Category Archives: Parenting Adopted Children

Be Careful With The Healing Heart of Your Child

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When our hurting children start to heal and they have a streak of positive behavior, beware.  YOU and your child are in very different places. 
 
Our children are not able to use “meta-mind” to step outside themselves and look back at how they are behaving. They may be seeing themselves as “doing good,” rather than “doing bad.”  They may be feeling safer, but their trauma is lurking right there below the surface.
 
Parents may be waiting for the next shoe to drop, as it were. While others may feel relief when there is a break from the shenanigans. That relief may trigger YOU to take a vacation from therapeutic parenting.
However YOU feel, be careful with your child’s healing heart. This is not the time to start traditional parenting, leaving your child to self-soothe,  using consequences, stop engaging.  Actually, this is the time to step it up.  Be even more engaging, more attentive, more available. Reward your child’s positive shift with the gift of more, not less.
Your child’s brain is better attuned to taking your therapeutic efforts in during times of peace.  If you go back to traditional parenting because you think your child doesn’t need it so much now, you will be unconsciously drawing your child into shenanigan behavior to get the therapeutic goodness back.
Make a commitment to be a therapeutic parent for a lifetime.  First of all, it is the most loving way for parents to be for any child. Secondly, traumatized children will always need you to be careful with their healing hearts–that means in good times, and during the emotional shenanigan times.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month.  Our next course dates are October 10th and 24th.  Child care provided for an extra fee. 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.

Be careful with the healing heart of your child.

Mea Culpa

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My blogs have been irregular for the past few weeks.  Mea culpa, I am sick with a common cold and in a work/bed/work/bed cycle. How a cold can take me down when my kids cannot is a mystery to me.  It is what it is.  Still, I am sorry to be hit and miss with YOU. Hope the rest of this makes sense.  My head is a big red balloon.
 
Recently I read a quote by Bryan Stevenson that struck a chord. “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” When I was a child it felt like my torso was really an ever expanding bucket filling up with shame.  Only recently, one of my colleagues helped me expel through EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a trauma reduction therapy) the last drop of childhood shame from the bottom of that bucket.  Free at last.
 
My parents used shame freely.  They never realized their message was distorted inside of me.  I learned that I was shameful; the functions of my body were shameful; my human desires were shameful; and, my childhood lack of self-restraint was shameful. That didn’t leave much to feel good about except being smart and pleasing my parents, which I found I had a hard time wanting to do. I was an attachment challenged child raised with traditional parenting strategies–plenty of shame, smarting smacks across the face and butt, angry punishments, and a lot of disapproval.
 
As you blog readers know, I wielded my own traditional parenting at my children when I first adopted them.  I still grieve my ignorance.  
 
In my bones I have  known my troubled children were more than the worst things they had done (something my husband had trouble grasping.)  In my opinion this is one of the most loving things you can do as a parent: forgive your children every day for the worst things that they did yesterday. Your children are more than the worst things they have done, and your forgiveness will allow YOU to parent them with the end in mind, rather than from the troubled place you find them at any given moment. 
A question for YOU to ponder:  if my parents had known I was going to grow up into the person I am, do you think they would have spared the shame and bathed their child instead in love and acceptance?  I know for a fact carrying that shame bucket did not make me the person I am today.  I am who I am despite the heavy weight of it.
What kind of parenting does your hurting child deserve?
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins in October.  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.

Shame and love are mutually exclusive.

Let The Super Sleuthing Begin

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What YOU can know for sure is that your child is from difficult beginnings.  Adoption alone makes this so.  The question I have for you is this: Are YOU from difficult beginnings, too?
 
I am writing a little book for adoptive parents that is requiring me to produce a biography. It is no secret to readers of this blog that I come from difficult beginnings, right?  Wow, do I ever.  Writing this bio has brought that fact sharply into focus.  Holy-mole, no wonder I struggled with regulation.
 
I challenge YOU to write a narrative, like a bio for your own book, about your early childhood through early adulthood.  You might be surprised at what you discover about yourself.
 
Here are ONLY a few things to consider:
  • Your genetic load from grandparents and parents–mental health, substance abuse, intellectual capacity, and physical health (we inherit a bunch)
  • Your parents’ situation at your conception (yep, conception matters)
  • Your parents were adopted or abused in early childhood.
  • External and Internal  condition of your mother when YOU were in utero–poverty, violence, stressors, trauma, unwanted pregnancy, unwed, unhappy, too young, ill-prepared, unsupported, underfed, unaware, unhealthy, physical illness, mental health issues, anxiety, depression, despair, grief, fear, shame
  • Pregnancy health–diabetes, pre-eclampsia, bed-ridden, hospitalized, operated on in utero
  • Labor/Birth–breach birth, complications, prematurity, NICU stay, emergency measures, loss of parent in childbirth, trauma, removed from mother by adoption plan
  • Adoption trauma at birth or in the first two years
  • Adoption trauma after the first two years
  • Maltreatment, neglect, physical, emotional or sexual abuse
  • Parental mental health problems
  • Single parent
  • Divorce of parents in first two years
  • Divorce of parents
  • Death of parent(s)
  • Death of siblings
  • Multiple babies
  • Large family
  • Caregiving transferred to others
  • Global crisis
Believe me, the list goes on and on.  All of these things impact your experience, your window of emotional tolerance, and your ability to regulate in times of stress.
 
So, when you are wondering why you get so dysregulated in the presence of your child’s attachment challenged shenanigans your bio will give you the information you need to understand.  A coherent narrative about your childhood is the very first step in changing the dysregulation in your home while you raise your own regulation-challenged child.
 
Be a Super Sleuth about your own life for a change.
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins in October.  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.

Let the Super Sleuthing begin.

Quizzing Is Not Talking

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Quizzing is not the same thing as talking with children/teens.
 
How was school?
Fine.
Do you have homework?
No. It’s finished.
What did you learn today?
Nothing.
Talk to any friends?
Yeah.
Anything happen of interest?
No.
Why don’t you ever want to talk to me?
I do.
But you don’t. Why don’t you?
I don’t know.
Try a few of these:
 
  • I saw this funny thing on You Tube today I want to show you.  Watch.
  • I made this video of Rough and Tumble today. So cute. Look.
  • I heard you tell Joe you made an 3D intro to your channel.  I want to see it.
  • I’m thinking about things to do next weekend.  Help me find something fun to do.
  • Here are three recipes I’m thinking about for dinner tomorrow when your friend is over.  What would be the most yummy for you guys? 
  • Which do you like better potato chips, french fries or potato salad for the BBQ tomorrow?
  • Hey, I’m picking up Gatorade today.  Which flavors are your favorites? Blue?  What flavor is Blue anyway?
  • Try this chocolate chip cookie.  How does it rate in your world of perfect chocolate chip cookies?
  • Which band boy are you liking on right now?  Let me see a picture.
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

Maybe you could care less about You Tube videos.  
You can bet your child cares more.

Dysregulation Is An Human Condition

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When I was in school, I learned that a becomes an when put in front of an h.  Is that a thing still?   Dysregulation Is An Human Condition (today’s title) just doesn’t sound right, but a or an aside, dysregulation in traumatized humans is still a thing.
 
I was working with an almost 18-year-old attachment challenged, formerly maltreated, boy yesterday and I realized that his very, very, nice demeanor was really a dysregulated state.  Shabam! Nearly got by me. 
 
He was here for one chronic misbehavior; otherwise, he wouldn’t be back here, as he graduated from my care nearly 6 years ago.  I did two sessions of cognitive behavioral conversation with him and assessed for deeper attachment challenged reasons for his misbehavior, when suddenly a revelation.  He sweetly (not oppositionally) says, “I don’t know” to nearly everything I ask, as though he knows nothing about himself.  After some serious digging, he was able to say that he is nice and smart, maybe.  
 
Turns out he has a dysregulation “tell.”  When he gets a rise in cortisol (stress hormone from dysregulation) his face does not change one tiny perceptible degree and his body stays relaxed looking and still; although, he does become even nicer and seemingly more empty saying, “I don’t know” to unpredictable questions.
 
Now that I know his “tell,” I can help him begin to notice how he is on the inside.  Before, it just seemed like there was no there there, which is never true. Once he begins to notice his own dysregulation, the odds quadruple for changing that one chronic misbehavior of his from the inside out.
 
Do you have a chronically nice child from difficult beginnings? Investigate her tell.  Explore her inner landscape for hidden dysregulation that is keeping your child’s personality from blossoming or holding a few negative behaviors frustratingly static. 
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

Our kids need help knowing what is happening to them emotionally on the inside, so they have a better chance of making thoughtful decisions and good choices on the outside. 

Play Deficits

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Yesterday, I made my two adult teenagers (both formerly diagnosed with a zillion things including RAD and maltreatment) to leave the house. They had been indoors on some form of electronic device in separate rooms for three days.  I am not kidding you.  I only saw either of them when they came out to barely eat and even then they brought some kind of electronic device to the kitchen or table. 
 
It took them about two hours to finally leave, and they were back within 20 minutes.  We live in a very lively downtown area with sidewalk sales, people dining and conversating on every corner, and lots of bustling activity of every kind. Personally, that is why I live here.  I enjoy wondering around with curiosity, as there is never a dull moment.  That’s me.
 
If your child came from difficult beginnings and had a hard time figuring out how to play when very young, you can bet there will be trouble figuring out how to be entertained in the later years.  Electronics are the super easy go-to for our kids because all the action, bells and whistles are built in. There is an obvious reason to play those games–to get from here to there, win a sword, kill the enemies, build a town, or raise the score. 
 
Oh, our kids can get into plenty of mischief following peers’ shenanigans out in the world all right. They can even entertain themselves by burning down the house playing with matches in their closets, but they have trouble figuring out how to enjoy the mysteries of life, be curious about the ordinary or the miraculous, and engaging the world naturally for no reason except because they live.  
 
Frankly, both of my kids would have appreciated my taking the walk with them.  They love for me to walk the dogs with them.  Their trips to McDonalds are more fun when I come along.  That is because they have figured out how to use my brain to entertain them.   Yesterday, I was in bed recovering from a nasty summer cold, so I wasn’t up for it.  
 
The very best thing YOU can do for your child of any age is to teach them how to play by playing, and actually bring to their attention how to observe and be curious.  Observation and curiosity have to be tenaciously taught to our children not through telling (Go out and be curious! my fallback mode,) but rather by actively engaging them with their world. If they internalize these processes when young, they will be curious and engaged for a lifetime.  If they don’t, they will be bored stiff without their electronic brains in hand.
 
I wish I had understood the difference between engaging and telling when my kids were young.  They are paying for my ignorance now.  I am desperately hoping YOU can learn from my mistakes, or I wouldn’t be telling you this.  The engaging is up to you.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

Curious sounds like:  Look at that bird singing in the tree. I wonder what it is singing about right now?  What do you think the words would be?  Let’s sing some words to its song.  

Long-term Damage Is What It Is

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My parents sent me to 9-years of ballet lessons because they said to each other often in front of me, “She is c-l-u-m-s-y.” YOU already know I fall a lot. Yesterday, I broke my toe by misjudging a step outside my kitchen, and this morning I nearly broke my face misjudging the same darned step.
 
I come from difficult beginnings of maltreatment and insecure attachment, and the scourge of c-l-u-m-s-y has been with me all my life.  I also have to cut every tag out of my collars and buy shoes a half-size bigger than necessary (which might explain the tripping problem on a different level–ha) because tight shoes significantly lower my IQ.
 
While I embark on the task of launching my son into adulthood, I am pointedly reminded of the long-term damage from difficult beginnings.  I lose sight of the effects on me because, after all, clumsy and itchy are all I have ever known.  On my sweet boy, the damage is what it is–long-term and pervasive.
 
Sunday, I started on the process of chaperoning my son on weekly grocery shopping trips for himself.  He was like a deer in headlights, and the truck hit him.  The cortisol flooded him so completely that he couldn’t remember what he ate last week. Beyond what I cook, he eats the same 6 things every week of his life–milk, bread, chili, ravioli, fruit, cereal.  He couldn’t remember even one of those things for 15 minutes. 
 
Eventually, he recovered his memory, searched the aisles four or five times, and got it all in the cart.  It took nearly an hour.  When I asked him to sign his name on the electronic pad at checkout, I thought my computer geek son was going to hyperventilate.  I can’t Mom.  I haven’t ever done it before. I don’t know how.  I can’t write that small.  I can’t handwrite. I can’t.  With soothing, persistence, and prompts to breathe, he did it just fine.
 
After putting the grocery bags into the car, I caught a glimpse of his smiling face.  “That was easy,” he said proudly. That was easy just like walking and chewing gum at the same time is easy for me.
This is just a reminder about your children from difficult beginnings.  They have long-term impairment that YOU and they need to understand in order to overcome with self-esteem intact.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Day one of Trust-based Relational Parent Training.  Super great group of parents.  Wish YOU were here.
  • 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.
  • Big HUG and APPRECIATION for the generous scholarship contributions–YOU know who YOU are.  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.
 
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.

School Is About To Start

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Oh, the dreaded morning routine drama…  Back to school brings this up full force.  Some of us have it every day, year-round, with no time off for summer.  YOU are not alone, but I know you feel like it when it is 7:45 am and you are going to be late for work because your darling child moves like cold molasses.  

 

First of all, check your own cortisol spike from fear and frustration: 

I am going to lose my job, my client, my reputation, my mind…I hate being late…my mom/dad would have killed me if I acted this way…he is never going to be able to get a job or survive with this behavior…  Look who is in survival mode now!

 

BREATHE long slow breaths until you get some perspective. Your child is not going to be an ax-murderer or skid-row dude because he is struggling to get with the socially acceptable morning routine.

 

If you are actually about to lose your job over this, hire someone to transition your child in the mornings or beg a neighbor or friend’s parent to do this for you.  Talk to your boss, schedule later appointments if you can, tag team with your partner, accept that this is your current lot in life so you can stop feeling like an atomic bomb is going off in your family every morning.

 

Face some realities.   YOU chose to adopt a child and that rarely comes without the challenge of special needs. I am not blaming YOU, only reminding that adoption is a choice and comes with certain hardships of which morning routine shenanigans are just drops in a big bucket. Maltreated kids were often abused in the morning because of the morning routines, so our kids fear, dislike, resist, and deeply avoid mornings.  YOU are such a good thing in your child’s life that morning feels INTENSELY SAFE, SNUG, COZY and DELICIOUS in ways that cannot be explained in words.  The feelings say: I need to stay here in bed forever because it feels better than any other thing and I need to feel this SAFE, ATTACHED feeling more than I need to brush my teeth, put my clothes on, or get you to work on time.  Sorry Mom/Dad. Sorry, I just can’t change right now. Please still love me, but I know you won’t. No one else has.

 

In no way am I intending to hit you right between the eyes.  I am, however, trying to have integrity and speak as truthfully and insightfully as I can, so you can find ways to accept, stay loving, and little by little move your baby into childhood, your child into adolescence, your adolescent into adulthood with hearts and minds intact.

 

Patience is a true virtue.  Personally, I was not blessed with much of it.  I have to work hard at it every single day of my parenting life. Sometimes I succeed.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

Morning routines from Hell require virtues from Heaven. 

It’s A Fact

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Horrible stress changes a kid’s brain.  Abuse and abandonment trauma are horrible stressors.  What adults may see as ADHD or Learning Disability may in fact be the results of trauma-related stress on the brain.
 
Research shows that the behaviors YOU may be living with in your children, such as:
slow processing
poor attention 
poor concentration
poor decision-making
poor choice-making
tuning out
hyperactivity
speech delays
reading and writing problems
lack of memory
are all about stress from trauma.  What normally acts as danger alarms, become alarms stuck on a perpetual fire drill.  Makes it hard to think.
 
The goal of regulation is to shut off the fire alarm, and only use it when there is actual fire.
 
Here are some systematic things to work on with your children:
  1. Calm down (easier said than done, of-course).
  2. Get connected (eye contact and hugs will do).
  3. Think it through (process what happened and how it can be different next time with practice).
Ready, set, go.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

Skill development is necessary to create new neuropathways.  

The Four Sack Baby

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Yesterday, my son’s Family Life Class began The Flour Sack Baby Experiment.  The kids drew on faces and hair, dressed-up their flour sacks, and were told to care for it like a baby all day.  Amy Mimi Eshelman is my Flour Sack granddaughter.  Apparently, they will do this all week.  Oh boy!
 
My son was completely off the hook when I came home from work.  I am not kidding. The events of the day had him so dysregulated that he began talking about it to me from the moment my car rolled into the garage and didn’t stop until bedtime.  He actually walked downstairs to greet me. That is truly something.  He looked stoned and wild-eyed.  At bedtime, he told me he felt drunk, though he never has had even a sip of alcohol.  He seemed drunk to me, too.
 
He told me how he had to care for his daughter all day and he trusted his girlfriend to hold her, but not his best friend.  He also confessed that he felt very attached to his baby by the end of the day.  
 
I don’t think I like this experiment. It is supposed to teach kids how much effort it takes to care for a child, kind of for the purpose of postponement to, well, MUCH later. That is completely lost on my kid. He thinks the entire thing is a blast and can’t wait to have one.  He learned that he really trusts his girlfriend.  He also learned that he can attach to a flour sack, which makes him know that he will be able to love and take care of his baby–HIS BABY! That does not really fill me with warm fuzzies.
I don’t think I ever considered myself to be one opposed to family life or sex education in schools.  I am rethinking that.  No, not really.  I don’t think.
 
What I know is that my son yells “Ick” and scrunches up his face any time I mention birth control, safe sex practices, or anything related to touching beyond hugs and the one kiss he planted on his girlfriend a couple months ago.  I am pretty sure a flour sack baby is not going to send him into baby making mode.  Right? I think I am right.  But I suddenly have a 7.5 fear spike on my emotional Richter Scale.
 
Can’t wait to see how baby high he is today when I get home.  He will probably have twins.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo 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 August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 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.

And baby makes three, and me panic.