Perspective, or point of view (POV), is different through the eyes of a child, and that perspective can be the one we’re using in writing a portion of a memoir. 

Let’s look at writing about an experience of shock.

News comes, delivered by a phone call, a knock on the door, a look on someone’s face. The way to write about it in a memoir changes depending on the age of the character experiencing it: adult or child. 

The experience of shock is similar for the two age groups (the muddle of emotions, the disruption), but the processing of it is different.

Adult shock can come through as disbelief with understanding (or delayed understanding).

Childhood shock typically comes through as confusion, with sensory fragments. 

Children often experience shock with:

• • sensory overload
  • silence or misinterpretation
  • children tend to misread what’s happening, focusing on small details

To show a child’s point of view and give that vital sense of “being there,” writers need to recreate that limited understanding without supplying adult explanation.

Here’s an example. Two parents have made an announcement to their children of their plans to separate.

For the adult POV (telling about):
It was hard to believe my parents wanted to split up.

The child POV (experiencing, focus is on sensory/in the moment):
Everyone at the dinner table went quiet. The refrigerator kept humming, nobody looked up from their plates.

This example illustrates how sound is a good sensory detail to show an experience of feeling shock, both through what is heard—and what is suddenly not heard. When someone feels shock, normal sounds can behave unnaturally (the silence at the dinner table, the refrigerator hum the loudest presence).

Sound can signal that something is wrong before the mind understands it.

• Her voice came through the phone too calm, like she was reading from a script.

Objects can become more readily visible during emotional disruption. Describing one or two can supply metaphor.

• The flowers by her bedside were already drooping.

When an adult is experiencing shock in a scene, repetition through looping or stuck behavior can be effective for showing the mind trying—and failing—to process what happened.  

• I reread the sentence over and over.

• She said my name at least three times before I answered.

Even for adults, when something overwhelming happens, the mind tends to stop explaining and start noticing details of the immediate environment. Sounds that wouldn’t have stood out before suddenly do. 

Whether you’re writing from a child’s wide-eyed confusion or an adult’s stunned disbelief, the most powerful depictions of shock share one thing: they trust the details to carry the weight, letting a humming refrigerator or a ticking clock say what the mind cannot yet put into words.