Tag Archives: Parent Self Love

If Wishes Were Horses

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To quote the fabulous Lucinda Williams, “If wishes were horses, I’d have a ranch.” How about YOU?

Love Matters

Love Matters

Mostly, I wish that love was all that mattered in the fight to heal the broken hearts (brains) of our children. If it were, all of our children would grow and heal and thrive, because we parents have love to give by the buckets full.

Unfortunately, love is only one ingredient. It is essential, but more is required. Sometimes YOU can throw into the pot everything imaginable, including the kitchen sink, for years on end and still not have enough ingredients to make a delicious stew.

So, my dears, make soup.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

When you pick the freshest veggies, reduce the stock to sublime, raid the garden for just the right herbs, and season the best you know how, YOU can feel proud of the soup YOU prepared. The rest of the cooking is up to your beautiful child. There may be a wonderful stew there, with a little more simmering in adulthood.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist

UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS:
Get more information and reserve your spot here for our upcoming Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on April 25th, 26th and 27th.

Get more information and sign up here for our 10-hour Trust-based Parenting Course for Parents of Adopted, Attachment Challenged, and/or Special Needs Children in Sacramento, CA on March 29th and April 5th, 2014.

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

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.

How To Think About Behavior

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Flipped OffUp your compassion by changing YOUR mind. The only way to parent attachment challenged children effectively is to see them clearly as little children with brains and bodies that have been severely impacted by difficult beginnings, maltreatment/abuse and attachment breaches.

Depressed Child 3

After that, YOU have to edit your own thinking about what you are seeing when you parent them every day.
This is what I mean: 
 
Behavior:        Child pushes your hugs away.
Thinking:         Child is controlling, unloving, rejecting.
Re-Think:        Child is afraid of being vulnerable and self protects
                       habitually by pushing people away.
 
Behavior:         Child spills something every day.         
Thinking:          Child is clumsy, stupid, never pays attention, or must
                        be doing this on purpose to annoy me.
Re-Think:         Child ‘s proprioceptive and vestibular senses are
                        challenged and need rehabilitation.
 
Behavior:          Child steals things repeatedly.             
Thinking:           Child is a thief, untrustworthy, embarrassing, morally
                         corrupt, and bound for prison.
Re-Think           Child has deprivation imprints, combined with
                         impulsivity.
 
Behavior:          Child lies nonsensically.                        
Thinking:           Child is a hopeless liar, bad seed, criminal,
                         antisocial, devious.
Re-Think:          Child is in survival mode most of the time: scared to
                         be caught, wrong, harmed, in-trouble, or bad (the
                               way it feels on the inside.)
 
Our compassion rises when we tell ourselves the truth about our children who have been harmed by adults early in their lives or by the circumstances of difficult biological beginnings–challenging pregnancy, neonatal surgery, birth trauma, prematurity, parental absence, illness or postpartum depression.
 
The Attach Place Logo High Parental Compassion = Parenting with Heart.
Something our children desperately need in order to heal.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT and Mother
Attachment Specialist
Check out our three blogs:

Hold Me Tight Weekend Workshop for Couples with Adopted and Special Needs Children

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Revised Dates:
April 21, 2014 6pm to 9pm
April 22, 2014 10am to 4pm
April 23, 2014 10am to 1pm

The Hold Me Tight Workshop is designed to give you a weekend away to connect with your spouse. This workshop will not teach you useless things; it will give you an opportunity to fully engage the deep, loving connection you desire in your relationship with your partner.

Hold Me Tight

Hold Me Tight

• Address stuck patterns and negative cycles
• Make sense of your own emotions
• Overcome loneliness
• Repair and forgive emotional and physical disconnection
• Communicate to develop deeper understanding and closeness

Hold Me Tight Couple

Hold Me Tight 

You will strengthen your bond through private exercises with your partner, didactic experiences, and video demonstrations of couples that have moved from distress to that longed for deep, intimate connection.

This workshop takes place in the safe environment of experienced attachment specialists and other parents experiencing similar attachment pushes and pulls in their lives because of the demands of healing the broken hearts and emotional difficulties of children from difficult biological beginnings, maltreatment, abuse and attachment breaches. YOU will be “seen” here and your struggles will be understood.

Dear Parent: This attachment focused couples workshop is brought to you at a 50% reduced rate by The Attach Place Center for Strengthening Relationships. We believe that you, your relationship, and your love matter. The stronger your relationship, the better able YOU will be to whether the slings and arrows of raising children from difficult beginnings.

This workshop is especially designed with YOU in mind.

To that end, we are dedicated to providing creative financing to make this opportunity possible for you and child care options for your children.

Who: YOU and Your Partner
When: April 21, 2014 – April 23, 2014
Cost: $300.00
Child Care: $5 per hour per child

Reserve your place by RSVPing to: info@attachplace.com

If you can carve out time for yourselves on a weekend, we promise that you will have valuable experiences to help you strengthening the safety, connection, and bond in your relationship.

Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT, Jennifer Olden, LMFT, Robin Blair, MFTI,
The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
Tel: (916) 403-0588 X 1
Email: info@attachplace.com

Parent Love

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If you feel blamed by others for your child’s persistent behavior, let yourself off that hook because YOU are doing the best you can.

It’s a new day.  What’s on your list for getting some love? Self love.

Parent Self Love