Category Archives: Parenting

Attachment and Trauma Series

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I am pretty excited about this upcoming free series on Attachment and Trauma in the Classroom.  I can’t listen to the the whole series myself, but you might be able to or you might be able to convince your child’s school to purchase the recorded series for teachers, classroom aides, counselors, school psychologists and school staff.  I am not attesting to how great the material will be because I haven’t heard it yet; however, I know the point of view of this organization and it is right on the dime about how to heal attachment and traumatized children.
 
Very often parents invite me to Student Study Team meetings, IEPs, and school brainstorming sessions to help inform well-meaning school personnel about ways of educating our children.  I have written more letters to help support my child clients in the classroom than I care to count.  I hate to admit it. This material may be even better than a school visit from moi.
 
Here you go.  If YOU have school aged children from difficult beginnings, I hope you can make it.  It’s FREEEEEEE.  How great is that?

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.

Our children are learning challenged.  
Let’s help teachers give them a chance.

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When they are withdrawn and negative…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:
If you would like to receive daily “YOU Time” parent support emails and you have not yet signed up,  click here.
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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.

 

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.

 

Grateful For A New Day

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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,
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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

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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

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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,
The Attach Place Logo
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 Wish

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There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t have so darned much to offer in this daily email.  I wish my life were smooth as silk and I woke up each morning digging through the reference books for something salient to say that would help you, rather than simply tuning into my own life and drawing from here.  I know this way is more helpful to YOU.  I know it is and that, of course, is why I write it.  I want desperately for my attachment challenged life to have meaning beyond itself…that is the “why” I write this for me.

So many times I have listened to parents lamenting the relentless disappointment that comes with the two step forward, one (or three) step back way our children have of learning. It is so bewildering and yet so much “how it is.”

This week I had such a wonderful all-nighter talk-a-thon with my 17-year-old son that I felt my heart fill with renewed energy and soar.  I know many of your hearts soared with me.   And, I am pleased by that.

Yesterday, “three steps back” arrived in the form of my T-Mobile phone bill.  I discovered $80.00 in gaming money surreptitiously charged to my phone.  Sure wasn’t me.  To his credit, my son did not lie or deny.  He said he felt ashamed and retreated under his bed covers.  Unfortunately, his dysregulation was great, so he skipped his chores, failed to keep a promise, and broke a house rule that day.  When I got home from work last night, he was still under the covers.

An hour later he appeared in my doorway whispering, “I’m sorry.”

Wait for it…

Emotionlessly, “Saying I am sorry won’t fix all of this this time.”

Back under the covers for another day, no doubt.  What in the world would prevent me from saying, “Thank you for the apology honey; let’s talk about it”?   Answer: painful disappointment.

Life is so delicious.  The highs and the lows make it worth living though.  I am still learning to be loving in the face of my own dysregulating emotions.  Upside: I didn’t yell or scold or punish.  I did, in the end, reject him, which shamed and caused his internalized self-hatred to spike through the roof.

Did I really need to do that to him?  Didn’t he punish himself enough already? Wasn’t my own disappointment enough?  Did I really need to rub it in, push away, incur abandonment panic in both directions?

I hope there is something in this tale for YOU.  There is nothing wrong with being accepting when your child has disappointed YOU.  It is okay; it is beautiful; it is forgiving; it is big-hearted; it is the definition love.  And love matters.

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT