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Quizzing Is Not Talking
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Tag Archives: Adoptive Parents
Play Deficits
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 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.
Stress Kills
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 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.
When RAD Heals
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 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.
Harassment For The Greater Good
It has been a long time since I wagged my index finger in your face. Today is the day. Take time for yourself. Have YOU made every effort to find respite for yourself that includes an overnight?
To quote a famous tennis shoe, Just do it.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
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.
Respite is the key to long-term regulation. Get some.
Grocery List
I asked the kids, as I do each week, to leave me a list of food they want me to get. Last week the list had only three things: peaches, plums, oranges. All but the oranges rotted in the bowl. The oranges are still there.
Today, I found this list on the counter when I came home from work:
Gater Raid – red, yellow, blue, purple
Waffles
French Toast Sticks
Mini Pancake Chocolate Chips
peaches
plums
apples
pizza rolls
toaster struddles – strawberry
strawberries
grapes
pop tarts strawberry and cinamine
gonalla bars
bananass
cheese sticks
Top Ramon Noodle 12 pk chicken
yogurt
soy milk
Wow, they have got to be kidding. This mad craving for sugar is amazing. When our children are free to choose, they can make some profoundly poor health decisions. Just as 2-year-olds do not get to choose their menu, neither should our kids because the taste buds in their brains are cross-wired.
Oh, and no I will not be buying most of that list. Maybe some bananass.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Hmmm, it has been a long time since I had a Pop Tart.
Maybe I am missing out on something… Naw.
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 September 12th and 19th 2015 from 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.
Hope, Expectation, and Disappointment
When parents have children, from day one there are implicit or maybe even explicit hopes for them. Parents say, We want our child to grow up and be happy, and in our minds we often have a template, a blueprint for what “happy” means. It is different for each parent, but the hopes generally exist. Here are a few unconscious or conscious expectations:
- Do well in school (Get As and Bs preferably, but Ds are failing)
- Be a good person (Character, faith, conscience, family centric, stand up straight and puts a napkin across the lap)
- Go to college (Because that is how one becomes successful)
- Get a good job (White collar job preferably because, YOU know)
- Find someone to love (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
- Be loved by someone (Normal, educated, employed, responsible, possibly specific gender, possibly specific race, possibly specific class, possibly specific religion)
- Create a family (2.5 children with mortgaged white picket fence–home attached)
- Be healthy (Have nothing go wrong with body or mind)
- Be happy (Look and sound happy because all the points above were achieved)
Children put a kink in those expectations and from the beginning parents start to fear, fear for their own hopes for their children. Here is a word to the wise: support the child you see in front of you, rather than the one you have in your mind. Attachment challenged or not, children have their own trajectories for their lives, which may be significantly different from the one you hold in your mind.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
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 July 8th 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 July 25th and August 1st, 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.
Intimate, loving attachment
is about understanding and accepting your child as s/he is.
Pain In Adoption
My daughter gets regular check-ins with CPS workers because her baby is so sick and, understandably, the hospital staff thought it was possibly due to neglect. Thankfully it wasn’t, but CPS stayed on.
Eventually CPS actually took her baby, my grandbaby. My daughter was grief stricken and I was…mixed about it all.
In the middle of last night (the only time she thinks she should talk to me) my daughter texted me that she was dreading going to court against CPS. I responded that I remember that feeling very well.
“CPS was called on you, Mom. YOU never did anything.”
I am forever amazed at how little either of my children remember about the vast shenanigans that occurred in our home throughout their childhood years.
CPS opened cases on me three or four times–false abuse allegations, being on the run, living on the river, living with strangers, pregnant minor, etc. Every one of them scared me to death. I know this has happened to many of YOU. And I know many of you live in fear of this. Some of you have lost your homes, gone bankrupt defending yourself, lost family and friends, and had children taken away because of CPS allegations.
Oh, the stress and grief of it all.
Now that I am on the other side of CPS’ grip the PTSD has mostly faded and I am thinking about what I could have done differently during the “crazy” years.
1. I could have parented with more understanding and less control. This might have saved me from some threats at the point of a butcher knife.
2. I could have “seen” my children as individuals separate from me, and attended to their life experience more. I never allowed wild, revealing clothes, colored hair, outrageous talk… But I wasn’t doing it either, so what was the big deal?
3. I could have found more ways to soothe my own pain and fear, so I wasn’t so reactive.
4. I could have joined with others more for support–online or in local groups with others going through the same thing with their attachment challenged children. I didn’t think I needed all that. Who was I kidding?
5. I could have insisted on respite for myself more (though I have to say I did a pretty good job of this.)
6. I could have shared my fear with CPS workers more, instead of being fearfully defensive. Yelling, You don’t get it! in the face of a CPS worker was probably not that helpful.
Hindsight, I know. Some folks often feel I am hard on myself when I talk about what I could have done differently. That is not my intention. I am pretty forgiving of myself, as I truly know that I did the best I could at the time. I am simply hopeful my musings on the past can help YOU in the present (especially, if you are in the midst of the crazy years.)
I know this in my bones: Our kids get better if we hang in there and give ourselves the benefit of everything we can find to support our herculean efforts.
Re-Do Time
Okay, re-do. That is one of the first levels of correction we can use with our children if–and it is a big IF–we can be playful, sweet, and respectful. Remember, corrections are intended to help our children learn to be family kids, not punishments for not innately knowing how to do it despite our repeated corrections.
Here are some examples for the playfully challenged, which I am known to be sometimes. How about YOU?
Your child demands a snack.
Hey sweetie pie will you ask again kindly please?
Your child barges into the room banging the walls with a band instrument, knocking down a picture frame, and creating an unnecessary ruckus.
Holy Mole Guacamole, whoa, take a second handsome and try that entry again. Yes, I mean it. I know you can do it like a kid instead of Godzilla.
Your child is snarky when you tell him to take out the trash.
Uh-oh, I said that without thinking. Sorry honey. What I meant to say was, In the next few minutes please take the trash out, so I can get going on dinner. What do you say?
Your child gives you attitude.
Whoa, we are working on this kindness thing, right? Will you show me some love in your voice and say it again please?
No! I won’t!
Something must be wrong. Can I help you with something?
No!
Okay, we can talk again later when we can do it with kindness. I’ll be right here.
Remember, corrections are not punishments. Try it again with kindness applies to us parents, too. Punishment does not teach our children anything, except that we are bigger and can be meaner. When they get bigger, imagine what they will do with that learning. Give what you want to get.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
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 June 10th 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, 10 to 4pm 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 July 25th and August 1st, 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.
Parents need re-dos sometimes, too.
Thank Your Lucky Stars
If your traumatized, attachment challenged child is pooping in the corners of your dining room while you are cooking dinner, this post is NOT really for YOU. Everyone else, cross yourself, count your blessings, kiss your rosary, say a little prayer, give a little nod to the Universe, thank your lucky stars for how blessed YOU are because your child is not pooping in the corners of your dining room.
On second thought: Call me if you are cleaning up poop right now.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
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 June 10th 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, 10 to 4pm 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 July 25th and August 1st, 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’m serious. YOU can call me.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 