Tag Archives: Adoptive Parents

Teach Regulation

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Sometimes we parents want things from our children we think they should know already.  Extrapolation, cause and effect, judgment, forethought and regulation are skills that must be taught.  They must be modeled, shaped, expanded, repeated, and taught over and over, as a matter of fact.  Yesterday, Play It Again Sam was my motto.  Today it is, Take Time for Training.  Take A Long Time For Training.

Nothing pleases me more than to see my son stop in mid-sentence, take a purposeful deep breath, and wait until his brain moves from “stuck on blank or nonsense” to engaged conversation.  He does this often without prompting.  And it makes me smile at him every time.  I usually give him a quick acknowledgement for realizing he needed to “regulate” and get on with the conversation.  It is a practice between us now.  I do it sometimes and he does it sometimes.  We are working together to fight our cycle of dysregulation.

I started teaching that breathing thing to him years ago:

  • Stop for a second, honey, and take a deep breath, so you think better about what you are saying. 
  • I need to take a breath because I am getting frustrated. 
  • When you feel overwhelmed, it just means your brain needs a little more oxygen, so breathe deeply a couples times. 
  • There is a big word for what is happening to you when you can’t think the way you want to–dysregulation.  Wacky word.  You should see how it is spelled, too.  Really wacky.  The opposite of that word is regulation.  Easier to spell. When I say regulation, I just mean remember to breathe.
  • Please take a breath so I can understand what you are meaning to say.
  • I am so angry that I need to stop talking right now and breathe.  I’ll come get you in a second so we can finish, okay?
  • I know you don’t want to have to do this, but breathing really helps.
  • It is hard to remember to breathe deeply when you are upset.  Me, too.
  • I feel badgered right now.  I don’t want to yell at you.  Please stop and take a breath cuz I am stopping and taking a breath. Thank you babe.  That really helps me regulate. 
  • I know you don’t want to badger me, but it feels like it.  Can you take a breath and slow down?
  • I just yelled at you because I didn’t take time to regulate.  I’m sorry.  I’m needing to breath more first.  Sorry.  That is my problem. I am working on it.
  • When you rush me as I first come home with your body and words and questions and computer, I get dysregulated.  I need some breathing time before I can actually listen.  Okay?  Can you give me a few minutes please?
  • Every day after I set my bags down, put my things away, and change my clothes after work, I will be ready to talk.  If you can make yourself wait, we will have a better conversation.  Breathing deeply helps me wait sometimes. Maybe you can try it. Deal?


X 10 or 20,000

breathe

Breathe.


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

  • The Trust-based Parenting Course  ended last weekend and a good time was had by all, though our back sides are a little sore from all that sitting. Thanks to all of you great parents for your commitment to therapeutic parenting with heart.
  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • Wow, more generous donations have come in to help other families.  YOU are appreciated–Big Love. 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.

Painful Realities

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Some of our children won’t make it to college, find jobs with reasonable living wages, or make life long soul mate commitments.  Some will do it all. Along their paths, they may struggle.  This is the reality for all parents and children.  Life can be very difficult.  Life can be very joyful. Attachment challenged children with special needs make these unknown futures especially scary for parents.

The antidote to fear is love. I believe this in my bones.  My own fear-filled journey with my daughter recently was instantly transformed by realizing I had lost connection with my heart, my love, in favor of listening to too many critics about how I was supporting her.  Once I listened to my own heart, the fear disappeared and I could actually be the mother my daughter needed–a present and loving one.  She didn’t need my fear-informed reactions and fierce boundaries.  She needed her Mom.

YOU cannot save anyone from their own trajectory.  YOU can only hold them in your loving gaze and influence by example.  You CAN surrender your fear and transform yourself into an attachment parent, who can hold the reality of your child’s life with empathy, kindness and love.  That is attachment.  Attachment is love.  Love trumps fear.


Love Matters,
Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • The Trust-based Parenting Course  ended last weekend and a good time was had by all, though our back sides are a little sore from all that sitting. Thanks to all of you great parents for your commitment to therapeutic parenting with heart.
  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • Wow, more generous donations have come in to help other families.  YOU are appreciated–Big Love. 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.

The Grief Within

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I was watching the 9/11 Memorial Museum dedication today and had a wave of deep sadness overtake me from that tragedy.  Then, without realizing it, I was consumed in old unrelated grief and simply cried it out until the tears stopped and I felt done.
 
angery griefHow this unfolded this morning in me made me think of YOU and your children. Grief often plays a big part in the background of our lives.  Our children have lost their sense of felt safety along with original attachments and sometimes many subsequent ones.  We parents have our personal grief from wounds past and re-worked dreams for the family life we hoped we were creating when we brought our children home. The grief is deeply stored as trauma in our brains, one painful event on top of another, that lends to inexplicable, triggered emotional experiences throughout our daily lives. 
How this unfolded this morning in me made me think of YOU and your children. Grief often plays a big part in the background of our lives.  Our children have lost their sense of felt safety along with original attachments and sometimes many subsequent ones.  We parents have our personal grief from wounds past and re-worked dreams for the family life we hoped we were creating when we brought our children home. The grief is deeply stored as trauma in our brains, one painful event on top of another, that lends to inexplicable, triggered emotional experiences throughout our daily lives.
 
Grief is sneaky.  It is like the background of a Jackson Pollack canvas.  We often cannot see it anymore due to the wild strokes of everyday life, but it is there, lying in wait for a scratch on the surface to reveal what hides beneath. 
 
Our kids have a complex reality and they rarely understand themselves, their emotions, or why the grief in the form of outbursts, negativity, and aggression overtake them at random intervals when they feel deprivation of any kind.
If YOU understood the grief beneath the outbursts, perhaps you would be more compassionate toward your child tragically tantruming over not getting a second cookie.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Day one of Trust-based Relational Parent Training.  Super great group of parents.  Wish YOU were here.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • Big HUG and APPRECIATION for the generous scholarship contributions–YOU know who YOU are.  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.

 

Long-Term Damage Is What It Is

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tripping 2My parents sent me to 9-years of ballet lessons because they said to each other often in front of me, “She is c-l-u-m-s-y.” YOU already know I fall a lot. Yesterday, I broke my toe by misjudging a step outside my kitchen, and this morning I nearly broke my face misjudging the same darned step.

I come from difficult beginnings of maltreatment and insecure attachment, and the scourge of c-l-u-m-s-y has been with me all my life. I also have to cut every tag out of my collars and buy shoes a half-size bigger than necessary (which might explain the tripping problem on a different level–ha) because tight shoes significantly lower my IQ.

While I embark on the task of launching my son into adulthood, I am pointedly reminded of the long-term damage from difficult beginnings. I lose sight of the effects on me because, after all, clumsy and itchy are all I have ever known. On my sweet boy, the damage is what it is–long-term and pervasive.

Sunday, I started on the process of chaperoning my son on weekly grocery shopping trips for himself. He was like a deer in headlights, and the truck hit him. The cortisol flooded him so completely that he couldn’t remember what he ate last week. Beyond what I cook, he eats the same 6 things every week of his life–milk, bread, chili, ravioli, fruit, cereal. He couldn’t remember even one of those things for 15 minutes.

Eventually, he recovered his memory, searched the aisles four or five times, and got it all in the cart. It took nearly an hour. When I asked him to sign his name on the electronic pad at checkout, I thought my computer geek son was going to hyperventilate. I can’t Mom. I haven’t ever done it before. I don’t know how. I can’t write that small. I can’t handwrite. I can’t. With soothing, persistence, and prompts to breathe, he did it just fine.

After putting the grocery bags into the car, I caught a glimpse of his smiling face. “That was easy,” he said proudly. That was easy just like walking and chewing gum at the same time is easy for me.

This is just a reminder about your children from difficult beginnings. They have long-term impairment that YOU and they need to understand in order to overcome with self-esteem intact.

Love Matters,

One Day Later

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breakfast in bedMoms, I am sure you are still reeling from all those pancakes in bed, bouquets of flowers, handmade gifts, and gobs of gratitude and love showered upon YOU yesterday for Mother’s Day.  YOU are probably still lounging in bed with a cappuccino dreaming about it all–right?  Dads, YOU will get your turn next month.
During the Trust-based Parenting course over the  weekend I spent a good bit of time helping parents see that their interpretation of their child’s motives for behavior are often misunderstandings.Here are a couple comments (paraphrased) I heard that you may think, too:
My child doesn’t value anything she has because she doesn’t care when I take her stuff away.
My child isn’t scared of anything so I have to be a drill sergeant.
My child doesn’t love me because she doesn’t even refer to me as her mother.It is an innate human drive to attach, love, and be loved.  Similarly, an innate human response to the fear following a loss of attachment (compounded when there is maltreatment) is elevated survival instincts–fight, flight or freeze.

If your child comes from difficult beginnings, most of the negative things YOU think about why your child is tantruming, not caring, not responding, or rejecting is a misinterpretation of a fight, flight or freeze survival/trauma reaction.

So here is the most accurate interpretation of nearly all persistent, negative, confusing behavior:  Our kids are stuck on surviving, which makes them seem uncaring about anything beyond themselves.  They care about everything, just not more than their own survival.


Love Matters,

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Day one of Trust-based Relational Parent Training.   Super great group of parents.  Wish YOU were here.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
  • Big HUG and APPRECIATION for the generous scholarship contributions–YOU know who YOU are.  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.

Work It Out–Lean Toward Love

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Having spent the afternoon with my 18-year-old daughter and her 6-month-old baby, I am left pondering many divergent things and am filled with so many emotions–the greatest of which is LOVE.  I love that girl, my daughter, and feel a growing attachment with my grand baby. Along with that love and attachment is a deep concern for their obvious challenges ahead.  Another child has been born with generational attachment wounds, in spite of my efforts to change the trajectory–more proof I am not in charge of the Universe (as if I needed more). Darn it.
 
I know this has happened in many of your lives and it is perhaps what many of YOU fear if it hasn’t happened.  First of all, it doesn’t happen in all attachment challenged children’s lives.  Many grow, and heal, and thrive thanks to your ever present attention to their needs and their own tenacity, resilience, and drive to live. I have had plenty of contact over the years with adults who have worked through their childhood challenges and changed their trajectories.  I consider myself in that company.
 
All in all, both of my children express gratitude and love for the family we have together.  They feel loved, and sometimes profoundly wounded by perceived slights.  That is part of their journey.  One day, some day, down the road a little further, as they continue to heal their hearts, I trust that they will work it all out. That is part of the innate human drive to lean toward love.
 
Lean toward love.

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

  • Count down to the next Trust-based Relational Parent Training—May 10th and 17th.  Very excited. Really enjoy being with parents for these extended time periods.  Love it.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partnerspresented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, 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.
 
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.

Favorite Sentence

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One of my favorite parenting sentences (I think I stole from PCIT, but who can remember such details at my age?) to get the kids moving.  I don’t know why this works so frequently, but it does.  It’s sharing power, so it makes sense that it works, now that I think about it.

Okay, time to go to bed.
Noooooooo!!! I’m not done!
How much more time do you think you need? [That was the favorite sentence, though I see now that it is really a question, my favorite parenting question.]
10 minutes.
Let’s compromise–5 more minutes.
Awwwa, okay.
Two minutes later, he is done and down the hall to the bedroom.

I know you don’t believe me, so start small and build up to bedtime.

cartoon momMy son has been home “sick” in bed for two days.
I asked him, How much more time do you think you need?
Uhh, I’m pretty sick.  My stomach really has been hurting.  Uh, a week?
Let’s compromise–you’re getting your butt to school to-mor-row.
It was worth a try, Mom.
We giggled.  He’s going to school tomorrow.

Wow, crazy as it seems, I have raised a seriously reasonable kid.  I worried that would never happen.  I often had so little faith in the face of so much fear.

Good thing I kept putting one foot in front of the other.  Just like YOU.


Keep the faith. Keep walking forward.
The Attach Place Logo

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Count down to the next Trust-based Relational Parent Training—May 10th and 17th.  Very excited. Really enjoy being with parents for these extended time periods.  Love it.
  • Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014.  If you are a therapist and interested in attending, 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.

Falling On My Nose

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trippingI fall a lot.  Just this week I fell right on my nose.  Didn’t break it, so all is well.  I fall so often that when I texted my husband about an accident outside the house between a bicyclist and a SUV, he texted back, What hospital are you going to?  Huh, wah?  It took three texts to clarify to him I wasn’t talking about myself, but rather about a stranger in the front yard (bicyclist hurt her foot, not too serious, for those of you with inquiring minds.)
Both of my kids had and still have proprioceptive and vestibular deficits.  They fall a lot, have trouble riding skate boards and bikes, slam into closed doors to seemingly stop, spill stuff, drop stuff, put things away with lids ajar, hug like jellyfish, and clean up like blind-folded raccoons.  Physical life is hard for them and my empathy was not always as high as it is now.

Frankly, I didn’t understand the constant physical mayhem running around me, but I wish I had. If so, I would have participated more fiercely in Occupational Therapy with them.  As it was, I sent them, but didn’t realize I could have contributed to making their lives easier by providing–Wilbarger Brushing Technique (as prescribed), Full Body Deep Pressure Touch, Joint Compression Activities, Interactive Brain Gym Play, Crash and Bump Play Space, Massage, Sensory Engagement, and Rough and Tumble Play.

What are YOU doing every day to help your child integrate and organize the sensory input of living?  It matters more than soccer practice.

The Attach Place Logo
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
The link code was wonky, if you had trouble clicking into the Love Matters Scholarship page this week. I think it is fixed now.
 
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.
 
Next Trust-based Relational Parent Training is scheduled for May 10th and 17th.  
 
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.

Accept and Love Grows

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Acceptance is like miracle salve for love wounds.  No kidding. Acceptance is the key to nearly all relationship conflicts–parent/child, spouse/spouse, boss/employee, extended family and friends.
 
My husband has a tiny bit of anxiety, which he quells by a tiny bit of what could be called NAGGING. I don’t see nagging.  I see him as loving and engaged in taking care of many things for our family.  I feel loved when he is attending, ever so minutely, to things I might forget to think about.
 
My son has very serious ADHD, amongst other things.  No matter what I ask him to do, he complies with a buckshot approach, rarely doing all of anything requested.  This could be seen as defiance, laziness, lack of care, and after 15 years it is certainly annoying.  I do get annoyed, but I see the desire he has to please me and accept that as a job well done.  
 
Personally, I have lost a good deal of my memory capacity since cancer treatment and getting older.  I make a lot of minor mistakes now. When this first started, I felt awful and experienced a drop in my self-confidence.  My husband, children, and colleagues accepted my mistakes and stepped right in to help me.  Their love and acceptance are helping me accept myself and adjust to this life change.  
We can struggle every day against things we cannot change, or we can embrace life with acceptance and love.  The choice is ours to make.
 
What do YOU need to accept in your child, your partner, others in your life to change conflict into love?
The Attach Place Logo
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
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.
 
Next Trust-based Relational Parent Training is scheduled for May 10th and 17th.  It is close to full already, so go towww.attachplace.com to register soon to reserve your space.  
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.

Loving Restraint

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This weekend The Attach Place held a small and wonderful Hold Me Tight Workshop for parents like YOU.  A good time was had by all, except one little guy who I ended up restraining.  Yep, you heard it here.  I had to restrain one of the children in child-care who was harming his siblings and himself.  It had been a long time since I held a child “against his will,” which is a terrible feeling.  Sometimes holding is the only way to keep everyone safe.  
 
In that moment I was hurled back in time when restraining my children was a daily event. While I was stroking the forehead of this little boy to soothe him, I was filled with love for him and his parents. Simultaneously, I felt a kind of forgiveness wash over me for the mother I had to be 10 years ago.  
 
We do what we have to do.  Shame is not required.
The Attach Place Logo
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Next Trust-based Relational Parent Training is scheduled for May 10th and 17th.  It is close to full already, so go to www.attachplace.com to register soon to reserve your space.  
Check out our three blogs: