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Certainty
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Category Archives: Parenting Attachment Challenged 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.
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
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.
Dear Desperate
Maybe I need to address this differently.
Dear Desperate,
I know that YOU are at your wits end. YOU have tried everything. Nothing, I mean, NOTHING works. Nothing! I know that sickening feeling in my bones–that exhausted, weary, battered feeling of despair and powerlessness that seeps into everything you say and do. It makes your work an escape, your marriage a war zone, your parenting a desperate nightmare you never wake up from.
This is the point where the rubber hits the road and you are challenged to stay in the game of life with your extremely emotionally disturbed and disturbing child. You have been hit, bit, spat upon, and that isn’t even the half of it. You have felt rage, the depth of which you never imagined. You have wanted to (or maybe you have) hit your precious child. You want to leave your marriage, kill yourself, run away forever, or you may even fantasize about taking the whole family over the side of the bridge together. You endlessly feel regret, focus on how it used to be, and wrestle with overwhelming tidal waves of guilt and shame, as you ruminate about life without your child.
Okay, maybe YOU haven’t experienced all of that, but plenty of it, right? I could tell you to get help, but I know you already have. YOU are doing everything you can think of and nothing is working to make your child the one you thought you were adopting. I know you thought that therapy and love and a good family was going to change that little brain that was harmed before s/he ever came home to YOU. And now you think none of that works and none of it matters.
What can I say to YOU that will make it better? Maybe nothing, except, “Me, too.” YOU are not alone, but it sure feels like it. I know this is going to seem impossible, but there are a lot of things that you have to do for YEARS before change occurs and, even then, your child is still likely going to need more parenting than one or two people can provide.
1. Get regular respite. YOU cannot do this without space from your child for your own amygdala to get out of cascading neurochemical flooding. I am talking about weekly childcare so you can go out; hire a daily in-home child-care worker to help with daily routines; find weekend respite once a month, etc.
2. Enlist family and neighbors to learn about complex developmental trauma and emotional dysregulation in children from difficult beginnings. Family members can only be helpful if they are educated and informed. When someone asks if they can help, say yes and get them up to speed on what YOU really need.
3. Face it: YOU have to be a therapeutic parent. YOU don’t get to be just a mom or just a dad. You actually must practice trust-based parenting strategies and sensory engagement consistently–consistently. Use life scripts. Use routines. Use correction strategies. Do it over and over and over and over. It matters, but it takes years sometimes for the scripts to kick in and the strategies to make new neural pathways. That is what you are doing for your child–creating new neural pathways. That is hard work that requires playful engagement and repetition to the point of tears. Do it like a meditation.
4. Get help for your marriage, if you still have one. Our children split their parents and parents turn on each other. YOU cannot be in a relationship war and simultaneously stay out of parenting hell. You need more than a “pretend” united front. Get help to get more.
5. If you are feeling even half of what I wrote about above, then you are likely suffering from Post-Adoption Traumatic Stress. It is a REAL thing. You need help, or YOU might actually hurt someone. At the very least, your child will not get better without you healing your knee-jerk reactions. Those are trauma induced reactions. YOU need to help yourself–put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Consider: yoga, meditation, neurofeedback, medication, therapy, Brainspotting, EMDR.
6. If YOU really have done it all and you cannot find a way to live with the chaos, look for residential treatment. This can help when YOU cannot give another ounce. I know it feels like abandonment, but it isn’t. YOU are always going to be the parent. You will be engaged in treatment until your child comes back home to you. It is not a magic bullet. Trust me on this. But, it can help everyone’s trauma resolve and routines to be established. There will be plenty of work left when your child returns home. Did I mention trusting me on this? Been there, too.
7. Be gentle on yourself and on your child. Children are not like this to “mess” with YOU. They are like this when they have been harmed in the early years. You are not like this because you want to “mess” with your child. You are traumatized, too.
This is hard, unfair, unreasonable, scary, and life altering, but YOU can do it. I didn’t think I could, and I did. So can YOU.
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.
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.
Muffin Bed
Last week I was up early baking Paleo muffins. Yesterday, while looking for a lost remote, I found one of them under the bed covers of “YOU know who.” Hoarding has long been an urge for both of my children. It may be for your child, too.
Children from difficult beginnings hoard for a variety of reasons. Here are a few:
- They were not feed regularly enough as babies or young children and have starvation imprinted in their pre-verbal, felt memory–food insecurity.
- They lost the most important thing in the world to them when they were little, and they cannot stand letting go of anything (including an unwanted muffin).
- They feel deprived at the core and try to fill up the hole with food and other stuff.
- They rarely feel the satisfaction of “enough.”
- Stuff is comforting.
- Hoarding gives a big sense of control over powerlessness.
What is a parent to do?
- First, severe restriction is not the answer. That will make it worse. Try to relax your own fear.
- Allowing power and control over food intake and stuff will allow the obsessive hoarding to slowly dissipate over months and years.
- Offer food and snacks every two hours–high protein foods.
- Provide a snack drawer or bowl that is always full with nutrient rich foods.
- Stay away from cereal products, sugary foods, highly processed foods. Allow tasty, sweet treats once in a while though. Over-strict rules will increase hoarding.
- Encourage eating until full. Don’t worry about obesity. Our kids need YOU to cool your jets on this American obsession–weight control. Even if weight gain is at hand.
- Provide a hoarding bin for stuff.
- Create a weekly give away or throw away ritual.
- Help your child think through what needs to be discarded or given away each week. Resist making your child figure it out alone. They need your loving support to feel secure enough to let stuff (even empty smashed boxes and broken-up toys) go.
- Be gentle, accepting, understanding and non-shaming.
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.
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.
Our Children Need Their Story
A coherent narrative–pre-birth to the present–is necessary for people to have stable mental health. Attachment therapists, like me, are emphatic about this. Our attachment challenged children need their stories. They don’t need it forced down their throats, but they do need it carefully unfolded over time in order to make sense of themselves.
Let me give you a belabored and extreme example:
Child B is adopted though never told much about the details. Child B feels different to the core, loveable, ashamed, angry, distant, and ultimately disconnected from her adoptive parents. She is reactive, rejecting, and ungrateful. Her adoptive parents are reactive and angry because they do not understand and they cannot find help who understands. Child B eventually becomes a young angry teen and runs away. She ends up on the streets having sex with men for money to survive. Eventually, Child B gets pregnant and CPS takes the baby (Child C) when born in the emergency room and a report is made about her apparent lack of reality. The baby (Child C) gets put into short term emergency foster care for a few days, then placed in a foster family. And, so it goes.
Here is the back story. Turns out that Child B described above had a birth mother, Child A, who was raped by her stepfather when she was 14-years-old. Child A gave birth to Child B while living in an abandoned house where a lot of runaways stayed. Child B was taken by CPS while still in the hospital because the “birth mother (Child A) was not capable of caring for a newborn (Child B).” The baby (Child B) was put in short term emergency foster care for a few days, then placed in a foster family for 6 months, then transitioned to a foster family for another year, only to be given 7-day notice at 1.5 years of age to another fost-adopt family who really want to start a family. The fost-adopt family tries desperately to parent Child B, but they cannot seem to feel attached.
Eventually, Child B gives birth to Child C. And, so it goes.
When children do not know their own story, like political history, they are bound to repeat it, search for it, long for it, re-create it, and have absolutely no idea how that happened.
Your child may be like Child A, Child B, Child C or a completely different version all together. No matter really. The narrative is the key to changing the trajectory. Without the narrative, there is an unconscious bio-neuro-psycho-social “spin cycle” at work that is practically super-natural. Actually, it is just natural. Biological processes are like this.
A coherent narrative gives us all a chance to understand ourselves in light of our history, our parents’ history, our multigenerational trajectory. When we understand, we can choose to stay the same or choose to change. When we are blindfolded, ignorant, or mis-informed, we are driven unconsciously to repeat the stories of those who came before us–very little choice in the matter.
A coherent narrative leads to mental health and the choice for a life worth crowing about.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training. There are two spaces still open for July 19th and 26th. Sign up here.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 