Tag Archives: Attachment

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.

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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.  
 
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Our children have a story they tell themselves.  Do you know what your child’s internal story is?  You might hear it leaking out in times of emotional upheaval:  Nobody likes me.  I never get what I want. It’s too hard.  I can’t. You don’t love me.  I don’t love anybody.  I hate myself.  I hate everyone.  I can do it without anyone’s help. I don’t need you.  I don’t need love.  I hate love.
 
Having a coherent narrative is one of the keys to mental health. Whenever you can, tell your child the story you want them to tell themselves inside. YOU don’t need to make anything up.  Your child is precious, loved, planned, wanted, adored, valued, appreciated, and special.  Make sure you say these things all the time–10,000 times to make a new neuro-pathway.  
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Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 

Still Struggling

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The last text my 18.5 year-old daughter sent me said, “Okay, CE, I will be fine without you.” The meaning of her reference to my given name is clear—she no longer considers me to be her mother. This is not the first time for sure, but it may be the last.

Where to draw the line in the sand has been my constant dilemma since she was 3 years-old, running away 6 blocks to strangers she thought would be better parents. I was calling the police at the same time the kind strangers were calling them. I picked her up and drove her home in tears—I was in tears; she actually wasn’t. This or similar scenarios occurred countless times over the last 15 years.

My partner draws his line “here,” my therapist colleagues draw it “near” there, but YOU, you might feel the same as me—stumped to find a way to help my emotionally disabled daughter without enabling her to continue making poor choices that she doesn’t consider poor or that she sees as necessary given her situation.

My sweet friend, Grish, is the mother of a 26 year-old Autism Spectrum adult child and she completely understands why I keep throwing money, support and resources in my daughter’s direction. She instantly said, “It’s not codependence. It’s being a mother!” I love non-husband, non-therapist friends. ☺ I love the other’s too, but they don’t say what I want. My love is conditional. Ha.

Push Me Pull YouNow isn’t that an interesting thing out of the mouth of a non-therapist mother? Is mother synonymous with enabler? I am sure that book has been written, but I know I am in line if it hasn’t been. Many of you are in this situation because I have previously counseled you, or heard from you in regard to other emails I have written that describe this excruciating Push-me Pull-you. When in doubt, reference Dr. Doolittle, right?

My childless friends are very clear. By helping my daughter regularly get out of messy situations of her own making, I am enabling her to continue making poor decisions and, therefore, I should stop it. Just do it! They must have gone to Nike Business School–Just do it! My mother friends are very clearly empathetic and sorely lacking (thank goodness) black and white solutions. Life is grey. Take the middle road. Don’t be severe. She is young. YOU are her mother. Of course you want to continue to help her.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

“Okay, CE, I will be fine without YOU,” sticks in my gut like a jagged knife. It is a familiar feeling I’ve had over the years. Cliches always come to mind in times like these, “If you love her, let her go.” The letting go probably never feels good.

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Being A Parent Is Hard, Duh!

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This is a “duh” statement, Being a parent is hard. Duh. Being a parent of an attachment challenged child is harder. Duh.

I am working every day to be a loving mother to my 18-year-old daughter. She would say I am not being loving at all. I am trying fiercely not to enable her to make poor choices by bailing her out of financial messes. She depends on me to have little resolve in this matter, but I am determined to stay firm–just as I wrote that my inner doubter whispered “I think” in my ear.

Mother DaughterBeing an attachment therapist in no way helps me with my parent/child struggle. When it comes to my daughter, I am near blind and seriously feeble-minded. I cannot tell the difference between loving and enabling her. Before I respond to any of her requests of me I have to run my thinking by my partner at home and a colleague at work, lest I do a seriously enabling act. It’s unbelievable to me that I am so mush brained with her. When it gets down to the core of it, I see her attachment challenge as a disability and I forgive so many things that are completely off because of that.

When someone makes poor choices day in and day out since they were 3-years-old, it feels hard to insist they make good ones before they can get my help. I read that last sentence to my partner and he said, “YOU have given her help for 15 years and she has never been willing to live inside the boundaries of our home or society. YOU have helped her a lot and you will have to do that the rest of your life because she will not choose a different path.” Thank goodness he was offering me a freshly made cappuccino when he said this or I might have bitten his face off. Instead, tears come to my eyes because I am gut-deep sad that I cannot save my daughter from herself, disability or not.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Enabling hurts. Love matters. Love is not enough. Life is not a quote. Parenting is hard. Duh.

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

Fear Silences Me

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Hi Ce–AKA, Child Whisperer,

Annie, Devon and the animals we love

My Kids 10 Long Years Ago

I wrote an email for YOU today that I am afraid to send. Fear overtook me just as I slid my cursor over the send button. I felt silenced by the fear that YOU might feel betrayed by my opinion about who is the best candidate to adopt children. Some of YOU were probably not the best candidates for adopting the children you are now trying desperately to heal. I was not the best candidate to adopt children 15 years ago when I brought my two home. St. Patrick’s Day every year is our adoption anniversary. That day this year my family hugged and we stuffed our faces with Chantilly cake, but the celebration was bittersweet, as it always is.

Frank, KidsAt the end of the month we are moving, and our house is a chaotic mess of boxes for the new place and piles of stuff to go to Goodwill or the dump. I noticed my son seemed kind of melancholy. When I asked what was up, he said this:

I am just taking a little time to think. I have a lot of memories in this house. Not all bad ones. Mom, you probably think I am thinking only about the bad ones, but I have good ones, too. A lot of stuff happened in our house over the last five years. I am also thinking about our putting Phoebe down (today). I will miss her. There is so much change all at once and this is my adoption anniversary. I feel all mixed up inside. I feel sad and weird, excited maybe, about going somewhere new, and about leaving part of us behind.

Sometimes I forget how sensitive my children are inside, because their tender hearts can be so camouflaged by chatter, negative behavior, distraction and destruction. I won’t miss this house a bit. The last five years have been nothing short of harrowing for me. Life with attachment challenged children is beyond challenging at every turn.

These moments of quiet contemplation by my son are precious to me. They give me hope. They warm my heart. They save me. I am packing them in a box for the movers, because there will be harrowing times again, no doubt. When they come, I can pull this memory out and turn it over and around in my head to remind myself of the heart beneath the leather, mine and my children’s.

Attachment Help

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

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

 

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

The First Few Months Last A Lifetime

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I am guilty of listing every behavior under the sun as “attachment challenged” behavior. This is a relative misnomer I know I am making, but there isn’t a good, easy way of calling out what many of us experience every day. So, for expedience (not necessarily clinical accuracy), I generically label. Mea culpa.

That said, I want to highlight a reality common to many of us–our children are often extremely concrete, lacking what some might call “theory of mind.” Theory of mind is what most of us who had a “good enough” mother/child connection in the early months take for granted–the ability to flexibly toggle between our inside and outside realities.

Many of our children have a very difficult time with subjectivity and objectivity in life. What is inside their minds and what is outside their minds is blurred and confusing to them. Our kids think that what they think is what everyone thinks. If you are reading this and you are having a hard time following what I am saying, then you may have had difficulty in your very early months, too (or I might be doing a terrible job explaining this.)

Upshot: this way of being is a personality style forged in the early months when one’s “mother” attends to a child’s

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The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

every need and engages the child reciprocally, interactively and connectedly. Or not. The “or not” is the point here.

Your child is not being stupid, difficult, oppositional, or intentionally moronic (which are some labels I have heard from parents, and sadly used at points in my parenting life.) Our children were deprived of essential attachment and bonding experiences in the first few months of life that last throughout childhood. While there are some ways this can evolve and change over time, it is just as likely that this concrete, lack of cognitive flexibility will persist throughout life. This knowledge is intended to conjure empathy and patience. I hope you are getting that.

Love Matters,

Ce

Words Are Like Claws On Scared Cats

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Attachment panic can be as brutal for the attachment object (YOU) as it is for the person experiencing it (your attachment challenged child or spouse.)  Attachment panic can occur when an attachment challenged person is triggered by perceived deprivation or withdrawal of another’s love. The cellular memory of early deprivation and loss causes a reaction of fight, flight or freeze.
 

Attachment Help

Comprehensive Attachment Therapy

This is fight:
When your three year old says with conviction, “I hate you” or “I only love Daddy,” as you head out the door for work; when your 11 year old lofts a hefty F-bomb at YOU, as you lovingly cajole him up in the morning for school; when your insecurely attached wife snidely quips how little she thinks of your love-making skill, as you pack for a 10-day business trip; when these kinds of things fly out of the mouth of someone in attachment panic, there is a brutality to it as sharp as claws on scared cats.  The words dig in, then drag across your heart leaving a trail of painful imprints that fester for days before they fade away. Sometimes the scars last a long time after the painful event has been forgotten.
 
Try to step out of the way of attachment panicked words, they are not meant to drive YOU away, but rather to pull YOU in.