Tag Archives: adoptive children

Dysregulation Is An Human Condition

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When I was in school, I learned that a becomes an when put in front of an h.  Is that a thing still?   Dysregulation Is An Human Condition (today’s title) just doesn’t sound right, but a or an aside, dysregulation in traumatized humans is still a thing.
 
I was working with an almost 18-year-old attachment challenged, formerly maltreated, boy yesterday and I realized that his very, very, nice demeanor was really a dysregulated state.  Shabam! Nearly got by me. 
 
He was here for one chronic misbehavior; otherwise, he wouldn’t be back here, as he graduated from my care nearly 6 years ago.  I did two sessions of cognitive behavioral conversation with him and assessed for deeper attachment challenged reasons for his misbehavior, when suddenly a revelation.  He sweetly (not oppositionally) says, “I don’t know” to nearly everything I ask, as though he knows nothing about himself.  After some serious digging, he was able to say that he is nice and smart, maybe.  
 
Turns out he has a dysregulation “tell.”  When he gets a rise in cortisol (stress hormone from dysregulation) his face does not change one tiny perceptible degree and his body stays relaxed looking and still; although, he does become even nicer and seemingly more empty saying, “I don’t know” to unpredictable questions.
 
Now that I know his “tell,” I can help him begin to notice how he is on the inside.  Before, it just seemed like there was no there there, which is never true. Once he begins to notice his own dysregulation, the odds quadruple for changing that one chronic misbehavior of his from the inside out.
 
Do you have a chronically nice child from difficult beginnings? Investigate her tell.  Explore her inner landscape for hidden dysregulation that is keeping your child’s personality from blossoming or holding a few negative behaviors frustratingly static. 
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Our kids need help knowing what is happening to them emotionally on the inside, so they have a better chance of making thoughtful decisions and good choices on the outside. 

Play Deficits

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Yesterday, I made my two adult teenagers (both formerly diagnosed with a zillion things including RAD and maltreatment) to leave the house. They had been indoors on some form of electronic device in separate rooms for three days.  I am not kidding you.  I only saw either of them when they came out to barely eat and even then they brought some kind of electronic device to the kitchen or table. 
 
It took them about two hours to finally leave, and they were back within 20 minutes.  We live in a very lively downtown area with sidewalk sales, people dining and conversating on every corner, and lots of bustling activity of every kind. Personally, that is why I live here.  I enjoy wondering around with curiosity, as there is never a dull moment.  That’s me.
 
If your child came from difficult beginnings and had a hard time figuring out how to play when very young, you can bet there will be trouble figuring out how to be entertained in the later years.  Electronics are the super easy go-to for our kids because all the action, bells and whistles are built in. There is an obvious reason to play those games–to get from here to there, win a sword, kill the enemies, build a town, or raise the score. 
 
Oh, our kids can get into plenty of mischief following peers’ shenanigans out in the world all right. They can even entertain themselves by burning down the house playing with matches in their closets, but they have trouble figuring out how to enjoy the mysteries of life, be curious about the ordinary or the miraculous, and engaging the world naturally for no reason except because they live.  
 
Frankly, both of my kids would have appreciated my taking the walk with them.  They love for me to walk the dogs with them.  Their trips to McDonalds are more fun when I come along.  That is because they have figured out how to use my brain to entertain them.   Yesterday, I was in bed recovering from a nasty summer cold, so I wasn’t up for it.  
 
The very best thing YOU can do for your child of any age is to teach them how to play by playing, and actually bring to their attention how to observe and be curious.  Observation and curiosity have to be tenaciously taught to our children not through telling (Go out and be curious! my fallback mode,) but rather by actively engaging them with their world. If they internalize these processes when young, they will be curious and engaged for a lifetime.  If they don’t, they will be bored stiff without their electronic brains in hand.
 
I wish I had understood the difference between engaging and telling when my kids were young.  They are paying for my ignorance now.  I am desperately hoping YOU can learn from my mistakes, or I wouldn’t be telling you this.  The engaging is up to you.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is September 9th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required only if you need child care.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Curious sounds like:  Look at that bird singing in the tree. I wonder what it is singing about right now?  What do you think the words would be?  Let’s sing some words to its song.  

School Is About To Start

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Oh, the dreaded morning routine drama…  Back to school brings this up full force.  Some of us have it every day, year-round, with no time off for summer.  YOU are not alone, but I know you feel like it when it is 7:45 am and you are going to be late for work because your darling child moves like cold molasses.  

 

First of all, check your own cortisol spike from fear and frustration: 

I am going to lose my job, my client, my reputation, my mind…I hate being late…my mom/dad would have killed me if I acted this way…he is never going to be able to get a job or survive with this behavior…  Look who is in survival mode now!

 

BREATHE long slow breaths until you get some perspective. Your child is not going to be an ax-murderer or skid-row dude because he is struggling to get with the socially acceptable morning routine.

 

If you are actually about to lose your job over this, hire someone to transition your child in the mornings or beg a neighbor or friend’s parent to do this for you.  Talk to your boss, schedule later appointments if you can, tag team with your partner, accept that this is your current lot in life so you can stop feeling like an atomic bomb is going off in your family every morning.

 

Face some realities.   YOU chose to adopt a child and that rarely comes without the challenge of special needs. I am not blaming YOU, only reminding that adoption is a choice and comes with certain hardships of which morning routine shenanigans are just drops in a big bucket. Maltreated kids were often abused in the morning because of the morning routines, so our kids fear, dislike, resist, and deeply avoid mornings.  YOU are such a good thing in your child’s life that morning feels INTENSELY SAFE, SNUG, COZY and DELICIOUS in ways that cannot be explained in words.  The feelings say: I need to stay here in bed forever because it feels better than any other thing and I need to feel this SAFE, ATTACHED feeling more than I need to brush my teeth, put my clothes on, or get you to work on time.  Sorry Mom/Dad. Sorry, I just can’t change right now. Please still love me, but I know you won’t. No one else has.

 

In no way am I intending to hit you right between the eyes.  I am, however, trying to have integrity and speak as truthfully and insightfully as I can, so you can find ways to accept, stay loving, and little by little move your baby into childhood, your child into adolescence, your adolescent into adulthood with hearts and minds intact.

 

Patience is a true virtue.  Personally, I was not blessed with much of it.  I have to work hard at it every single day of my parenting life. Sometimes I succeed.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Morning routines from Hell require virtues from Heaven. 

It’s A Fact

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Horrible stress changes a kid’s brain.  Abuse and abandonment trauma are horrible stressors.  What adults may see as ADHD or Learning Disability may in fact be the results of trauma-related stress on the brain.
 
Research shows that the behaviors YOU may be living with in your children, such as:
slow processing
poor attention 
poor concentration
poor decision-making
poor choice-making
tuning out
hyperactivity
speech delays
reading and writing problems
lack of memory
are all about stress from trauma.  What normally acts as danger alarms, become alarms stuck on a perpetual fire drill.  Makes it hard to think.
 
The goal of regulation is to shut off the fire alarm, and only use it when there is actual fire.
 
Here are some systematic things to work on with your children:
  1. Calm down (easier said than done, of-course).
  2. Get connected (eye contact and hugs will do).
  3. Think it through (process what happened and how it can be different next time with practice).
Ready, set, go.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Skill development is necessary to create new neuropathways.  

The Four Sack Baby

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Yesterday, my son’s Family Life Class began The Flour Sack Baby Experiment.  The kids drew on faces and hair, dressed-up their flour sacks, and were told to care for it like a baby all day.  Amy Mimi Eshelman is my Flour Sack granddaughter.  Apparently, they will do this all week.  Oh boy!
 
My son was completely off the hook when I came home from work.  I am not kidding. The events of the day had him so dysregulated that he began talking about it to me from the moment my car rolled into the garage and didn’t stop until bedtime.  He actually walked downstairs to greet me. That is truly something.  He looked stoned and wild-eyed.  At bedtime, he told me he felt drunk, though he never has had even a sip of alcohol.  He seemed drunk to me, too.
 
He told me how he had to care for his daughter all day and he trusted his girlfriend to hold her, but not his best friend.  He also confessed that he felt very attached to his baby by the end of the day.  
 
I don’t think I like this experiment. It is supposed to teach kids how much effort it takes to care for a child, kind of for the purpose of postponement to, well, MUCH later. That is completely lost on my kid. He thinks the entire thing is a blast and can’t wait to have one.  He learned that he really trusts his girlfriend.  He also learned that he can attach to a flour sack, which makes him know that he will be able to love and take care of his baby–HIS BABY! That does not really fill me with warm fuzzies.
I don’t think I ever considered myself to be one opposed to family life or sex education in schools.  I am rethinking that.  No, not really.  I don’t think.
 
What I know is that my son yells “Ick” and scrunches up his face any time I mention birth control, safe sex practices, or anything related to touching beyond hugs and the one kiss he planted on his girlfriend a couple months ago.  I am pretty sure a flour sack baby is not going to send him into baby making mode.  Right? I think I am right.  But I suddenly have a 7.5 fear spike on my emotional Richter Scale.
 
Can’t wait to see how baby high he is today when I get home.  He will probably have twins.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

And baby makes three, and me panic. 

Tired To The Bone

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How familiar are YOU with these fun conversations?
 
Me: I was surprised to hear you went to the store Saturday and bought two swimsuits after we talked about your having two new swimsuits already.
 
Son’s Girlfriend:  It was Friday.
 
Me:  Okay, Friday, you bought two swimsuits after we talked about how you didn’t need new swimsuits.
 
Son’s Girlfriend: I only bought one.
 
Me: Yes, though you tried to get two and didn’t end up with enough money at the checkout, right?  That really isn’t my point though.
 
Son’s Girlfriend:  No eye contact and total silence.
 
When we returned home, I reminded my son to do his chores.
 
Son:  I know.
 
Me: Great, how about now?
 
Son:  I did one.
Me: Great, how about the rest?
Son: What are they?
 
Me: The same ones you have every day.
 
Son: I don’t have the same ones every day.
 
Me: Nearly every day then.
 
Son: No eye contact and total silence.
 
At that point I needed a little time out in my room to regulate.  Two adult RAD kids are enough to make my head spin, Exorcist style, over nearly nothing.  I must get a grip.  Do you know where I can buy one?
 
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Taking this stuff seriously will make your head explode.  

Stress Kills

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I know it seems like you have to live with stress because you are parenting children who present with behavior that is stressful.  That has a certain logic, but I think it is an excuse for not regulating yourself so you can be less stressed.  I certainly have blamed my children for my stress level.  It was hard for me to take responsibility for myself, for my health, for my stress reduction strategies.
 
Are YOU taking responsibility for your emotional state?  
 
Here is a suggestion:
 
Take your stress temperature at regular intervals throughout your day.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where are YOU?  If you use the Zones of Regulation, which I suggest you do with yourself and your children, ask yourself what zone you are in regularly throughout your day.
 
  • If your stress level is above a 7 or in RED, YOU have flipped your lid. Stop whatever you are doing and take a break.  Let the kids coast on a benign beloved activity (yes, even TV or iPad,) so you can breathe yourself off the ledge.
  • If your stress level is between 4 and 6 or in YELLOW, YOU are about to flip your lid.  Gather up your kids and go outside to run around in the yard, a park, or the gym.  Engage all the children in a rev up and calm down activity like racing then resting, climbing then crawling, screaming then humming.  Do it all with them until you are below a 4 or in GREEN.
  • If your stress level is between 1 and 3 or in GREEN, YOU are alive and living the dream.  Enjoy it and remember you need to do something actively to stay that way.
  • If you cannot even find your number or in BLUE, YOU are too low and in need of rest, relief, exercise, friendship, hugs, food, laughter, love.  Go get it now.
Everyone raising children from difficult beginnings needs to actively regulate moment to moment.  It is not a passive thing.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

I read this somewhere:  Love says, ‘I’ve seen the ugly parts of you, and I’m staying.’
I love being loved that way.

Split Off Parts

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When children have been abandoned, neglected, abused or maltreated in early childhood, their brains physiologically hard wire their regulatory systems into fairly fixed and heightened states of neurochemical arousal. Essentially, they are perpetually geared-up and on their marks for a fight, a sprint, or an immediate shutdown in the face of real or even imagined hints of danger.  Not their fault.
 
Along with this biological imperative to survive at all cost, the child’s psyche is susceptible to shutting off parts of awareness in order to compartmentalize disturbing material into manageable emotional bodies we clinicians often refer to as “parts.”  When I talk about splitting off parts, I am talking about these emotional bodies of experience and reaction that can be in or out of a person’s conscious experience. Children usually have no awareness of these parts.  That is why they often don’t remember when they have done something awful to YOU or their sibling or their teacher.  It was a part of them, they do not yet know about, jumping into action, then just as quickly receding back into the psyche’s island of bad boys and girls until the next time.
 
I am not talking about complete splits, as in what we colloquially call multiple personalities with names and separate histories, though that is the result of similar severe circumstances.  I am talking about triggered moments of irrational meanness, viscousness, violence and vile verbal assaults.  I am talking about triggered moments of instant regression into a screaming 2-year-old, only the child is far from that actual age. I am talking about triggered impulsive acts of diving into pornographic darkness, sexual enactments, senseless stealing, attempts to kill an animal, or extreme expression of gory, bloody flashbacks.
 
These moments can scare us parents into survival modes of our own.  We become frightened of our children.  We start thinking in terms of good and evil. We pull back and self-protect. We start imagining the worst case scenarios and outcomes for the future. We lock our bedroom doors. We begin serious consideration of sending them to treatment.  Those are all normal responses to abnormal circumstances. 
 
While residential treatment may be necessary, it is not required to deal with most child “parts.” Trauma treatment is, however, necessary to help the child acknowledge and increase tolerance for the experience and intense emotions each part is literally holding for the child.  
 
In everyday life, we can begin to understand our children and become a trauma-informed parent.  We can begin to be therapeutic and healing with our children by being curious about what they thought happened just before they, for example, bit you, what they felt when biting you, and how they experienced the event afterward.  Identify their feelings to them if they cannot.  Ask them to feel their body sensations, so they can identify moments when they may be emotionally dysregulated.  Teach them about their own body responses and their actions.  Give them skills for managing these intense experiences. Be soothing, loving, empathic and informed about what is really going on and how YOU can be part of the solution.  Healing is possible.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Don’t let fear get in the way of being therapeutic.

The Effects of Emotional Abuses on Children

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The aftereffects of emotional abuse and neglect on top of attachment challenge can be amazingly detrimental to our children.  The worst of which is not the behavior we see in the immediate years after our beautiful children come home to us, but rather what we see manifest years down the road when the development of our child’s self is so painfully distorted, disturbed and delayed.
Believe it or not, research shows that emotional abuse and emotional neglect are more harmful long term than sexual or physical abuse on children.  How in the world can that be? Well, it is much easier to pinpoint the cause of a child’s disturbance if we know what caused it (e.g. Your birth mom hit you…Your best friend’s father raped you…), so the treatment, while difficult, is specifically focused.
Emotional abuses of neglect, dark attunement, negativity, anger, rejection, control, absence, and hatefulness are like the water in the proverbial boiling pot that cooks the frog to death.  The frog just sees the water as pervasive in the same way we experience air; it is not experienced as a perpetrator of its demise, but rather the medium in which all life exists. Our children have the same vantage point.  Emotional abuse is the air in which they grow up.
Years down the road when our children begin to show up as significantly disturbed and relationally impaired, the environment of pervasive emotional abuse and neglect will be nearly impossible to pinpoint without guidance, and it must be identified and processed in order for your child to heal.
Yep, that’s it for today.  I am on vacation.  I have time to think.  It is a dangerously heady place for me to be.  YOU are on the receiving end of my pondering.  Apologies.
I am actually on my way to the beach.  Life is good.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place is offering a weekend workshop for couples on July 18th and 19th, 9am to 5pm each day, to help you create the loving relationship you want and deserve.   Jennifer Olden, MFT and Certified Emotionally Focused Therapy Supervisor, will conduct a two-day Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop.  For more information, call Jennifer at The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships 916-403-0588, Ext 3.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day.  Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Life’s a beach.  Today anyway.

When RAD Heals

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Last night as I was about 15 minutes from heading out the door to catch a redeye to the East Coast, my son says, “Mom, I don’t think I have that reactive attachment stuff anymore.”
 
Hmmmm…?
 
“Yaya, I’m going to miss you while you are gone and I really love you now.  I think it’s over.”
 
I was thinking it’s been over for awhile now. 
 
“No, no it hasn’t, but it is now.”
Well, thanks for telling me.  I love you, too.
“I know YOU love ME, MOM.”
(Good talk then.)  See you in ten days, I say with a bit too much glee and a snappy little Snoopy Dance all the way to the car.  He didn’t see it. I promise.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place Logo The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month.  Next group is August 12th at 6pm. Come join us.  Online RSVP each month required.   Child care provided.
The Attach Place offers a 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course  every other month.  Our next course begins August 22nd and August 29th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online atwww.attachplace.com.
The Attach Place supports The Wounded Warrior Project by providing free neurofeedback to veterans.  Feel free to send a soldier our way for an assessment and 20 session course of treatment.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Life wounds. RAD heals.