Category Archives: Parenting Attachment Challenged Children

Shake It Off

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Good Morning Fellow Parent,

Got up this morning to the usual:  Teeth, Deodorant, Zipper?  Close, but no trifecta.
 
Just have to Shake It Off with Audrey and Dad:
 
Shake It Off
 

Honestly, it has been one of those kid weeks. It’s definitely my house, because the same things happen every day, every day, every day.  Shaking it off is the only answer.  

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

 When nothing else makes sense, DANCE.

Fre-Frontal Lobe Damage

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I am fond of saying things about the Pre-Frontal Cortex.  YOU might have noticed that if you are a long time Daily YOU Time reader.  I just like the way it rolls off my tongue. Uh, fingers?  
Anyway, our attachment challenged children, as well as any child who comes from difficult beginnings of distressed pregnancy, prematurity, and birth trauma are going to experience frontal lobe (i.e. Pre-Frontal Cortex) damage or delay (if that is easier to think about.)  
That part of the brain is responsible for executive functions of memory, theory of mind (e.g. knowing that one’s mind is not the only mind), extrapolation, cause and effect thinking, reason, and ultimately complex judgement and morality.
Dr. James Chandler nicely describes some of the functions this way:
  1. Working memory and recall (holding facts in mind while manipulating information; accessing facts stored in long-term memory.)
  2. Activation, arousal, and effort (getting started; paying attention; finishing work)
  3. Controlling emotions (ability to tolerate frustration; thinking before acting or speaking)
  4. Internalizing language (using “self-talk” to control one’s behavior and direct future actions)
  5. Taking an issue apart, analyzing the pieces, reconstituting and organizing it into new ideas (complex problem solving).

Give your child a break when it comes to statements they make like:

I forgot.

I don’t remember how to do it.

I don’t remember what you said.

I got distracted.

I can’t focus.

I can’t think.

I can’t start.

I can’t manage.

I don’t know.

I don’t know how.

I can’t remember how.

I didn’t hear you.

I can’t control it.

I just took it.

I just wanted it.

I just hit him.

I got confused.

I can’t do my homework.

I can’t organize it.

I am trying to organize it.

I can’t figure it out.

I can’t.

I can’t.

I can’t.

Your child probably can’t. This is not bad, lazy, unmotivated, defiant, passive aggressive, attachment disordered, stubborn, stupid, resistant, avoidant, or hateful.  Your child needs hurdle-help, brain training, tools, repetition, hands-on experience, skill-building, and your patience.

Pre-Frontal Cortex frontal lobe damage is the problem, not your child.

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Patience and understanding will save your relationship with a child who comes from difficult beginnings. Relationship is love in action. 
Love Matters.

Parent Heal Thyself

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Who better to bring compassion to the task of parenting than a parent who received little compassion when s/he was a child. If that sounds like you, do your own trauma recovery work so you can be a healing force in the life of your child. If you go wounded into that great attachment challenged parenting adventure, you will likely struggle and contribute to keeping both of your wounds gaping.

Love Matters, Ce

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

Parent heal thyself.

Adoptive Brains Are Different

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If your child is adopted, his/her brain is NOT the same as a healthy, attached, birth child. When we ascribe negative intention to our children’s behavior, we are sadly mistaken. Our children have special needs. They need special dispensation regarding every day activities.

For example:

When they take forever to get dressed…

When they will not accept your clothing choices…

When screaming is their response to “no…”

When they are charming when others say “no…”

When they are withdrawn and negative…

When they are outspoken and attention seeking…

When they are good at getting their way…

When they seem helpless and inadequate at every turn…

When they are controlling…

When they don’t take responsibility…

When they are irrational…

When they are black and white…

When they are clumsy…

When they insist on doing things their own way…

When they are clueless about the needs of others…

When they are self-centered…

When they hoard…

When they break everything they touch…

When they do not share…

When they share everything…

When they would go home with anyone…

When they will not let go of your hand, ever…

When they seem perpetually 2 years old…

When they act 27 years old…

…they need our understanding, compassion, and patience for their brain related specialness.

Love Matters, Ce

Brains Are Impacted By Adoption

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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Hello Fellow Parent,

If your child is adopted, his/her brain is NOT the same as a healthy, attached, birth child.  When we ascribe negative intention to our children’s behavior, we are sadly mistaken. Our children have special needs.  They need special dispensation regarding every day activities.  

For example:

When they take forever to get dressed…

When they will not accept your clothing choices…

When screaming is their response to “no…”

When they are charming when other’s say “no…”

When they are withdrawn and negative…

When they are outspoken and attention seeking…

When they are good at getting their way…

When they seem helpless and inadequate at every turn…

When they are controlling…

When they don’t take responsibility…

When they are irrational…

When they are black and white…

When they are clumsy…

When they insist on doing things their own way…

When they are clueless about the needs of others…

When they are self-centered…

When they hoard…

When they break everything they touch…

When they do not share…

When they share everything…

When they would go home with anyone…

When they will not let go of your hand, ever…

When they seem perpetually 2 years old…

When they act 27 years old…

…they need our understanding, compassion, and patience for their brain related specialness.

Love Matters, Ce

8/28/14 Our website is under construction right now, so you cannot get there from anywhere.  In a couple days, you can do the following if you like:
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Give your child compassion in the form of patience and understanding.  You will need to have YOU time to be able to do that.  Get it! You deserve it!  If your child has special needs, so do you.

 

Love vs. Fear

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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There are really only two emotional states: love and fear. Love signals safety.  Fear signals danger. 

How you speak sends a signal to your child’s brain.  What are you regularly signaling?

Love Matters, Ce

Next Trust-Based Parent Training is Sept. 27th and Oct 4th.  Click here for more information and to register.
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Prosody is rhythm, inflection, and intonation of speech. Prosody reflects the emotional state of the speaker. 

Love or fear?

 

From Dan Hughes

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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I Will Discover 

The Song That Is 

In Your Heart 

And…

I Will

Sing It To You When 

You Forget It    

This pledge embodies the essence of being an intersubjectively mindful parent to a child challenged by complex trauma.  

It demands attention to your own song, your own trauma, your own mindfulness.  

Then for your child(ren): listen hard for the melody of experience, the narrative, the cacophony, the arias, the long slow note held into breathless silence.

 
Love Matters, Ce
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Listen beyond the angry spitting and screaming for the fear and pain that lies beneath.

 

It Gets In

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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“Does any of this ever get through to our attachment challenged children?”  I am asked this question daily by one parent or another…usually in exasperation and often in despair. 

Unequivocally, yes. Yes it does.  

One day, when you least expect it, you will be both surprised and delighted when you overhear your son or daughter giving sage advice to a sibling or peer.  The advice will sound as though it came right out of your own mouth.  

Have faith.  Trust the human brain to record every single thing, even while denying any memory of the past.  The brain records the bad (sadly) AND the good (thankfully.) That is the hidden paradox.

You child will eventually be able to call upon the years of repetitious neuro-pathways you created when you taught the same lessons, day in and day out, even as they appeared to “never” learn from their mistakes and your best teaching.  

 
Love Matters, 
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
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We all learn through repetition.  Think about something you are trying to change.  How may times have you started and stopped, started and stopped…?   Repetition creates new neuro-pathways for everyone.  It takes a lot of effort to change, right?

 

Things Get Broken

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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Good Morning Fellow Parent,

Our kids break things.  They break things to test the limits of everything because they cannot intuit when to stop, where the breaking point really is.  That is an attachment issue.  A lack of good enough parenting in the first 33 months of life (starting at conception) creates in a child’s brain the inability to intuit when to put the brakes on: when to stop.   So, SNAP, it’s broken.  Have you noticed that your child seems surprised every time something is broken?  It broke. 

Along with the inability to put brakes on is the inability to extrapolate.  Extrapolation is an executive function of the pre-frontal cortex.  Our attachment challenged children cannot extrapolate one broken thing to another broken thing.  Attachment challenged children have a higher level of cortisol (stress hormone) flooding their pre-frontal cortices, thus delaying the development of the executive function.  The executive function in the brain is what makes it possible for our children to put two and two together.  You probably noticed already that our kids don’t put two and two together very well, thus the need for repetition, repetition, repetition on our parts.

They are developmentally delayed.  It is important for us parents  to understand this.  They may look “normal,” but they are not really.  Their brains are different. How can we continue to expect age appropriate behavior from a child whose brain is delayed by many, many years?

The 65,000 dollar question is:  Will their brains ever change?  With help–your safe love, corrective parenting, attachment therapies, neurofeedback, Trauma Therapies, and time–mostly they will…much later than we parents usually expect and desire. Hang in there.

Up your empathy for how in the world it must feel to make the same mistakes over and over and over again and to be in trouble over and over and over again?  For me, horrible to the core and angry as hell at those who appeared to be constantly picking on me.  I think our kids feel something like that.  When I feel empathy, I handle things more gently and lovingly.  So will you.  That is what our kids need–gentle, consistent parenting. Over and over and over.

Love Matters, Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships
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When YOU get upset today, take one deep breath before speaking. Maybe three.

 

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Daily YOU Time
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Love Matters
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Good Morning Fellow Parent,

I reply to many email questions daily from parents with parenting questions.  I welcome questions in email, so families can get support between sessions.  Turns out, I don’t always understand the questions and offer less than what is expected; however, sometimes the replies have a universal quality.  This is a response to a recent email I thought might be helpful to share with you.

I wanted to follow up about that “glee” you experience in your (child) when he is blowing out.
That is a chemical reaction.  When he is blowing out, his brain is flooded with cortisol (stress hormone taking his prefrontal
cortex–judgement, caring, ability to respond appropriately–off line), his adrenaline pumps through his body (giving him the feeling of superman like physical power), and endorphins are released because of the over-arousal (giving him a burst of relief and, dare I say it, exuberant satisfaction) which makes him seem to ENJOY a good blow out while it is happening.
What you interpret as “enjoying the negative escalation” is really “enjoying the chemical process” of the blow-out, not the defiant behavior directed at you. To top it all off, this chemical alchemy is ADDICTIVE, so the blow outs become habituated because unconsciously he is seeking that intense feeling.
That said, what is the answer?   While you are getting him into recovery from addictive blow-outs, you have to do some therapeutic things that maybe seem counter-intuitive and like way too much energy to be putting into a kid that is old enough to do the basic tasks of getting dressed, taking showers, etc. Remember, his brain is addicted to blowing out.  He has been blowing out most of his life; it isn’t just for you.  You will have to do the regular, daily, hard work of re-organizing his experiences to replace the blow-out habit with a new positive addiction like relational, interactive play (the language of children).
Keep your emotions light and be playful… Give him the same chemical alchemy in a positive way.  Morning pillow fight to get his blood pumping? Game of tag around the house before a shower? Turn on some rock and roll and dance around like an idiot?  Tickle fest?  Serenade him with I’ve Got a Hammer?
 

Try it, if you think you can stay playful and tolerate the “up” energy.  You can get some replacement neuro-pathways constructed this way.

Love Matters, Ce
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Understanding your child’s behavior as a brain/body process, rather than a calculated, personal attack on YOU, is important to your ability to meet your child with love.