Category Archives: adoption

Parents Or Enemies

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Still trying to be empathic with my nearly 19-year-old son about his lack of willingness to shower, brush teeth, and irradicate his room-stink-oozing-out-into-the-hallway living condition.  In the pre-dawn hours even before the dogs are awake, he and I have a quiet heart-to-heart.

He tells me he has always thought of his bio parents and me as the enemy.  He tells me he only trusts his sister, my older daughter (who happened to be mean to him, frightened him, threatened him most of his first ten years.)

In the moment of his honest expression, I am deeply saddened and stymied as to how to help him make the leap from trauma reactive child to responsible-for-his-own-life adult. I suggest it is truly coming the time he lives somewhere without a mother figure.  He says he doesn’t want to leave me.  He says he does see the problem, though: “I am always badgering you to get your attention and I never do what you want me to do for myself.”

These talks are painful.  I love him, and he sees me as the enemy. Me.  He thinks the person who loves, listens, works, shops, cooks, cleans, gives, transports, finances, and considers him every day of his life is his enemy.

Outside, his ride to school honks. We hug good-bye.  He says, “I love you, Mom,” as he rushes toward the front door.

I call after him, I love you, too. honey.  Have a good day.  We exchange this sentiment today as every day.  We will do it again tomorrow.  Life goes on.  I will look for the next phase of his transition into adulthood outside our home. That is hard for me.  He is my baby. He is not ready to leave home, and he will never be ready.  I must push him out of the nest. How do bird mothers do it? With all of my heart, I believe his transition into adulthood depends on it. I hope I have the heart.

I was finally able to do it for my attachment challenged daughter, his sister, and she is standing on her own, caring for her daughter, and creating a home right next door to her biological father.  There is something right about this outcome.

Faith is my Tonto.  I watched black and white reruns because I am not quite that old.  For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, this sentence is for you:  Faith is my sidekick.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is December 9th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.  Child care provided.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are December 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com. 

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

The truth about our children’s experience has to be safely held by parents.  There will be no healing without this.

Fear, Fear And More Fear

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Whoow, back from Thangsgiving.  That was a nice long break, except for the fact that my heat has been off since Wednesday and it has been sub 55 degrees in my house for 5 days.   Burrrrr.  Chihuahuas are very shaky in a house with no heat.

Hope you had a lovely few days together.  I know holidays are not always jolly with healing children, so I am hoping that the calm of back to school routine has set in already.

I was talking with my son yesterday about why a classmate of his who also happens to come from difficult beginnings is suddenly spending a lot of time at our house.

Her mom is in cancer treatment, so we are helping out. But your friend doesn’t know, so you can’t tell her. 

“Oh,” he says, “I can see why she hasn’t been told.  Her mom probably doesn’t want her to feel the way I did when you had cancer.”

Suddenly feeling like I didn’t protect him enough five years ago, I fumble for words, Uh, yes, because she is different than you and not prepared to experience the fear.

“The terror, Mom. I was terrified the whole time,”  he emphasizes with air exclamation points.

I am sorry you were terrified for so long.  You were very brave.  You went to school every day, were beyond sweet to me, and held it all together until I got well.

“Yeah, then I had to go back to residential because I lost it when you got better,” he tells me as if I don’t know that is why he “lost it.”  

I don’t remember very much about that year, just that you were amazing.

“Me either,” he says. “Just the terror and the good times.  We had some good times that year, too. I remember those.”

Would you have wanted me to try and keep it from you so you wouldn’t have been so scared?

“That bald head probably would have given it away, Mom,” he says without humor. When I laugh, he sees the funny part and laughs, too.

“Let’s not do that again, okay?” he asks in a statement.

Okay deal, I promise, like that is possible, all the while hoping against all odds I am not lying right now.

Life is full of scary twists and turns.  Even after bringing them home from their difficult beginnings, we cannot always protect them from the parts of life that hurt.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly, no feeAdoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2ndWednesday of each month.  Next group is December 9th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.  Child care provided.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates areDecember 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com. 

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Fear strikes at the core of children who were scared to

death from the beginning.

I Can’t Accept Him

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Parents get frustrated, even desperate when they cannot make their child be different (i.e. be good.)  We can even get to the point where we don’t want to be around our traumatized child and have nothing positive to say. I understand that; however, check out this comment, “I can’t accept him this way.”  If you don’t accept your child the way he is, then that same child will not have a cheerleader to encourage positive movement forward. Our children need to see their preciousness in our eyes, even when their behavior is ugly and unacceptable. That acceptance says they are lovable. What if when you heard that snarky tone, processed those mean words, and saw that offensive behavior, you gently requested a correction with compassion in your voice and soft loving eyes?  That would mean you are being a loving parent.  Your child needs love when s/he is being the worst.  Children do bad things when they feel bad about themselves and those around them. Turn the tides by focusing on being love in action and simply correct the offense with your heart intact.  Work very hard not to be a negative mirror to your child.  Instead, be a loving one.  Your child, who is acting out pain, needs the latter more.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

www.attachplace.com

The Attach Place provides a monthly, no feeAdoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2ndWednesday of each month.  Next group is December 9th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.  Child care provided.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates areDecember 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com. 

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Commit to being love in action.

When You Come to the Edge Of All That You Know

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Listen folks, our kids do not come with handbooks, for the attached ones or otherwise, so you are in for the ride of your life.  Buckle up.  It’s bumpy out here in parentland.

When you come to the edge of all that you know, jump.  And, I don’t mean over the cliff.  I mean jump into the kind of parenting that is not what you were raised with; the kind that scares you; the kind that has to face the fact that you are not, never have been, and never will be in control of your children.

Your child is on a path s/he is trying to figure out, too.  Your parenting job is to help him find a middle ground: the path between cannon-balling into the deep end without a life preserver and diving head-long into the shallow end.  Neither of those hardwired paths is a good choice for your attachment challenged, traumatized child.  The middle way is the only way with hope for a better life.  If you are having trouble figuring out what the middle way is, let me help.  It’s for your child to have enough time to learn how to swim.

So, what is that scary, non-controlling, love-based form of parenting that can support your child into the middle way of a productive life?  It’s called non-traditional, therapeutic parenting that relies on relationship over compliance, and love over fear.

Traditional parenting is full of cause and effect, logical consequence interventions that make so much sense to attached people who were raised by biological parents. Therapeutic parenting puts logical parenting with imposing consequences away for another day when your traumatized child has a brain that can make sense of that kind of intervention.  Traditional parenting registers one way with attachment challenged children–I am bad and my parents are bad.  Therapeutic parenting registers a different way–I am safe and my parents are loving.  Which model makes the most sense for a child who came into your life believing at the core that s/he is bad because s/he was abandoned and parents are not to be trusted or even worse, dangerous?

If nothing is working to guide your child toward the middle way, you might check your parenting, then jump into something new, something untried, something less power and control oriented.  Are you putting compliance in front of everything else that matters–like love, relationship, safety?  If so, you are the one who has the brain power to change, not your challenged child. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is, you know, insanity.  If you are feeling more and more insane, try 100% therapeutic parenting.  Over time, I promise the middle way will seem more and more possible for your child.  Swimming happens.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates areDecember 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com. 

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Read about therapeutic parenting in a number of books. Beyond Consequences by Heather Forbes and Bryan Post is a start.  There are many others.

Parent Bashing

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I have no room in my personal or professional world for parent bashing. This is likely because I am a parent. I am not perfect. And I have been bashed by professionals, CPS, law enforcement and family.

I say that to say this: parents who give up, lose hope, throw up their hands and toss in the towel are cutting themselves and their children short. Honestly, some children do need to go to residential treatment because they truly cannot be safely maintained at home.  Some children go to residential treatment because their parent(s) cannot tolerate their feelings about their child at home.

I am not passing judgment. I am, however, encouraging parents who feel overwhelmed to get help and to resist the urge to give up.  You are the change agent in your child’s life. Giving up is not an option though shoring up is.

If giving up is on the tip of your tongue, you need more help than you are getting, and you need to advocate for more.  Go to your county adoption assistance program to request help.  Stomp your feet and insist that you get attachment help if standard Wraparound isn’t working. You can get support at home. Demand it.  And, demand it the way you need it.  If you know you need attachment therapy, don’t settle for behavior therapy.  If you know you need respite, don’t settle for therapy.  If you know you need emotional support for yourself, don’t settle for child rehabilitation services.

Get educated and informed about the services available to you in your county and state.  It isn’t the same in every state, and every county is different in their processes.  Call your adoption assistance program to find out what resources are available to your child.  Call your District Attorney to see if there is a Victim Compensation Fund and how to apply. Call your county mental health to access mental health benefits for your child and family. This may lead to Therapeutic Behavioral Services (TBS) and Wraparound Services (WRAP) for in-home therapeutic services.  Be sure to focus on attachment and relationship first, before behavior. You will get further with your child if you do so.

Also, if your child was originally taken by CPS in California (and perhaps other states) and given to you for fostering and adoption, s/he is likely eligible for Victim Compensation Funding that will pay for therapy.  There are also funds there for you, the derivative caregiver. These are awesome financial benefits for victims of crime that children adopted domestically from the systems deserve.

I hope this helps you know how to get started getting some services that you deserve.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is December 9th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.  Child care provided.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are December 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com. 

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Resources are key in being able to deal with some of the emotional duress involved in raising attachment challenged, traumatized children.

Dear Parent Teacher

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Hello Ce,

I love this. Take a few minutes to listen to the smartest people I’ve heard from in a long time.

Brain Highways

Out of the mouths of our babes.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is November 11th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us. Child care provided.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month. Our next course dates are December 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online at http://www.attachplace.com.

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans. Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

…And Justice For All–Restorative Justice Best for Adoptive Children

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I know you all are doubtful that it is possible to raise attachment challenged, traumatized children without punishing them for their poor behavior. The real challenge is resisting the parental urge to punish. What you can do instead is get extremely good at restorative justice.

For your child, restorative justice is labor intensive, pocket-book painful, and shame free. It is just this simple. If you break it or steal it, you pay for it from your own resources–allowance, birthday money, savings, holiday money, earned income. If you waste my time, you owe me. No money? No problem. Pay your debt by dusting baseboards, pulling weeds, cleaning out the gutters, sweeping the patio, skimming the pool, walking the dog…there are a zillion ways to pay off the repair of damage done or time spent repairing, waiting, searching, taxi-ing, etc.

The world works according to the principles of restorative justice. If you park too long, you pay a price. If you back into another car, you pay to fix it. If you put a hole in the wall, you repair it after shopping and paying for spackle. If you do not show up to a therapy appointment, you have to pay anyway. If you do not show up for work, you are fired and do not collect a paycheck. Restorative justice is educational and excellent training for the future.

Those are the kinds of consequences that make sense, restore justice, require responsible action, and have zero emotional expenditures if you can manage to regulate.

I can kind of hear a cry from many of you parents: What if they won’t do it? If they won’t, then they don’t get the next thing they want until they do restore justice. It’s a kind of barless jail. When bail is paid, life goes back to normal. Just like in real life. This can be your child’s real life. Give it a shot and stop punishing poor behavior. Punishment teaches nothing positive. Restorative justice teaches fairness.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is November 11th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month. Our next course dates are December 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online at http://www.attachplace.com.

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans. Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

…and justice for all.

When You Come To The Edge Of All That You Know

Leave a reply

Listen folks, our kids do not come with handbooks, for the attached ones or otherwise, so you are in for the ride of your life. Buckle up. It’s bumpy out here in parentland.

When you come to the edge of all that you know, jump. And, I don’t mean over the cliff. I mean jump into the kind of parenting that is not what you were raised with; the kind that scares you; the kind that has to face the fact that you are not, never have been, and never will be in control of your children.

Your child is on a path s/he is trying to figure out, too. Your parenting job is to help him find a middle ground: the path between cannon-balling into the deep end without a life preserver and diving head-long into the shallow end. Neither is a good choice for your attachment challenged, traumatized child. The middle way is the only way with hope for a better life. If you are having trouble figuring out what the middle way is, let me help. It’s for your child to have enough family time to learn how to swim.

So, what is that scary, non-controlling, love-based form of parenting that can support your child into the middle way of a productive life? It’s called non-traditional, therapeutic parenting that focuses on relationship over compliance, and love over fear.

Traditional parenting is full of cause and effect, logical consequences that make so much sense to attached people who were raised by biological parents. Therapeutic parenting puts logical parenting with imposing consequences away for another day when your traumatized child has a brain that can make sense of that kind of intervention. Traditional parenting registers one way with attachment challenged children–I am bad and my parents are bad. Therapeutic parenting registers a different way–I am safe and my parents are loving. Which model makes the most sense for a child who came into your life believing at the core that s/he is bad because s/he was abandoned and parents are not to be trusted or even worse, dangerous?

If nothing is working to guide your child toward the middle way, you might check your parenting, then jump into something new, something untried, something less power and control oriented. Are you putting compliance in front of everything else that matters–like love, relationship, safety? If so, you are the one who has the brain power to change, not your challenged child. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is, you know, insanity. If you are feeling more and more insane, try 100% therapeutic parenting. Over time, I promise the middle way will seem more and more possible for your child. Swimming happens.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Read about therapeutic parenting in a number of books. Beyond Consequences by Heather Forbes and Bryan Post is a start. There are many others.
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly, no fee Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is November 11th at a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us.

The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month. Our next course dates are December 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up online at http://www.attachplace.com.

The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans. Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.