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Certainty
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Category Archives: Parenting Adopted Children
Grateful For A New Day
What is that quote from Einstein? “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.” Actually, I am not sure that that is the exact quote, nor that it was said by Einstein, but I am going with it because it serves my purpose. If he didn’t say it, I am sure he would have agreed with whomever did say it, right?
I am so grateful for a new day, a new chance to see through a different viewfinder. Yesterday, I was all sour and sad and pathetic. And I sure needed a good cry and a couple shoulders to hold me while I did it. Time to pick myself up, dust off my soiled clothes and dirty hands, and think circles instead of boxes, inside or outside of them, as it were.
Focusing on my son’s lying problem is causing more lying. I know that. I can see it every day. So, true to form, I keep focusing on the lying every day. That is the same old thinking and it is getting me more of the same old problem.
There is a super sure-fire cure for lying. Up your empathy, expect the obvious (lying), and accept re-viewing, re-phrasing, re-doing, re-remembering, re-evaluating, re-inventing, re-seeing, re-explaining, re-visiting, and re-telling until your child settles on what is the last re-vision. Then re-joice because, little by little, your child is re-wiring for the truth.
This method happens to take the patience of a cat observing a mouse for the kill. My personal opinion: The answers to the great conundrums of the Universe are usually found in the ways of dogs and cats. Wag on, my friends, wag on and purr a lot.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.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.
No Lemon”aid” Today
From Friday Snoopy Happy Dance to Monday lemons over here on my side of the grass is not greener cliche fence. For the life of me, I cannot seem to make my usual lemonade from the sour fruits of my morning. It is already 3:30pm and I haven’t written to YOU. Come on, Ce. Perk up.
Everywhere I turned today for comfort, dished out messages that I could only hear as, “It’s your fault.” Your children are being this way because of YOU. Well, no kidding Sherlock! No freaking kidding!
All I wanted was for someone who loves me to say, “Wow, it IS so hard, and it has been a long 15 years, and you are doing your best, and I can see that, and hang on, and it will all be okay, because YOU are okay.” I did get two hugs in the end. That mattered, because love matters.
Yep, I’m feeling a little pathetic, and that’s it. Lemon without the “aid.”
Better cue-up the Snoopy Dance music, cuz I need a reason to celebrate. I know YOU have these days. I hope it feels comforting to know that YOU are not the only one. Big love to YOU, because…
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
Celebrate, YOU Need It
I am a sucker for a good ol’ Snoopy Happy Dance. Snoopy Happy Dancing is a time to cut loose, twirl around, be silly, act ridiculous.
Come on, celebrate life with me.
This is it.
This is livin’ the dream.
It is what YOU make it.
Make some happy dance memories for yourself and for your kids. Give them one more thing to remember in their childhoods that is joyful, lively and without trouble. It’s free, no ticket line, no sweaty heat, no chilly breeze, no clean-up necessary, no muss, no fuss.
Just fun.
Have YOU forgotten how to do the Snoopy Happy Dance? Here is a primer.
It’s Friday. Celebrate with a little happy dance of your own.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.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.
Jinxed Myself
I am so often guilty of thinking “my children never learn.”
In the middle of the night (oh, around 1:30am) a couple days ago, while I was writing to YOU about how “mostly” my family is on the other side of insanity these days, I discovered my son in bed playing away on his computer. With very little fanfare or emotion I said, “You need to go to sleep now and you have lost your computer privilege… goodnight honey,” and I trotted off to bed like a little carefree pony.
When 6:30am rolled around and it was time to go to school, he refused to speak to me, take his meds, or get up at all–spent the whole day in bed and wouldn’t speak to me when I got home (though he did manage to do all his chores–win/lose sorta.) Here it is three days later and he still isn’t speaking or going to school. He doesn’t have a computer, so doesn’t have a life-force apparently.
My punishing him in the night the way I did, albeit calmly with an obvious natural consequence, sent him into a cortisol cascade impeding his prefrontal cortex and launching days of poor decision making. So, thinking “my children never learn” is hysterical. The truth is: I never learn.
I know some of YOU are thinking: Okay, but what did you really do wrong Ce? He knew he shouldn’t be doing that. He knew he would get into some kind of trouble. He was wrong. He was breaking the rule. He needed a consequence (punishment) to learn not to do it again. How else will he ever learn?
I truly wish I had a child with a brain that could manage that kind of thinking and that kind of parenting. I don’t. I have a child with extremely poor cause and effect thinking under pressure. Period. He does not learn from natural or logical consequences dropped on him even by a quiet and gentle little pony. He dysregulates, blows up or in, and makes one poor decision after another. He can’t learn under those circumstances. His brain is offline.
Frankly, I am the only one in this equation with the capacity to actually think during times of stress and yet I often don’t. Funny how I want him to do something that I can’t. Isn’t that the parent way? That was my parents’ way. How about YOU?
When will I learn to parent the brain of the child I actual live with instead of the one I wish I had? When will I ever learn?
By the way, this could have been handled the next day with a simple conversation. He likely would have consequenced himself without the drama, but I just couldn’t wait to parent power-bomb him. I think it is a little meanness in me. I really do. Oh, the shame of being naked in the mirror of my baser nature. If I look at it, I can set myself free. This is how I will one day learn.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
If YOU Knew What I Know
In response to Dear Desperate yesterday, I heard back from so many of YOU. Some with Amen Sister! Some with stories of hell being endured across the country by parents just like YOU. And some from parents who, like me, are mostly on the other side of the daily chaos.
To those of YOU in the thick of it, one day this will calm way, way down. Try to reign in your fear of all things horrible happening, and take each day as it comes. Some days will feel like a springtime and others like Tsunamis. One day after the other, year by year, your children will grow, mature, and begin to take conscious steps on their own. Our challenged kids learn to live the way a baby learns to walk. They fall down a lot over the course of their childhoods and teen years. Stuff gets broken. Little by little, with our healing support and the support of the community, they begin to crawl, then walk. Their gaits are not always steady by the time they reach adulthood, but they fall way less often. And for that YOU will be joyous and feel triumphant beyond your wildest imagination.
To those of YOU out of the thicket and into the sun, embossed Super Parent Under-Armor all around. Wear it proudly beneath your togs. Your lives are like Snoopy Dances to my soul. If all parents knew what I know about the end game, they would feel more hopeful. I have tons of hope, because YOU tell me your stories and I have one of my own. Also, I get to be a small part of the journey with many of YOU. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Yep, filled with hope is the way to go. Hope makes the cobblestones a little less painful under your bare feet as you wind your way through dark valleys and up the steep cliffs to lighter days on the mountaintop.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
Stuck In Numb
One form of protection the human organism has built-in to protect from the overwhelming emotions of trauma, abandonment and maltreatment is dissociation. Dissociation can be viewed on a continuum from numbing to splitting off parts into personality fragments. These are heady concepts that need real study to fully understand, though YOU may be experiencing it every day in your child(ren) without really knowing what it is.
If your child seems to have few highs and few lows and has the appearance often of sleepwalking, you are likely living with a child who is “stuck in numb,” in a dimmer switch state or breaker switch state. Dimmer switch state is like being wrapped head-to-toe in foam where all feelings are dulled and muted. Breaker switch state is like being “shocked” into feeling nothing at all. Questions like “What do you feel?” are met with confusion or persistent responses of “I don’t know.”
Treatment is necessary for dissociated children. Without it, your child will likely grow somatic or psychological conditions that plague for a lifetime
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.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.
I recommend YOU Read This If YOU Haven’t
I recommend YOU read this if YOU haven’t.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.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.
The Freedom to Not Know
YOU are a fabulous human. How do I know? I know because YOU are raising a child/children from difficult beginnings and spending every ounce of your life-force doing it. By definition, YOU are fabulous. Bask in it. YOU deserve the pat on the back, the adoration, the gold star, the love, and the gentleness of self-love.
I was probably 35-years-old before I had an epiphany that it was okay to say these three words: “I don’t know.” Thank goodness I found that humility in my 30s, because I adopted attachment challenged children in my 40s and I didn’t have a clue what to do. My previous well-constructed life was suddenly turned upside down and I was stunned to find out just how much I didn’t know.
If you follow my email blog YOU know I am prone to hyperbole (kind of to entertain YOU and kind of to entertain myself), but in this case I am not exaggerating. My children came home to me at 2 and 3-years-old and within six-months they were swinging from the proverbial chandeliers and I had no idea what to do.
There was no shame in my not knowing, just as there is no shame in YOU not knowing. It is an imperative that YOU get support from people who “get YOU.” Other adoptive parents will. Find a therapist with whom YOU can be real–“I feel like strangling him.” That is a feeling, NOT child abuse. Actually strangling her IS child abuse. Wanting to strangle him is reality. Admit it, and it will set YOU free. Find someone to talk to who gets it. YOU need that to find your way to the other side–determination to be a safe, predictable, loving, and tenacious therapeutic parent.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.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.
Complex Trauma
What the heck is Complex Trauma anyway, sometimes referred to as Complex Developmental Trauma? That is what most of our kids are experiencing and that you are trying to parent–attachment trauma and maltreatment trauma that interrupts human development and hardwires survival styles. The styles are varied and overlapping, but fall into a number of ways of dealing with the stressors of life.
Unfortunately, one of the ways our kids learn to cope is by cutting off their righteously angry powerless emotions they felt as a child and internalizing them against themselves (“all bad”) or against YOU (“all bad.”) These split off parts are destructive to the fabric of their identity and can cause a trajectory change for the worse. YOU may have noticed a flipping back and forth between the all bad self and the all bad other. That is what I am talking about.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. Sign up here.
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
- Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014. Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 