Category Archives: Parenting

Conscious Parenting

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Respect is a two way street that starts and ends with YOU.  I think that may be some kind of mixed cul-de-sac metaphor, but I think YOU get what I mean. Parenting is a perennial exercise in self-discipline and our lapses in verbal self-control can be relationally incendiary. Kids are designed biologically to monkey see, monkey do. Wow, I am pulling out all the cliches this morning. Forgive me. Cliches are cliches for a reason, I guess.
 
Anyway, if you consciously give your respectful attention, care, and attuned listening, you are way more likely to get some of that back.  If you believe the thinking of a 14 or 15 or 16 year-old is “ridiculous,” that same child will think your 30 or 40 or 50+ year-old thinking is “ridiculous,” too.
 
Relationship is the key to winning the hearts and minds of attachment challenged children. Dismissive parenting will chill the heart right out of your child.
 
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Parenting takes a lot of work, whether you are engaged or disengaged, respectful or not. Conscious parenting will get you more of what you want than unconscious, but you cannot wait until you get it to give it.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

$1 July 4th Weighted Blanket Sale

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Today Only!  July 4th $1 Weighted Blanket Sale. 

Get one of these for your child.  Works to soothe, calm, slow down, regulate and focus kids with sensory issues, which are mostly all children from difficult beginnings.
Weighted Blankets

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible.  Yay!

Slow Down YOU Move Too Fast

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There is an old Simon and Garfunkel song from the 60’s:
 
skippingSlow Down 
YOU Move Too Fast
You’ve Got To Make The Morning Last
Just Skipping Down The Cobblestones
Looking For Fun and Feeling Groovy
 
If YOU know this song, I am sure I just clicked it on “repeat” in your head for the rest of the day.  
 
Now do it. 
 
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Angry Dysregulation

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I hated. bye
I hate y.  bye
i hate u. bye
I hate who. bye
I hate you. bye
 
I received these five texts, one right after the other, while I was co-facilitating a Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop over the weekend. Thank goodness they weren’t from my husband, right? 
 
I rarely consequence when correcting these days.  My son is 17 years old.  He doesn’t learn from consequences, so I learned not to use them for that purpose.  Well, until he broke my trust in a minor way and I was too tired to think it through. During that low point, I knee jerk took away his electronics and required him to return home in the middle of a three-day stay with a friend.  I dropped a bomb on his world over a minor offense.  When he returned to an electronics-free bedroom, he sent me those lovely texts above. There you have it–angry dysregulation.
 

messy room

He stayed dysregulated for two days, destroying his room, sneaking food under his covers, refusing to do his chores, and yelling down the hall at me, “Please don’t speak to me again today!” He did say please. Good boy.Let’s just say this. There were no clean bowls, spoons, or glasses in the house. They were all piled high in the sink or strewn across his bedroom floor.  
 
Before I left the house for the last day of my workshop, I sat on the side of his bed where he was swaddled like a mummy head to toe and gently said this: 
 
Honey, I know you are angry because I took away your electronics and cancelled your sleepover.  I also know you feel ashamed of what you did that caused it.  I am leaving for work right now and will be back in three hours.  This can all be over by you facing what you did like a man and then taking care of your responsibilities around the house. I have left you a list. What you did is not so horrible that you have to feel bad about yourself. You can just learn from your mistake. Your electronics will follow. I love you. See you later.
 
When my workshop was over, I returned home to a spotless house and a boy still swaddled in covers. When he heard me come in, he raised up and said,  I suddenly realized I was making it worse. Sorry Mom, I didn’t mean that text.  
 
Thanks for the apology.  Nice job on the kitchen, too.
 
This could all have been handled differently by me.  Just like him, I forget sometimes how I make things worse by dropping bombs on mosquitos.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible.  Yay!
 
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.

Over-Processing

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I know it is hard to believe that I have been anything better than a horrible parent, given some of the things I have shared with YOU.  I have my scorched earth moments and I have my strengths, too.  One surprising strength of mine is not needing to process everything to death.

I think attuned heart-to-hearts are precious.  When my husband and I have “the talk,” it is slow, purposeful, and over fairly quickly.  We stop, sit down, look into each others’ eyes, say how we feel, what we need, what we don’t need, make a repair if necessary, and get done.  These happen once in awhile. Our love, attachment and relationship are strong.

An earOver-processing leads partners and children to hate “the talk.”  Make your talks emotionally yummy, satisfying, touching, and over quickly.  Choose your topics wisely.  Be selective about what requires “the talk.”  If you are able to do that, you will probably get at least one of your child’s ears in the discussion.  One is way better than none.

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

What About Dad?

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vacuum dadHello Daddy-Os (and mother’s wearing their #1 Dad ball caps).  This weekend includes your day. Finally, a day for YOU to get up early, round up the kids, clean up breakfast fiascoes, open a box of well intended kid coupons or golf accessories rarely to be used, and survive parenting another day.  Oh dear, too cynical?  …and enjoy the delight of parenting another day. That’s what I meant to say.

 
Father’s Day was initiated in 1910 by a daughter of a single father of six living at the YMCA.  Kinda glad that isn’t YOU, right?  Single parents of any number get my hat tip for your tenacity and grit.  
 
Mother’s of attachment challenged children usually get the spotlight because they are often the target of attachment grief and reactivity in their children.  Father’s often find they have a different experience altogether.  
 
fun dad
It may be that your life partner is stressed a lot these days. Your children seem mostly fine to you, but she doesn’t think so. You can kind of see what she means, but not entirely and they are kids after all.  You don’t want to read books and go to parenting classes, but you support the household as much as you can.  You want to enjoy life more and stress less. Carve out some fun time this weekend, YOU deserve it.
 
On the other hand, YOU might be the target of your children’s emotional duress.  If so, then YOU need a day of love and peace. Make sure YOU get it.  YOU deserve it.
hammock dad
Big thank you to Dads.  YOU are so important in the lives of your kids.  
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

No Fear

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Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend where I found myself insisting that I have no fear.  She was doubting me and perhaps I protested too much.  Our silly banter made me ponder that concept a little more because I really don’t experience fear.  But why don’t I?  Then I was reminded how my children never seemed to express fear in the years following coming home with me.  They took big physical and relational risks, broke all rules, and seemed to be unmoved by my ire.  I came to know this as traumatic dissociation, because the longer I lived with them the more I saw how much fear and anxiety operated in them.  They were actually afraid of almost everything.

fearMy children and I have something in common.  We have all three been scared “to death” in our lives and survived to see another day.  That kind of trauma can have varying impacts on people.  Some become more fearful and others repress fear completely, thus NO FEAR (or any other feeling for that matter.)

Eventually, the feelings of fear must be uncovered, so life can be engaged with appropriate amounts of risk taking and caution. I think my children have work to do in this arena.  When my daughter calls in tears about how scared she is to be on her own, I hear the grief and work to soothe her.  My son still glazes over to avoid his fears.  There is more processing to be done for them to emerge feeling safe inside themselves and in the world.


So, what is my story.  Of course I feel fear, when I am in danger.  Since I am rarely in danger, I rarely feel fear.  I was scared to death early in my life and I think I did repress my feelings for a number of years.  In my twenties I faced my scary loss with copious crying that seemed to last forever. Talk about keeping my therapist flush with vacations for a few years. When the grief came to a natural close–my loss processed fully, made sense of, and incorporated into my narrative about myself–I returned to a life fully alive and filled with love.  That was my goal then and continues to be my goal now. I think living in love, without fear, AKA anxiety, is the outcome of doing my personal work.  I am grateful for that and for the ability to embrace life and accept it on its own terms.  For me, there is no other option.

unconditional love

Felt safety needs to be our parenting goal for our children, so they can face forward without fear and with love in their own lives.

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

 
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.

Odd Suggestion

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This may seem like an odd suggestion, so bear with me. Teen daughters fare better when they are given structure, guidance, and daily expectations from fathers. 
 
mother teen daughter
 
Adoptive mothers (or any parent who is seen as the primary nurturer by the child) often, though not always, are the targets of projective anger from past abuses by birth mothers. During the teen years, when identity development, separation, and individuation are the developmental goals, teen girls often up the ante on rejection of their mothers and intensify their reactivity when being corrected.  
 

father daughter

Since reactivity is intensified in the teens years, it makes sense to enlist fathers to do most of the corrective parenting, structuring, and guiding. Teen girls can often take in information from their fathers in a way that they cannot from their mothers.
 
While this is painful for adoptive mothers, having fathers step in more can keep girls from running away, reacting aggressively, sexually rebelling, and refusing to do anything suggested by a reasoned mother.
 

mother daughters

 
The good news is that this phase doesn’t last forever. Young adult daughters usually come back to their mothers for guidance as they age into their childbearing years.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

 
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.

Fear At The Core

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If your child came from difficult beginnings, YOU may be noticing that there is a fear at the core that there is not 

angry childenough, that they might be left or rejected, and that they have to get what they want at all cost. Despite the current abundance of their home life, that fear fuels many behaviors adoptive parents come to misinterpret as controlling, self-centered, manipulating, and calculated. 

 
angry teenLook again at the behaviors you dislike, define negatively, and work endlessly to stamp out of your child.  These things come from hardwired fear that has long gone into a perpetual, unconscious drive to survive.
 
Punishment for negative behavior is not the answer.  A felt sense of safety IS. Your reassuring parenting–safe words, soft tone, attuned understanding, empathy, structure, nurture, playful engagement, and willingness to be with your child when they feel unlovable and out-of-control–is the pathway to healing. 
 

Mending Heart

It takes a long time to heal fear at the core. That often expert-quoted equation–It takes therapeutic parenting for one month for each year of your child’s age to heal–is wrong.  It is just wrong. Your child needs constant mindful parenting.  Period.
 

Mother love

Don’t give up.
Hang in.
Your perseverance will pay-off in the future.
Broken hearts heal.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

 

Quick Learner

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Mommy Dearest

I broke my Golden-Self-Care-Vacuuming-Rule this morning–in case YOU don’t know, it is: Vacuum Only Twice A Month no matter the shape of things–and I vacuumed a third time.  I have hardwood floors in my new house, so I am teetering on changing the Golden-Self-Care-Vacuuming-Rule in order to avoid the Retrospective-Self-Disgust-Bad Mother-Rule. I am weighing which one gives me the most grief–exhaustion from compulsive house cleaning or shame from being a bad mother with a filthy house. There it is. That is the dilemma.  What would Mother Teresa do?  
 
Never mind, that was a digression.  While I was vacuuming at 6:30 am, my son interrupted the process by urgently proclaiming, as if the house were on fire,  “Mom! Mom!! I’m a quick learner.”  
 
“Yaaa-yaaa right you are,” I say in my best dismissive Fargo accent. I’m sure my eyes rolled. His face looked slightly crestfallen and he retreated back to readying for school. Honest to goodness, I was just dumbfounded in the moment. QUICK LEARNER could only be printed on a little last place trophy.  You know. the kind of trophy he got from the Participant Trophybasketball team fiasco when he was 7 where he stood center court with both arms raised yelling, “Pick me, Pick me” for 15 games straight. Boy got a trophy. Boy is a tedious learner of the 10,000 drops of water on the forehead kind. Bless his little heart, because he tries really hard, but he is out-of-sync and that doesn’t lend to Quick Learning awards.
 
Still, after a few seconds, I knew what he was talking about. Yesterday, he learned three chords on his new electric guitar all in one day.  Feeling so much pride in himself, he wanted me to be proud, too. Darn it. If only at 6:30 am, before my second cappuccino, in the soothing roar of breaking the Golden-Self-Care-Vacuuming-Rule, I could have realized that.
 
Do over for Mommy Dearest.  “Hey Babe, I’m sorry. I just realized you are really proud of learning those chords and you caught on SO quickly.  I am glad you are proud of yourself and I am proud of you for sure.  You are a quick guitar learner (reframe).” He beamed ear to ear. Being loving is so easy when regulated (after savoring my second non-fat, half-packet-of-sugar, extra-frothy cappuccino with chocolate sprinkled on top.)
 
Ten minutes later, he was leaving for school, guitar and binder in hand. “Have a great day today honey. I love you. “And”…wait for it…”you might want to zip your pants.”  Yaaa-yaaa, right, a quick learner you are. I only thought that last part. I have some self-restraint. Teeny bit.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
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