, there is no clear evidence of research on this topic.)

They were not, in other words, expected to man up and get over it.

The author believes that the war veterans were treated unfairly, which makes this quote an ethical claim.