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Energize Times Three
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Tag Archives: Attachment
Toxic Stress Part 2
The only way to change the toxic stress that may be poisoning your family life is to get on board a huge parent self-care regimen for yourself, that I wrote about yesterday, and a daily felt safety diet for your child.
Felt Safety Diet:
- First and foremost: Well regulated parents who have an establishedSelf-care Regimen.
- A slow pace. Pretend you live in a small sleepy town where no one feels the need to speed. Then, don’t speed, rush, hustle, bustle, race, multi-task, or try to live three lives at once.
- Attune to your child’s needs for connection, engagement, attention, playfulness. Play with your children. Watching them play is not the same thing.
- Lose the concept of punishment and consequences. Use structure and gentle correction instead. If you use punishment and consequences, your child will fear you while continuing to do the things you don’t want them to do.
- Set the behavior bar low, so your child is successful. Praise like crazy for achieving it. Setting the bar too high will cause behavior like giving up, throwing in the towel, defiance, opposition, or not even trying.
- Accept your child for who they actually are, rather than for who you wish they were. This is a big one. Stop working so hard to make them different. Imagine someone doing that to you every day, all day.
- Never forget that your child probably has some kind of sensory integration issue because children from difficult beginnings usually do. Give them a steady schedule (every two hours) of physicality, healthy food/snacks and big hydration.
- Finally, work very hard to be sure your child’s school is trauma informed, so your child isn’t inadvertently emotionally harmed.
And there you have it: a healing Felt Safety Diet.
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 November 11that a NEW time–5:30 pm. Join us. Online RSVP each month required when you need child care.
The Attach Place offers an 8-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course every other month. Our next course dates areDecember 5th and 12th, 2015. Sign-up by calling 916-403-0588 x1 or email attachplace@yahoo.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.
Take a look at your calendar. If the word respite does not appear there, get to it.
The Great ChildCare Hunt
I am really empathizing with those of you who cannot keep a good child care worker in your homes to spell you from the demands of therapeutic parenting.
I had this problem early on when my kids were little, hanging from the chandeliers, but finally found the best thing ever, my adult step son, to take the job for 8 or so years. Can you believe that? Every weekday and some weekends for eight years! When I look back on it, I owe my sanity to that young man who nearly lost his own some days while backed into a corner at knifepoint. True story. He never quit. He did not quit me or them. I have the biggest appreciation for him. Words cannot cover it.
As of late, it has been hard for me to keep a child care worker for our parent training events and our monthly parent support nights. I keep peeling them off one by one. There is no shortage of people willing to try; however, there is a limited supply of willingness to come back. I know many of you know this story.
Today, I am on my umpteenth round of solicitations on Care.com. I’m glad I have that resource. Overnight I have a new crop of bright-eyed helpers in my inbox thinking they have what it takes to step into your shoes for a few hours once in a while. I hope this let’s YOU know that raising attachment challenged children is nothing like raising attached children. Nothing–no matter what well meaning people say, All kids are like that, and such.
No, no they aren’t.
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.
Hire someone with a special needs background, pay them what they are worth to you, and send them to a Trust Based Parenting Training. I spent a lot of money on childcare over the years. It was well worth it for the respite.
Blessings Come In Strange Ways
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The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Tax Day
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The Attach Place provides a monthly no fee Back Off And Balance
If YOU have been helicopter parenting to the point where even just the sound of your voice is creating reactivity from your attachment challenged teen, back off and get some balance. Back way off. Let them come to you for what they need. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it works. When YOU give them space, and space, and space, your children come seeking contact with YOU. Be very low key about your response.
Without irony, accept the overture, and be the hero: “Sure, I will drive you to your volleyball game.”
The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Let your children seek YOU. That can turn the tables.
If Only You Were Different, I Would Love You
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Tit For Tat Gets YOU Back
Our children do not cause our poor parenting behavior–yelling,
demanding, demeaning, belittling, overpowering, physicality,
threatening, arguing, meanness, etc. Those behaviors belong to us
and no amount of attachment challenge child behavior is responsible
for our “low road” reactions.
Because this is true, I have mastered the art of the sincere apology.
I often owe that to both of my children. Whenever I suggest that
parents owe an apology to their children before expecting their
children to sincerely apologize, I get push back like there is no
tomorrow.
“Absolutely not!” retorted one parent, when I asked if she had
something to apologize for after she wrongly accused her daughter of
something she had actually done herself. “If she didn’t lie all the
time, I wouldn’t have falsely accused her.” Okay, but you did
wrongly accuse her, and really you owe her a sincere apology for
wronging her, right? “No.” Hmmmm.
If we expect our children to sincerely feel remorse and apologize for
their wrongs, then we have to model it first. Otherwise, we are
blaming them for our behavior.
Isn’t that what they often infuriatingly do to YOU?
Because Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is
September 27, 2014 and October 4, 2014. Sign-up here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/9ba51af5e7/TEST/c0f94646cd .
Please share freely. Your community of support can sign-up for their
own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here –
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheAttachPlaceCenter/9ba51af5e7/TEST/b816f9fd03 .
Tit for tat, gets YOU back.
Back to School Blues
I had a nice long break. Honestly, I missed writing to YOU every day, and I didn’t miss writing every day. Since I last sent you a missive, it was the stress-free days of summer and now it is back to school. Even if your attachment challenged child is excited about the school year, you can put money on a scourge of blow outs and meltdowns because, like school or not, dysregulation is afoot.
Here are a few tips to ease you through the back to school blues:
Up the empathy for your child’s stress. (“Awe, it’s awful to have 6 teachers you hate. Just awful.”)
Give hurdle help. (“I’ll help you find your binder, your homework, your pencil, your deodorant, your zipper, your brain, and your shoes.”)
Be a hero for a few weeks. (“Oh, you forgot your lunch again? Sure, I will take an hour out of my morning to swing it by school before lunchtime.”)
Listen to every story with eager ears and soft eyes. (“Oh, she did? Then what? Oh, that is HILLLL-arious.”)
Have fun and chill. (Eat ice cream after school at least once a week for the first month. Even YOU might like an excuse to blow your diet.”)
Okay, that’s it for me on my first day back to YOU.
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Work It Out–Lean Toward Love
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,
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.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 