Category Archives: Discipline

Odd Suggestion

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This may seem like an odd suggestion, so bear with me. Teen daughters fare better when they are given structure, guidance, and daily expectations from fathers. 
 
mother teen daughter
 
Adoptive mothers (or any parent who is seen as the primary nurturer by the child) often, though not always, are the targets of projective anger from past abuses by birth mothers. During the teen years, when identity development, separation, and individuation are the developmental goals, teen girls often up the ante on rejection of their mothers and intensify their reactivity when being corrected.  
 

father daughter

Since reactivity is intensified in the teens years, it makes sense to enlist fathers to do most of the corrective parenting, structuring, and guiding. Teen girls can often take in information from their fathers in a way that they cannot from their mothers.
 
While this is painful for adoptive mothers, having fathers step in more can keep girls from running away, reacting aggressively, sexually rebelling, and refusing to do anything suggested by a reasoned mother.
 

mother daughters

 
The good news is that this phase doesn’t last forever. Young adult daughters usually come back to their mothers for guidance as they age into their childbearing years.
Love Matters,
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Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

 
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No Room For Shame

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shamed boy 2If YOU feel abundant shame, YOU may inadvertently be abundantly shaming.  Many of us were parented with a strong nod to shame to keep us following the golden rules.  Sadly, shame IS an effective deterrent to misbehavior for some children–it leaves scares, however.

It was effective with me when I was a kid, sort of.  Actually, as I think about it, I just became more sneaky and ate plenty of parent-induced and self-induced shame pie, as a result. Later in life, I came to see that I had internalized all the shaming. Not only did I see my behavior as shameful, but so was I at the core of my being, shameful.

Everything triggered a shame response inside me–tripping on a crack in Dog Shamingthe sidewalk, being complemented, making a mistake, winning awards, being seen, not being seen, laughing too much, being too much, being TOO much.  My little children’s attachment challenged behavior caused me to spin in terrible shame spirals–“bad parent” shame.  Thankfully, it was my children’s behavior that helped me get over it, too.

Nearly 5 years after I brought my children home, I began to heal and came to a solid understanding (with a lot of therapy of course) that all that shame was unnecessary and that I could keep myself “in line” with love instead.  I could help my children find their self-worth with love, too.

Forgiveness, information, help from someone wise, love from others, from a higher power, and from oneself: These are all healing salve to the shame that binds us.

There is absolutely nothing shameful about having an attachment challenged child who has difficulty in life, but sometimes we parents feel ashamed by comparing ourselves and our children to others and only seeing the ways we don’t measure up. There in lies the shame. Self-love heals shame.  If YOU have abundant shame, get abundant help.  YOU can heal.  Your children can heal, too.
self love
Love Matters,
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Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

Favorite Sentence

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One of my favorite parenting sentences (I think I stole from PCIT, but who can remember such details at my age?) to get the kids moving.  I don’t know why this works so frequently, but it does.  It’s sharing power, so it makes sense that it works, now that I think about it.

Okay, time to go to bed.
Noooooooo!!! I’m not done!
How much more time do you think you need? [That was the favorite sentence, though I see now that it is really a question, my favorite parenting question.]
10 minutes.
Let’s compromise–5 more minutes.
Awwwa, okay.
Two minutes later, he is done and down the hall to the bedroom.

I know you don’t believe me, so start small and build up to bedtime.

cartoon momMy son has been home “sick” in bed for two days.
I asked him, How much more time do you think you need?
Uhh, I’m pretty sick.  My stomach really has been hurting.  Uh, a week?
Let’s compromise–you’re getting your butt to school to-mor-row.
It was worth a try, Mom.
We giggled.  He’s going to school tomorrow.

Wow, crazy as it seems, I have raised a seriously reasonable kid.  I worried that would never happen.  I often had so little faith in the face of so much fear.

Good thing I kept putting one foot in front of the other.  Just like YOU.


Keep the faith. Keep walking forward.
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Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Count down to the next Trust-based Relational Parent Training—May 10th and 17th.  Very excited. Really enjoy being with parents for these extended time periods.  Love it.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund.

Accept and Love Grows

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Acceptance is like miracle salve for love wounds.  No kidding. Acceptance is the key to nearly all relationship conflicts–parent/child, spouse/spouse, boss/employee, extended family and friends.
 
My husband has a tiny bit of anxiety, which he quells by a tiny bit of what could be called NAGGING. I don’t see nagging.  I see him as loving and engaged in taking care of many things for our family.  I feel loved when he is attending, ever so minutely, to things I might forget to think about.
 
My son has very serious ADHD, amongst other things.  No matter what I ask him to do, he complies with a buckshot approach, rarely doing all of anything requested.  This could be seen as defiance, laziness, lack of care, and after 15 years it is certainly annoying.  I do get annoyed, but I see the desire he has to please me and accept that as a job well done.  
 
Personally, I have lost a good deal of my memory capacity since cancer treatment and getting older.  I make a lot of minor mistakes now. When this first started, I felt awful and experienced a drop in my self-confidence.  My husband, children, and colleagues accepted my mistakes and stepped right in to help me.  Their love and acceptance are helping me accept myself and adjust to this life change.  
We can struggle every day against things we cannot change, or we can embrace life with acceptance and love.  The choice is ours to make.
 
What do YOU need to accept in your child, your partner, others in your life to change conflict into love?
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Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund.
 
Next Trust-based Relational Parent Training is scheduled for May 10th and 17th.  It is close to full already, so go towww.attachplace.com to register soon to reserve your space.  
Check out our three blogs:
 
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up.  All you need is an email address and first name.

Attachment Panic

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Attachment panic in our children is painful and scary. It occurs when insecurely attached children are triggered by some kind of deprivation–major or minor, real or perceived–to experience abandonment at the core of their being. When the child feels that core abandonment, s/he goes into survival mode–fight, flight or freeze–because at least once, and often many times in the past, s/he endured the bone chilling fear of eminent death by abandonment.  
What you need to know is that YOU cannot always prevent this kind of triggered panic.  Over time YOU can build in your child a felt sense of safety by creating a safe, sensory-rich environment, being a safe and attuned parent, and helping your child understand that manipulation, excessive control and violence are misguided ways to get connection. It takes a long time to turn this around and heal the wounds. Keep the faith. Healing happens with consistent therapeutic parenting.
Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund.
 
Next Trust-based Relational Parent Training is scheduled for May 10th and 17th.  It is close to full already, so go to www.attachplace.com to register soon to reserve your space.  
Check out our three blogs:
 
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up.  All you need is an email address and first name.

The Parent Whisperer

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I am not meaning to toot my own horn, though the sweet acknowledgement here may seem like it. I received this email from a former client this week and I was tickled by the story. By his permission, I hope you are, too.

Hi Ce,

I was thinking about you the other day when I saw an episode of “Dog Whisper” with Cesar Milan, have you seen this show? At the start of the show he explains how he “Trains owners and rehabilitates dogs.” It was just like you! Train the parents and rehabilitate the children. Cesar Milan talks about “eye contact” and “the energy” the owner conveys; the parallels were fascinating. I don’t want to go too far with comparing children to pets, but what really struck me on the show was the amount of importance Cesar gives to making sure the owner’s emotions and verbal commands are consistent, as the dogs are very perceptive to the emotional environment.

I was (and still am) frustrated with the lack of logic my children convey when we have confrontations. I naively explain to them, “Of course you are late for school, if you would have gotten up with your alarm you would not be late. If you would have gone to bed earlier, you would not be so tired. Why are you yelling at me when I woke you up three times and YOU went back to bed.” I am bewildered by their failure to recognize such linear cause and effect relationships. The Dog Whisperer showed me I did not give my children credit for understanding the situation better than a dog. RAD children are aware of their role in being late, but are even more painfully aware of our emotional interactions and are responding to that: the elevated level of anxiety every time I went to wake them up, the sarcasm in my voice “of course you are late,” and my lack of addressing their emotional needs (the panic that their favorite sweatshirt is dirty, can not be simply addressed by handing them [I wish, honestly on many occasions it was throwing] another perfectly functioning and clean alternative). They have a better understanding of the situation than I really wanted them to have or gave them credit for. With calm eyes and an engaging presence, I had a successful morning today getting my sleepy children out of bed. Both slept through their ringing alarms (how they do this amazes me). I stayed loving and engaged….AND THEY RESPONDED!!!!!!

Thank you Ce! You are a Parent Whisperer!

Ha, this is such a wonderful learning. I just had to share it with YOU. Those of you who know me know that being treated like a dog, in my family, is akin to being treated like the King and Queen of your own little kingdom. Likening parenting children to puppy training (no spanking newspaper in our house) was by no means degrading.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

While I don’t really deserve the moniker, I’m going to keep it.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist and
Parent Whisperer

UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS:
Get more information and reserve your spot here for our upcoming Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on April 25th, 26th and 27th.

Get more information and sign up here for our 10-hour Trust-based Parenting Course for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on March 29th and April 5th, 2014.

Check out our three blogs:
http://www.lovestronglovelong.com
http://www.parentingwithheart.net
http://www.wisdomforadoptiveparents.com

Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up. All you need is an email address and first name.

Fear Is A Harsh Master

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Fear is a harsh master. At least once a week a parent confesses to me they are worried they have a budding Adam Lanza in their living room. I mean no disrespect to Adam Lanza and his family. He was a very disturbed young man whose family (guns aside) had tried to get him help for years prior to the Newtown tragedy. And that is the point of what parents are telling me. They are trying to get their child help, nothing seems to work, and they fear the outcome will be tragic.

I know that portentous fear very well. It has sliced me to the bone many times throughout my child raising years. When fear was my master, my parenting was over-controlling, reactive, and down right harsh. Children always mirror parental emotion, rather than parental intention. My fear begot scared, angry, reactive behavior from my children. I could see the reflection of my fear in their eyes.

I know YOU are scared. The antidote is love. That is so touchy feel-y, New Age-y, isn’t it? It just happens to be true. When I wrestled my fear into submission and let go to love with a capital L, my children reflected that back to me. Faking love doesn’t work, so I am not talking about pretending to be loving through gritted teeth. I am talking about surrendering fear and really finding in your heart the courage to love with an open heart. Your children can feel the difference, and in time that love will be the change YOU are looking for in them.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS:
Get more information and sign up here for our 10-hour Trust-based Parenting Course for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on March 29th and April 5th, 2014.

Get more information and reserve your spot here for our upcoming Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on April 25th, 26th and 27th.

Check out our three blogs:
http://www.lovestronglovelong.com
http://www.parentingwithheart.net
http://www.wisdomforadoptiveparents.com

Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up. All you need is an email address and first name.

Stop Chatter Scrambled Brains

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Sometimes my brain feels like scrambled eggs from all the chatter around me. Children from difficult beginnings are masters at filling the air with random talk. They are often highly anxious and highly habituated to being distracting so they can get attention without having to be real, present, or intimate–all three of which are frightening for them beyond expression.

This is actually child abuse.

This is actually child abuse.

Habituation is the problem. Habits are formed when a child from difficult beginnings has intolerable, overwhelming feelings that have been quieted by some kind of behavior, usually negative. When securely attached children have overwhelming feelings, they seek the comfort of a safe parent for soothing. If the attachment is damaged for some reason, then a child may seek other ways of meeting their needs, promoting the allusion that keeping distance will keep them from being frightened, getting hurt or experiencing abandonment. Those other ways become as habituated as hugs are in a secure child.

Habits must be broken, stopped dead in their tracks, before one can ever really know what feelings lie beneath.

That’s were YOU come in. Get a clear routine you follow, no matter what, when a negative behavior shows up–like random chattering that threatens to scramble your sanity.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Practice appropriate social engagement with your child–yep, role play.
Don’t answer nonsensical questions. Say, “Nope, try again. ‘
Don’t answer the same question twice. Say, “Nope, try again.”
Withhold threats, frustration, and angry expressions.
Be a very good, calm, broken record. If YOU can discipline yourself, your child can stop the chatter habit.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

The First Few Months Last A Lifetime

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I am guilty of listing every behavior under the sun as “attachment challenged” behavior. This is a relative misnomer I know I am making, but there isn’t a good, easy way of calling out what many of us experience every day. So, for expedience (not necessarily clinical accuracy), I generically label. Mea culpa.

That said, I want to highlight a reality common to many of us–our children are often extremely concrete, lacking what some might call “theory of mind.” Theory of mind is what most of us who had a “good enough” mother/child connection in the early months take for granted–the ability to flexibly toggle between our inside and outside realities.

Many of our children have a very difficult time with subjectivity and objectivity in life. What is inside their minds and what is outside their minds is blurred and confusing to them. Our kids think that what they think is what everyone thinks. If you are reading this and you are having a hard time following what I am saying, then you may have had difficulty in your very early months, too (or I might be doing a terrible job explaining this.)

Upshot: this way of being is a personality style forged in the early months when one’s “mother” attends to a child’s

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

every need and engages the child reciprocally, interactively and connectedly. Or not. The “or not” is the point here.

Your child is not being stupid, difficult, oppositional, or intentionally moronic (which are some labels I have heard from parents, and sadly used at points in my parenting life.) Our children were deprived of essential attachment and bonding experiences in the first few months of life that last throughout childhood. While there are some ways this can evolve and change over time, it is just as likely that this concrete, lack of cognitive flexibility will persist throughout life. This knowledge is intended to conjure empathy and patience. I hope you are getting that.

Love Matters,

Ce

Punishment vs. Consequences

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Most traditional parenting strategies will not work longterm with an attachment challenged child. However, it is important to allow natural and logical consequences to persist in your child’s life because it is the way of the world and children need to understand that over time. Still natural and logical consequences will likely not create huge behavior change.

A natural and logical consequence becomes punishment when you deliver it by withholding love and giving anger, disapproval, rage, put downs, rejection, hopelessness, and dismissiveness.

Negative emotional “consequencing” is punishment. It doesn’t work longterm to change behavior and it slices gashes on the heart of your relationship with your child. That punishment lasts a lifetime.Scared child

A loving, short talk is a logical consequence. That will change behavior faster than your expressed rage, disappointment, disgust, anger, frustration, rejection or dismissal.

Why?

Because a loving relationship changes the heart (otherwise known as the brain) of your child. Win-win.