We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming to bring
you…a dose of reality.
First I want to thank each of you who had the courage to leave a comment or email, asking me to pray for your family, offering to pray for my family and telling me your story. You are such an encouragement! We are not alone!
So, what is trauma?
Automobile accident
Physical abuse
Emotional abuse
Sexual abuse
Neglect
Depressed parental care
Pre and perinatal birth trauma
Loss of caregiver
Prolonged experiences of unmet needs
Bullying
Domestic violence
Medical trauma
Adoption
Foster care
Surrogacy
Frequent moves
Unstable or unsafe environment
Experiencing or witnessing horrific injury or death of
another
*This list is not all-inclusive*
I realize I’m possibly in the minority of slow learners,
but quite frankly, this surprises me! I’ve
generally thought of a traumatic event as being a physical act. It truly opens my heart and mind to
understand trauma more clearly!
And of this long list, the fact that my child has experienced
many of them totally changes things for me!
I need to learn a new way of parenting.
Because many of our children have never been taught cause/effect thinking, but rather have lived in a state of ‘survival mode,’ the common forms of discipline for inappropriate behavior simply will not be effective.
Many of our children express anger or rage in times of
overwhelm and stress. We may think this is the root of the problem: they are deeply angry. In fact, the anger and frustration are manifestations of the true emotion: fear.
More on that in the next post.
I’m keeping this short and sweet because I some of us may
need to simply absorb this information before moving on.
And now to revive that happy place within us, let’s run to
the secret chocolate stash (because if we’ve been dealing with this for any length of time, we all have one), call the one friend who doesn’t think we’re making this up, or curl up in a fetal position in a corner.
After all, those would be typical fear responses for us bigger people, right?!?
7 comments:
That's my problem today....my chocolate stash is empty :( Had to use too much of it this past weekend.
Hoping your day is going well. Thanks for the prayers...sending some your way as well. This is just all so hard. Blessings, Jennifer
One of my little men came to us at age 4 and had such terrible anxiety he'd have numerous panic attacks. We stumbled upon holding time and that was extremely helpful to his healing.
The trauma our boys experienced has altered them for life. Especially our little guy with RAD. Paired with anxiety itself and visual processing disorder we definitely have our hands full doing our best to love the fear away and help him express it in appropriate ways.
One thing that has impacted my thinking is the "fears" that I would rationalized to some of my children as "that would never happen" HAS happened to one or more of my kids. For example: the fear of them losing me their mom...in the past I would have said "that would never happen", but for some of my kids that HAS happened. Having memories {good/bad} of their family only to be taken away without much explanation IS a real fear to them. It HAS happened to them, so now they need constant reminders that I will not leave them, that no one will take them away from me...and that I want them as my children, etc.
We are working our way through Trust Based Parenting videos right now. How true this is that we can't parent children from hard places the same. Thanks for being willing to share about it all here!
hmm...didn't think about it until now, but maybe that is why I have a pan of brownies in front of me on my computer desk. It's been a rough week.
Our RAD dd has definitely been our biggest parenting challenge. What surprised me was that our orphanage raised China daughter was in much better mental health than our foster care daughter who was raised for 20 mo in a nice apartment in the US with her "family".
My biggest struggle is wondering when the healthy family live (over 8 years now) will overcome the 20 mo of living with a dysfunctional family? Trauma's effects are much more damaging than many imagine.
I really appreciate your "trauma" posts. I have really been thinking I was the only one dealing with this. My daughter came home at 15 months and has been mostly an unhappy child (home 1.5 yr). So many things you wrote hit close to home! Especially, "the behavior that mimics bi-polar disorder". I am terribly sorry you are going through this, but also feel such relief it is not just MY child! More posts on how you cope would be much appreciated. You definitely seem to deal with it better than me. I wasn't expecting it at all and seem to take it personally (even when I try not to).
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