Category Archives: Attachment Hope

Blessings Come In Strange Ways

I have been keeping a little (read: BIG) secret from YOU, because I learned real quick from family and friends that I was, perhaps, a little out of mind. Then I realized that YOU already know I am a little out of my mind, so why hide from YOU, right?

Okay, as you might recall I tried to move my 18-year-old attachment challenged son out of the house into a sheltered living environment nearby, but caved after his very genuine hiccuping sobs streamed rivers down his face. He clearly wasn’t ready to leave Mom, just because Mom was ready for him to leave.

Fast forward six months and here I am moving my son’s 19 year old girlfriend into our extra bedroom. Stop gasping. I know. Trust me, I know because my husband hasn’t stopped rolling his eyes into the back of his head since I mentioned it to him. As a matter of fact, I am sure they are permanently stuck that way. He looks very silly.

Here’s the thing: She is a severely attachment challenged teen who aged out of a group home straight into a homeless shelter. How is that possible? Of course I have heard of these things happening, but I have never been as close to it as this. She and my son are like mirror images of each other–two peas in a pod, as it were. I just had to open our home. I had to.

I don’t talk a lot about blessings because I am not really that kind of person. However, this decision is a true blessing to me. When I adopted little children, it was not a bit altruistic. It was purely selfish, because I wanted children and couldn’t have them myself. When my kids turned out to feel less than thrilled to have me as their mother, I slowly evolved to the place I probably should have been in the first place–raising children for the love of the children, rather than to meet my need to be a mother. On the flip side, having my son and his girlfriend in the house brings laughter, sweet silliness, quiet sitting, walking the dog, and lively hikes to the gelato store. I feel like I have died and been reborn into a family. Even if the honeymoon only lasts a week or two, I will remember this feeling forever.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is June 10th at 6pm. Come join us. Online RSVP each month required. Child care provided.

We had a fun first half of the 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course over the weekend. Looking forward to Day 2 on Saturday. Next course–July 25th and August 1st, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

Blessings coming in strange ways.

Mindfulness Is A Door

Leave a reply

Mindfulness is a door into regulation. YOU can help your child learn to tolerate feelings, rather than try to get away from them. In this way, the window of emotional tolerance widens. Our complex traumatized children have very narrow windows of tolerance for any heightened emotion, including excitement.

What do you do to get them to tolerate their emotions? Find a form of meditation the family can do at any time to find the still point inside themselves.

There is a fun box of cards you can purchase on Amazon called Yoga Pretzels. I love this box because it is fun for kids to do. Get them to hold their poses as long as they can. That is the still point.

Sitting Criss Cross Applesauce, placing hands palm up, and slowly letting out a low key OOOOMMMM is the still point.

Lighting a candle and focusing on it is finding the still point.

Western culture is not very good at promoting stillness. We are much more about distraction, addiction, avoidance, and denial. Finding the still point is probably the single most effective way to improve the quality of our lives–sit quietly in the still point 5 minutes every day and see how your life changes–if you dare.

Be playful with your kids and tell them you are learning to find the quiet spot inside your mind. Ask them to sit with you silently and see if they can find it inside themselves. Do this for one minute every day for a week. Build up to five minutes over five weeks. When the whole family finds the still point inside their minds each day, there is a small reward. YOU are in charge of the reward (make it small, but fabulous so they want to do it again and again and again.)

Quiet sitting can compel mindfulness when dysregulation is at hand. Stop, drop and OOOMMM. Hold it as long as you can and start again. Make it fun. Allow for silliness. YOU are encourage a bit of quiet regulation, then you can release your child meditators back to play–the real language of children.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

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.

“…Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

–T.S. Elliott

We Are Amazing

Leave a reply

My life is being run by dogs, cats and kids. I wake to the whine of my weeping-eyed, black lab resting his giant head about an inch from my face. My cat made sure I was alerted off and on throughout the night by walking back and forth across my pillow (and thus my face.) Silver lining, I was awake and ready if burglars ascended. They didn’t. When I get into the kitchen to give that whiny dog his morning chewy (yes, I know, I trained him to whine at 5:30am by feeding him treats), I see a formerly clean sink now full of dirty dishes with telltale crumbs and peanut butter smeared everywhere. When did that happen, I was up all night watching for burglars? Then my son literally crawls into the living room telling me I have to drive him to school today because of xyz, which he forgot to tell me.

Frankly, I can’t wait to get to the office. I love my work, though I do have to swing back by school at noon to take the boy to the dentist. Sometime in the night my daughter texted that she needs money to buy FOOD, again, and can I bring it by before 11am because they are really hungry.

Uh, no. No, I can’t. Sorry honey. Recycle some cans.

We parents are amazing humans, AMAZING!

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

P.S. While I was writing this, my son crawled back into the living room to tell me, “Nevermind Mom, I’m sick and yes I DID puke in my shoes MOM!” The kid knows me.

Okay, go back to bed, sweetheart, and give up your laptop on the way.

Silver lining, I don’t have to take him to the dentist at noon. Lunch anyone?

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.

When they turn 18, they usually aren’t ready to fly. Breathe.

Feeling Alone

Leave a reply

It can be so isolating to have challenging children. They feel isolated, and so do we. Break the barriers. Find a support group and go. Create a support group and stay. Meet other challenged, exhausted, amazing parents like YOU. We are all in the same boat. It’s nice to have company there–deck chairs all lined up and all. No, not the Titanic. More like a Disney Cruise with zoo animals.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is June 10th. Come join us. Online RSVPeach month required. Child care provided.

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

Attachment challenged kid shenanigans

are not a reflection of YOU, unless YOU make it that way.

Scared Senseless

Leave a reply

As a parent, I know what it is like to be scared senseless by TV movies about attachment challenged children, about News reports of foster children killing parents, and my imagination in the face of truly unbelievable, unrelenting shenanigans by my children. Much of my own dysregulation was caused by my ever present fear of the future hovering around me. Sometimes I could feel the breath of fear, rank and hot on my neck.

Do yourself a favor: only think of your children in the present. They are not your future nightmare. They are children. They are hurting children. Difficult? Oh yes. Hurting and hurtful? Certainly. Criminals and killers? Not usually. Can they become criminals and killers? Yes, just like the rest of the population. News flash: most criminals and killers are raised by their biological parents.

Put your fears away and bring your empathy, tenacity, and love out for the rest of their childhood. Don’t let the sensational, unusual, or imaginal destroy your ability to love freely with hope now. Remember that attachment challenged brains are delayed emotionally. Even if you have a terrible teen, calculate the true emotional age. Still pretty darned young, right?

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course happens tomorrow–May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

Love and fear are not compatible companions.

Self-Care

Leave a reply

The words “self-care” must have concrete meaning to YOU. Every day, what is your self-care? If your answer is a big question mark, then know this, YOU will eventually break down under the constant stressors of raising a traumatized, attachment challenged child.

Better proactive than reactive, right? Don’t wait until you have a stress disease, depression, massive dysregulation, cancer, etc. to think about yourself. Put that darned oxygen mask on! YOU matter.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is May 13th. Come join us. Online RSVPeach month required. Child care provided.

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

When you care for yourself, you care for your family.

Teenagers From The GitGo

Leave a reply

I feel like I have been raising teenagers for 19 years. Because traumatized children are on survival mode, they seem to have teenager-like behaviors from the gitgo. Yep, I said “Gitgo.” I looked it up. It is still a word to Webster.

Today, I woke my son for school and thought the same thing I have thought every day for all these years: He needs to clean this disgusting room. That is an hysterical repetitive thought process. How can I possibly care about his room for 16+ years? HE obviously doesn’t NEED a clean room. The good news is I didn’t say anything. If I said something every time I thought it my children would hate me.

Parents don’t have to parent everything. If we did, our children would be either passively resistant or aggressively resistant 24/7. By the actual teen years, we would be totally tuned out and without influence in our children’s lives.

Relationship is everything. Clean rooms, not so much.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

Cheers to maintaining your influence for your child’s lifetime.

Parent Regulators

Leave a reply

If a child came from difficult beginnings in the first 33 months of life, then it is likely that child will have difficulty with emotion regulation. One of the main goals of the parent/child relationship before the age of two is to imprint the child with an effective arousal relaxation system by meeting crying upset with soothing care.

If your child gets over the top when upset, YOU are going to have to help your child “learn” to do what otherwise would have been hardwired in the first two years.

How the heck do you do that?

1. Stop talking when you see your child is getting upset. STOP TALKING.
2. Be a soothing influence. Soft eyes, neutral voice, loving facial expression.
3. Be a safe influence. Kneel down, step to the side, breathe deeply and slowly.
4. Be an empathic influence. You must feel really awful right now. I am sorry you feel so bad. Focus on your child’s needs, rather than your own.
5. Assure your child you are here, s/he is safe, and that together everything will work out.
6. Resist letting your child’s dysregulation gobble-up your regulation. Without yours, there is none.
7. Wait it out. Safety hold if you need to. Offer love, help, support, solutions when the storm has cleared.
8. Calmly talk it through, listen, redo without shaming.

Then…get support for yourself afterward so you can be emotionally held. YOU need that to stay steady and empathic. YOU have a tough job. Get some love for yourself.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. 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 world seems upside down sometimes. Today is one of those days.

Still Face

Leave a reply

Back when attachment was not considered “a thing,” there was a pocket of researchers studying the parent/infant bond. Their work spawned the attachment revolution in parenting, brain science, relationship building, and treatment of mental health problems. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that one of the most salient experiments conducted was called the “Still Face.” To me, the experiment has a painfully cruel aspect to it; that said, we learned a lot about how a child is affected by the facial expression of the mother. It holds for fathers, too, but those experiments (to my knowledge) have not been done. I truly wonder why.

When YOU are stressed out, angry, tired, or loving too long from your mind (rather than the part of your mind we call heart), your face betrays you to your attachment challenged child. Your face becomes incongruent, your eyes lose their twinkle, and your voice lacks the warmth that the glow of love gives it. YOU may be going through the motions of parenting, but a “Still Face” can be detected just below the surface.

Your child can feel via the conduit of your facial expressions and eyes that YOU are not emotionally present, which immediately sends a signal to that child that you are unsafe, unloving, cold–hateful even. Attachment panic will likely spring up and emotionally dysregulated behavior will not be far behind.

YOU cannot fake it for very long before your attachment challenged child takes it in as something bad about him/her and something bad about YOU.

If YOU are chronically faking, get help for yourself. Find a confidante, a church member, another adoptive parent, support group or a therapist for support. YOU are doing one of the hardest things on earth–parenting a traumatized child. Island, rock, martyr are not synonyms for mother or father.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Next group is April 8th. Come join us. Online RSVPeach month required. Child care provided.

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Empathy is truly the answer.

Flipping Your Lid

Leave a reply

Watch this 2.5 minute video. Commit the model to memory and teach it to your children. It is one of the best ways to help them understand regulation and dysregulation–flipping their lids and breathing them right back on.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Handy model of the brain–catchy.

Wisdom For Adoptive Parents

Support For Parents of Traumatized, Attachment Challenged Children

Category Archives: Attachment Hope

Blessings Come In Strange Ways

Mindfulness Is A Door

We Are Amazing

Feeling Alone

Scared Senseless

Self-Care

Teenagers From The GitGo

Parent Regulators

Still Face

Flipping Your Lid

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: