Tag Archives: adoptive children

If Wishes Were Horses

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To quote the fabulous Lucinda Williams, “If wishes were horses, I’d have a ranch.” How about YOU?

Love Matters

Love Matters

Mostly, I wish that love was all that mattered in the fight to heal the broken hearts (brains) of our children. If it were, all of our children would grow and heal and thrive, because we parents have love to give by the buckets full.

Unfortunately, love is only one ingredient. It is essential, but more is required. Sometimes YOU can throw into the pot everything imaginable, including the kitchen sink, for years on end and still not have enough ingredients to make a delicious stew.

So, my dears, make soup.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

When you pick the freshest veggies, reduce the stock to sublime, raid the garden for just the right herbs, and season the best you know how, YOU can feel proud of the soup YOU prepared. The rest of the cooking is up to your beautiful child. There may be a wonderful stew there, with a little more simmering in adulthood.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS:
Get more information and reserve your spot here for our upcoming Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on April 25th, 26th and 27th.

Get more information and sign up here for our 10-hour Trust-based Parenting Course for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on March 29th and April 5th, 2014.

Check out our three blogs:
http://www.lovestronglovelong.com
http://www.parentingwithheart.net
http://www.wisdomforadoptiveparents.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.

How To Think About Behavior

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Flipped OffUp your compassion by changing YOUR mind. The only way to parent attachment challenged children effectively is to see them clearly as little children with brains and bodies that have been severely impacted by difficult beginnings, maltreatment/abuse and attachment breaches.

Depressed Child 3

After that, YOU have to edit your own thinking about what you are seeing when you parent them every day.
This is what I mean: 
 
Behavior:        Child pushes your hugs away.
Thinking:         Child is controlling, unloving, rejecting.
Re-Think:        Child is afraid of being vulnerable and self protects
                       habitually by pushing people away.
 
Behavior:         Child spills something every day.         
Thinking:          Child is clumsy, stupid, never pays attention, or must
                        be doing this on purpose to annoy me.
Re-Think:         Child ‘s proprioceptive and vestibular senses are
                        challenged and need rehabilitation.
 
Behavior:          Child steals things repeatedly.             
Thinking:           Child is a thief, untrustworthy, embarrassing, morally
                         corrupt, and bound for prison.
Re-Think           Child has deprivation imprints, combined with
                         impulsivity.
 
Behavior:          Child lies nonsensically.                        
Thinking:           Child is a hopeless liar, bad seed, criminal,
                         antisocial, devious.
Re-Think:          Child is in survival mode most of the time: scared to
                         be caught, wrong, harmed, in-trouble, or bad (the
                               way it feels on the inside.)
 
Our compassion rises when we tell ourselves the truth about our children who have been harmed by adults early in their lives or by the circumstances of difficult biological beginnings–challenging pregnancy, neonatal surgery, birth trauma, prematurity, parental absence, illness or postpartum depression.
 
The Attach Place Logo High Parental Compassion = Parenting with Heart.
Something our children desperately need in order to heal.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist
Check out our three blogs:

Sharing with Heart

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Sometimes YOU might hear criticism about your parenting in my emails and I most desperately want YOU to know that that is the last thing I would like to heap upon YOU.  I want to freely give YOU love and understanding.  I have lived very near your shoes, if not in them. I truly do not blame YOU for what life has dished out. 
Path With Heart 2
That said, I do want to give YOU the benefit of some of the lessons I have learned along the way of raising my attachment challenged babies, children, teens, and now, adults. My education as a psychotherapist taught me nothing close to what I needed to help heal the broken hearts of my children. Similarly, my education taught me nothing about how to love children who are too afraid to let my love in and to love me back.  I wish a professional had been on the side of my family when my children first came home to me, but I searched far and wide and turned up very few who truly understood attachment challenge. Being a regular income person, I didn’t have the means to access treatment on the East Coast or in Europe where I found some glimmers of hope. Instead, I had to read books, tomes actually, and make calls all over the world.  Sometimes, I tried to talk with people who didn’t really speak American English.  Those were costly and futile attempts.
In the end, I experimented.  I tried what was published at the time. Created some things.  Missed some things.  I loved.  I had successes. I failed.  I nearly ended it all.  That is the truth.
The Attach Place Logo
Today, I can honestly say that I am grateful for the journey.  I have grown, changed, explored, and become a new person along the way. My children are their own people with their own trajectories. That is what I KNOW today that I didn’t know in the beginning.  I hope my account of this helps YOU in some way.  That is always my sincere hope for all of this unbecoming self disclosure–that my journey can benefit YOU and your sweet babies.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist
Check out our three blogs:
 
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.

Fierce or Funny

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Troubled Boy

 

 

Sometimes the gravity of raising an attachment challenged child makes parents focus on every last negative behavior as if it might be the one that sends their child over the edge and straight to jail in adulthood. Right?

Some of us are so incredibly scared by the constant behaviors of attachment challenged children, that we treat them like they are candidates for perpetrating Columbine or Newtown style massacres. Let me remind YOU: Those tragedies were committed by biological children living in the homes of their biological families, not attachment challenged children living in the homes of their adoptive families.

I am not discounting the “hell” some of you are living in. I know that is real, and continually threatens your sanity; however, the fear of eminent tragedy has loving people parenting fiercely and without humor. This is my point–playful correction is easier than it seems and super effective.

Last week one of my colleagues shared that her three-year-old son was introduced to the F-word in preschool and couldn’t get enough of saying it all over the place.

Swearing BoySwearing BoySwearing Boy

Since he is possessed with a three-year-old oppositional nature, she was quick on her feet to say in response to his superlative repetitions, “Just don’t call me MUSTARD!” Of-course, mustard was all he could think of calling out after that.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

We can get freaked out and fierce, or we can be playful and silly. Which do you think will support the parent/child relationship?

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

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.

Hold Me Tight Weekend Workshop for Couples with Adopted and Special Needs Children

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Revised Dates:
April 21, 2014 6pm to 9pm
April 22, 2014 10am to 4pm
April 23, 2014 10am to 1pm

The Hold Me Tight Workshop is designed to give you a weekend away to connect with your spouse. This workshop will not teach you useless things; it will give you an opportunity to fully engage the deep, loving connection you desire in your relationship with your partner.

Hold Me Tight

Hold Me Tight

• Address stuck patterns and negative cycles
• Make sense of your own emotions
• Overcome loneliness
• Repair and forgive emotional and physical disconnection
• Communicate to develop deeper understanding and closeness

Hold Me Tight Couple

Hold Me Tight 

You will strengthen your bond through private exercises with your partner, didactic experiences, and video demonstrations of couples that have moved from distress to that longed for deep, intimate connection.

This workshop takes place in the safe environment of experienced attachment specialists and other parents experiencing similar attachment pushes and pulls in their lives because of the demands of healing the broken hearts and emotional difficulties of children from difficult biological beginnings, maltreatment, abuse and attachment breaches. YOU will be “seen” here and your struggles will be understood.

Dear Parent: This attachment focused couples workshop is brought to you at a 50% reduced rate by The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships. We believe that you, your relationship, and your love matter. The stronger your relationship, the better able YOU will be to whether the slings and arrows of raising children from difficult beginnings.

This workshop is especially designed with YOU in mind.

To that end, we are dedicated to providing creative financing to make this opportunity possible for you and child care options for your children.

Who: YOU and Your Partner
When: April 21, 2014 – April 23, 2014
Cost: $300.00
Child Care: $5 per hour per child

Reserve your place by RSVPing to: info@attachplace.com

If you can carve out time for yourselves on a weekend, we promise that you will have valuable experiences to help you strengthening the safety, connection, and bond in your relationship.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT, Jennifer Olden, LMFT, Robin Blair, MFTI,
The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
Tel: (916) 403-0588 X 1
Email: info@attachplace.com

Stop Chatter Scrambled Brains

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Sometimes my brain feels like scrambled eggs from all the chatter around me. Children from difficult beginnings are masters at filling the air with random talk. They are often highly anxious and highly habituated to being distracting so they can get attention without having to be real, present, or intimate–all three of which are frightening for them beyond expression.

This is actually child abuse.

This is actually child abuse.

Habituation is the problem. Habits are formed when a child from difficult beginnings has intolerable, overwhelming feelings that have been quieted by some kind of behavior, usually negative. When securely attached children have overwhelming feelings, they seek the comfort of a safe parent for soothing. If the attachment is damaged for some reason, then a child may seek other ways of meeting their needs, promoting the allusion that keeping distance will keep them from being frightened, getting hurt or experiencing abandonment. Those other ways become as habituated as hugs are in a secure child.

Habits must be broken, stopped dead in their tracks, before one can ever really know what feelings lie beneath.

That’s were YOU come in. Get a clear routine you follow, no matter what, when a negative behavior shows up–like random chattering that threatens to scramble your sanity.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Practice appropriate social engagement with your child–yep, role play.
Don’t answer nonsensical questions. Say, “Nope, try again. ‘
Don’t answer the same question twice. Say, “Nope, try again.”
Withhold threats, frustration, and angry expressions.
Be a very good, calm, broken record. If YOU can discipline yourself, your child can stop the chatter habit.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

Modeling, Molding and Making Meaning

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Modeling

Modeling

Our children come home to us with imprints of their own. Many of them, not so great. Those imprints last a lifetime. In order to override the incredible tenacity of the built-in human mind-body complex, YOU have to model, mold, and make meaning of things you might think your children will just “get” along the way. They won’t unless you model, mold and make meaning out of the things your family finds important–family values made overt.

In our family:

Modeling

Modeling

  • children are taken care of by parents
  • we play and laugh a lot
  • we keep our house organized and clean
  • parents work in and out of the home and children go to school
  • learning is important
  • we ask for help
  • we use our words
  • everyone contributes to the family according to their ability
  • we can make mistakes
  • we love each other and don’t hurt each other
  • we solve problems with our words
  • we help each other
  • we eat together
  • we stick together
  • we have strong hearts
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

You cannot just say it to the kids. YOU have to live it and make it meaningful every day.

Our kids will not just “get” it. We have to make it perfectly clear, over and over and over. That is how the molding happens.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT, Mother and Attachment Specialist

Respite Reminder

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No matter how tough YOU are, YOU need respite. It is okay to take time away from your attachment challenged children. Of-course, there is a bit of a price to pay before you go and when you come back, but you need down time for your neurochemistry to balance.

Living in a home that provokes constant high cortisol levels will burn out your adrenals, deplete your dopamine, and destroy your serotonin. These are all naturally occurring mood stabilizers. YOU need yours.

Get respite. Running on empty is a sure-fire way of putting your children into retrograde. That is NASA speak for meltdown.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Again, I know you think you can’t get that. I know. And yet, I think YOU can if you are creative and determined to save your own sanity, your own life.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT                     Attachment Specialist and Mother

Growing Up Happens

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There have been times when I wondered if my children were ever going to grow up. The emotional delay that accompanies children from difficult beginnings makes growing up seem like just a dream–a dream unattainable.

Today, I am in bed with a horrible migraine, the kind that replicates scenes from the Exorcist. I’m ugly sick. When my 17-year-old son came home from school today, the first thing he asked was, “How are you feeling Mom?” Then he waited to hear the answer, and refrained following up with a request to be logged into his computer. Instead, he asked if the dogs needed to be feed or if I needed anything. Who is this kid?

Later, I remembered he had started his laundry last night and didn’t put it in the dryer. I literally held my head in my hands and yelled from my bed, “Hey Buddy, will you work on your laundry, the dog poop, and cat poop?” About 2 seconds passed before he yelled back, “Oh yeah,” and I heard him move quickly toward the laundry room, then to the backyard, and finally the garage. He washed a few of his dishes in the sink, too.

Wow, something is changing. Not everything, just some really incredible things. The gremlin on my left shoulder whispers, Don’t get too excited; this is probably a one step forward, two steps back moment. The Warrior Mamma in me would slap that gremlin and be dancing a little jig if she didn’t have such a headache, because she is seeing that her baby, who has been dragging his feet into the world, is actually becoming a thoughtful, loving person.

Annie, Devon and the animals we love

         My Kids 10 Long Years Ago

Sick days rock sometimes.

Love Matters,
Ce

Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop for Parents of Attachment Challenged Children

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I am so excited to be able to offer this Hold Me Tight Workshop for Parents of Attachment Challenged Children, Adopted Children, and Special Needs Children in the Sacramento, CA area. Keeping your marriage or relationship together while raising children from difficult beginnings can be so trying. This workshop is for YOU. It is being offered at a reduced rate and can be paid for creatively. The workshop is actually parts of three days on one weekend–Friday evening for a few hours, Saturday all day, Sunday for a few hours. The flyer is a bit vague about the timeframe, so I thought I would spell that our here.

Hold Me Tight Workshops are provided around the world for couples who are seeking to strengthen their attachment bonds in their relationships. This workshop is designed with YOU in mind. I hope you check it out and make time for your love life.

Email (ce@attachplace.com) or call me (916-403-0588 Ex. 2) about the various funding options available to YOU, and to sign-up, of course.

I hope you give yourselves the gift of renewed connection by giving your relationship some TLC over the course of a weekend.

Childcare provided. What more could you ask for besides a trip to Bali?

Love Matters,
Ce