Category Archives: Parenting Attachment Challenged Children

Practice Regulation

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Attachment breach and abuse in the first two years of life almost always instills an inability to self-regulate emotions in a child. Providing emotion regulation is one of the fundamental functions of a mother or caregiver for a newborn baby.  That looks like consistent caregiving in the form of meeting a baby’s survival needs to be soothed, dry, full, and safe.  Separation from a birth mother or abuse by a mother or other person in this formative time prevents the child’s emotion regulatory system from developing properly, which can cause regulation problems for a lifetime.
 
As adoptive parents or parents of children from difficult beginnings, our job is to understand, teach and practice emotion regulation with our children.  When we do this, we help develop parts of the brain that are underdeveloped.  We can literally create new neuro-pathways in the brains of our children.  Cool, right?
 
So, resist the urge (and the headache) to keep your child calm “all the time.”  Instead, at regular intervals (practice every day), purposely get your child excited with sensory stimulation, then help your child calm down. That is what is needed. Being calm all the time will not teach your child to self-soothe.  In a playful manner, amping up and calming down, over and over, is the way.
 
Ready, set, go play.  Fall down, calm down, and start again.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Practice makes perfect neuro-pathways.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Milestones

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If your child is healing from Complex Developmental Trauma, ticking off milestones is a little bit foreign.  We know what two steps forward, three steps back feels like.  We know what stuck at about 2 years old feels like.  The excitement of seeing our children grow emotionally in accordance with their chronological age is rare indeed.

 
Let me share my delight last night at sending my 17-year-old son off to his very first rock concert.  I will be forever grateful to his friend’s father who said he would be the chaperone if I would foot the bill. I would have bought the tickets, stretch Hummer limo, and a Morton’s steak to get him to do it.  When my son came home this afternoon, he was all smiles and full of stories for me.  He is finally enjoying teenage things–milestone.  Delicious milestone.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 Hang in there.  Milestones do show up.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

I Can’t Breathe

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When YOU Get Tired

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When YOU get tired, take a Mommy or Daddy time out to refuel, readjust, reenergize, and reconnect with yourself.  Without YOU, then what?

I know this can go against the grain of what having children is all about.  Aren’t we supposed to put our children’s needs above our own?  Yes, sure.  And most of the time YOU do.  But sacrifice to the point of martyrdom will not a healthy family make.

After you have taken a breather, put your head back on with a new set of lens for your eyes.  The second best way to take care of yourself is to re-adjust your attitude about your traumatized children.  Their pain, wounding, outbursts, hatefulness, rejection, meanness, and fear has nearly nothing to do with YOU, and nearly everything to do with how they experience themselves and others in a dangerous world.  YOU scare them to the core.

If you were made of cardboard, YOU would still be the object of reactivity and likely be covered in spit and kick marks.  So, refocus your thinking.  Don’t over personalize your child’s reactivity toward YOU.  It is not about YOU.

Here is a suggestion: Love from a higher place.  Some of YOU have the love of God in your hearts.  Others the love of passion.  And still, there are folks who are rising to a call.  Some are engaging the challenge.  How ever you keep your heart alive and giving, do it.  Do it every day like your life depends on it–because it does.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 Love is not just a feeling.  It is a commitment.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Sporadic Outbursts

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Sporadic outbursting is not a sign that your regulation challenged child is a brat.  Your child’s brain is developmentally unable to manage high emotion–sometimes.  Period.
 
Outbursting needs healing, not punishment.  
 
Do your best to intervene within the first two minutes of a meltdown because you have a slight chance of turning the tables if you do.  If you wait until the tornado gets on the move, you have missed your cortisol/adrenalin window to bring the sun back.
 
Intervening looks a lot of different ways.  Here are a few:
  • Oh, did I say something that upset you Sweetheart?
  • I know you really wanted to do that longer.  How much more time do you think you need?  Let’s negotiate that to 5 more minutes.
  • You can finish that game before you take your bath in 5 minutes. Would you like to do that?
  • Which would you like to do first, clean up your room or take your bath?
  • I can see you are very upset.  I am not trying to make you mad. Tell me what you need right now Honey? I love you.
  • Oh my, Mommy said that kind of loud, huh?  I am sorry.  I must have scared you.
  • (Touch a hand, arm, back gently.) You are safe Sweetie.  
  • There is plenty of food.  Would you like another snack? 
  • I can see why you are getting upset.  Let’s figure this out together.
  • I’m sorry.
  • I didn’t mean to upset you Babe. We just don’t sing during dinner.  
  • I love you and I want you to feel safe.
  • It’s okay to be angry.  Tell me what you are angry about.
  • Uh oh, tickle time.
  • Uh oh, wild hugging time.
  • Uh oh, stomping our feet time.
  • Hey Sweetheart, look at my eyes.  Can you see the love in my eyes.  I am not mad at you.
  • It’s okay to make mistakes. That’s how we learn. I make them all the time.
  • I know you feel bad.  You are not bad.
 
The Attach Place Logo Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

YOU are a precious child in my eyes.  Make sure your eyes are saying that.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

They Will Not Just Grow Out of It

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A common thought for parents, when a child has certain problems or ways of thinking, doing or being, is that “S/he will grow out of it.” That is a very normal sentiment and it is often true for children; however, our children, our children with complex traumatic experiences in their early years, are special, with special brains–They will not just grow out of it.  Without therapeutic treatment and therapeutic parenting, they will likely stay the same and often get worse.
 
The very way the brain develops, builds itself, around early life experiences is the reason why traumatized children in large proportion develop emotional disorders later in life.
 
The good news is that there are ways of supporting the brain forward, unfolding the parts that are delayed and under-functioning. It is specific and laborious and it is well worth the effort.   YOU are going to have to trust me on this.
The Attach Place Logo
Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Don’t wait to get yourself and your child help.  
Brains need guidance.
NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

 

The Art of Repetition

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You might have noticed that I say the same things to YOU, over and over and over in a bunch of different ways.  I do this because it it is difficult for parents to develop new mental models for therapeutic parenting, because you have to bust through the old template of how YOU were parented.
 
Our kids are the same, because their brains and our brains are similar. Depending on your early childhood and trauma experiences, YOU may actually have a VERY similar brain, as your child.
 
I say all of that in order to say this:  Therapeutic parenting requires a tremendous amount of repetition to create new neuro-pathways to replace the negative templates in a traumatized child’s brain. NAGGING is not the repetition I keep recommending you use over and over and over.  NAGGING is not the repetition I keep recommending you use over and over and over. NAGGING is not the repetition I keep recommending you use over and over and over. NAGGING is not the repetition I keep recommending you use over and over and over.  See what I mean?
 
Your child does not need exasperated, humiliating, eye-rolling, hard repetition of a command.  That is nagging with negative attitude. That tells your child, “I am sick and tired of you and you are too stupid to live, YOU annoying, worthless brat!” Yes, that is how your child hears it, even if you think they know you don’t mean it.
 
Your child needs soft eyed, patient, empathic, brain-building, neocortex developing, repetitive interaction about how, why, and when something either needs to happen or something did happen. Build the prefrontal cortex, executive function of your child if you want them to make better choices.  It’s not what you tell them. It’s how you engage them that develops the part of the brain that will allow you to be less repetitive over time.  Your child has to be helped by YOU to use that part of the brain in order to grow it.  
 
Nagging keeps your child and YOU stuck in a negative feedback loop.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Engagement is like water to a garden in Spring.

The next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.

 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Everything Is A Seed

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Everything you do or say to your child is a seed.  Beware of what you sow, because you are planting the internal garden of a future adult. What kind of person do you want your child to become?

 
I am so disappointed in you and your behavior.
I hate you sometimes.
I don’t like you.
You are nothing but trouble.
You make me sick.
You are annoying.
I cannot stand being around you.
You are selfish.
You are ugly.
I think you are ridiculous.
What a worthless piece of crap you are becoming.
Get away from me.
You stink.
No one will ever love you if you don’t change.
You can’t be trusted.
You are hopeless.
No wonder your parents gave you up.
You are thoughtless.
You are stupid.
You are frightening to me.
Our lives are ruined because of you.
You are lucky I don’t drop you on the side of the road.
You don’t deserve a nice home and loving parents.
That’s it.  I am done with you.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Beware the gnarly seeds of self-hatred.

The next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.

 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Delicious Reports

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I have the deep privilege of getting to know many families who are loving through the light and the dark days of raising traumatized children.  The most delightful part for me is getting updates out of the blue about the happenings in your lives long after I have stopped being intimately involved in your family shenanigans.  
 
This Thanksgiving I got an inbox full.  What I can easily pull together is a common theme.  Blood, sweat, and tears eventually fall away to delightful times of joy and love.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Keep the faith.

Love matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Take care of yourself while keeping the faith.

Let’s Get Real

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Over the course of raising children there are some contributions we make, right? All parents make them, attachment challenged or not.

I donated two leather couches, the walls (including quite a bit of drywall) in four different houses, window screens, window panes, window sills, bathroom mirrors, more carpet than I care to tell you about, too numerous to count glasses and plates, pans, cabinet hinges and doors, car seats, various bicycles, skateboards, dining room tables and chairs, mattresses, furniture of every kind really, musical instruments, computers, DSs, smartphones, iPods x6, video cameras, and a number of precious jewelry items that I loved with both sentimental and actual value.

That was stuff. It was my contribution. I let it go, after grieving for some of it. Now it doesn’t matter a bit. Time has erased the significance of the stuff and left me with a lesson learned.

The other night my husband broke several crystal glasses reaching for a water glass in the darkness of our kitchen. I am so grateful I know that stuff doesn’t matter more than love. When he came back to bed, I was only concerned that he escaped injury. There was a time I would have been upset about losing my stuff.

In ten years from now the stuff you get upset about losing to the rearing of your children will be meaningless. I am not saying that one should not value and be respectful of hard acquired comforts. I am saying that they are not as important as they seem, when put up against the value of saving the heart of a child.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Tend to the heart of the matter.

 

 

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The next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.

Please share freely. Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.