If you’re familiar with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-Kaiser Permanente study from the 1990s, you know that factors such as divorce, domestic violence or having an incarcerated parent are called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

In the long term, living with ACEs or other negative factors, such as poverty, can literally change your brain chemistry.

As a director at a nonprofit group for preventing child abuse, I’ve known about ACEs for a long time.

But it wasn’t until I brought a 12-year-old foster child into my life that I fully understood their impact.

What does it look like for a young person to live with several ACEs and no supports?

I became a foster parent because I thought I had things to give — time and care and love — to kids who needed them.

Initially, I was the person whom the county calls when a child is removed from a home and has nowhere else to go, or when a foster family needs a break.

I saw a child who wanted to be happy, but who, after a lifetime of abuse and neglect, didn’t know how.

I’ve taken pains to build a fortress of protective factors around my girl.

Protective factors are those things that most of us take for granted — a friend to call when we need advice; someone to help when that car I mentioned won’t start.

For Cleo, protective factors include school supports — not just teachers and staff who are kind, but trauma-informed teachers and staff who understand how ACEs can be reflected in behavior.

National data shows that more than 20 percent of children up to age 17 have experienced two or more ACEs.

Yes, a child can have post-traumatic stress disorder; PTSD is not reserved for combat veterans.

We need to admit that ACEs are not limited to low-income neighborhoods, and that the domestic violence and substance abuse that take place in higher income homes are just as toxic.

Second, we need to stop treating children who’ve been affected by trauma as if their behavior doesn’t make sense.

In the state of New York, every April 30 is ACEs Awareness Day, and the state mandates trauma training for domestic-violence shelter workers and child-care providers.

We need to shore up (or perhaps create) a safety net: The child-welfare, mental-health and education systems must work together to serve the whole child, or kids will fall through the cracks.

You can’t treat kids with trauma like kids without trauma.

Jenn O’Connor is director of policy and advocacy at Prevent Child Abuse NY and director of the NYS Home Visiting Coordination Initiative.

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