Tag Archives: parenting attachment challenged children

Pigeon Holes Are Tricky

What we believe about ourselves, we manifest. What we believe about our children, they become. Be careful what YOU believe.

All day today I thought my son didn’t get up in time to go to school. At some point during the day I sent a note to his school saying so. Then in the afternoon I texted him a reminder that no school means no computer. He texted me back, “I’m on my way home from school now Mom.”

Wha?

Because he woke himself up by his own alarm, left no crumbs across the kitchen, and exited kindly without a peep so as not to awaken me from my sleep, I thought he was still cocooned behind his closed bedroom door. I left for work believing he, as usual, did not get himself up and, as promised, I was stridently refusing to be his alarm clock.

My son is pigeon holed in my mind by my beliefs about him. It is wrong of me. He can be a good family member. He was this morning. Once he “gets” something, he usually gets it for good. Of course, there are relapses, but my pigeon hole is not going to be the reason.

What do you believe about your attachment challenged child?

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

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 April 8th. Come join us. Online RSVP each month required. Child care provided.

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Believe.

How Trauma Works

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The brain records trauma in such a way that it keeps getting triggered over and over again, even after the abuser has long left the picture. Your child repeatedly relives the past in the present. That is the definition of posttraumatic stress, and Complex Developmental Trauma is attachment challenge plus posttraumatic stress. This makes your child tread as though the abuse is about to recur at the next turn.

My son recoils from me whenever I make a sudden move near him. I have never beaten him, but he is afraid I will because he has that memory encoded in his implicit (unconscious) brain from before he was two years old. My daughter, on the other hand, is drawn to recreating the traumatic experiences of childhood neglect in her adult life, over and over. She relives the past every day and struggles to survive as if she has to do it that way.

I try to support both of my children to rise up from the imprints they received during those traumatic times, but it has been difficult. Our work, as healing parents, is to help our children understand and perceive themselves as something other than victim, and to not be controlled by the ever-reactive trauma brain.

Building a new sense of self is monumental. Think how you would feel if YOU were tasked to rewire yourself from the ground floor up, childhood to now. Just changing one little bad habit feels impossible to me sometimes–Step away from the chocolate.

Your kids need YOU to keep your perception of them pure and precious, so they can begin to see themselves through truly loving eyes. That is a child’s birthright after all.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Taylor Swift and I Shake It Off every day.

Trauma Messed With Your Child

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If your child had trauma in the early years, then your child is still impacted by that trauma. Trauma is hardwired into the brain. Three specific things are altered by trauma: your child’s perception of self, your child’s perception of others, and your child’s perception of the world. That means that every experience, thought, and feeling your child has is filtered through the lens of traumatized perceptions. EVERY experience, thought and feeling!

Swearing boy

Go put your shoes on, Honey.

NO!

Here is your favorite snack.

I don’t want that!

I love you.

I hate you! And I will never love you! Why did you even adopt me!?!

I know YOU are tired and you find yourself quietly (or even loudly on stressful days) wanting your child to simply act normal, have normal responses to everyday life events, respond normally to interactions, and feel basically normal inside.

Guess what: your child probably can’t. It isn’t on purpose. It’s not because of stubbornness. Opposition is not the root. And defiance is not that fun. Trauma messed with your child’s brain.

Being angry and grief-stricken is natural given the daily frustrations of parenting an attachment and abuse-traumatized child. However, behaving with frustration and anger toward your child for a “brain thing” is harmful and negatively reinforcing to their already distorted perceptions.

self care

What can YOU do?

Don your Big Lady panties (unless you prefer boxers.)

Get support.

Take care of yourself.

Respite is necessary.

Seek

counseling.

Hobbies work. Weekly date night–a must. Tea breaks with friends save sanity. Parent helpers are angels on Earth. Housekeepers and landscapers are peacekeepers. Lightening-up helps. Ask for what you need. Take naps. Take walks. Take breaths. Take heart.

YOU are not alone.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next 10-hr. Trust-based Parenting Course is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign-up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Forgive yourself your shortcomings and wipe the slate clean every day.

Positive Experience Changes Brains

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Keep hope alive folks, because there definitely is plenty of reason to do so. The brain is capable of repair beyond our current scientific understanding. Play, laugh, talk together about real life things, so your child can learn about life the best way–from YOU.

Our traumatized children have a hard time feeling safe with parents, so they often cannot learn from us. Playing, laughing, rolling around, and acting silly together creates safety–felt safety. Felt safety is what allows a fragile brain to grow new neuropathways, new insights, new access to the part of the brain that governs memory and executive functions such as logical sequencing, cause and effect thinking, connections, organization, theory of mind, empathy, and moral reasoning.

Your child may not fully heal while living at home, but positive experiences change brains and move children further down the road to a fulfilling life. That’s really all we are hoping for, right?

Play more. Bark less.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Workshop is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Practicing what YOU know is hard work.

Get support from others who are “in the know.” YOU will be glad you did.

Fear Strikes The Core

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Like a lightening bolt, fear strikes the core of our complex traumatized children in nearly all that they do.

Last night, I came home from work and walked in the door to my son beginning a lie before the door had even closed behind me.

“I cleaned my room, Mom, but I already messed it up again.”

In my world owning up to an ugly truth is difficult, but entirely freeing. For my son, fear strikes his core before he can think of the truth, so the lies shoot out in my face like spring-loaded slinkies–one right after the other in a barely detectable loop-de-loop.

Once quiet again and out of his fear-stricken state, for the 5000th time I asked him, What could you do instead of lie?

He responds, “Not be afraid.”

Well, can you actually control your fear?

“No.”

Did it occur to you that you could not be afraid by simply cleaning your room?

“Oh. Pregnant pause. “No.”

This is an executive function problem. Putting two and two together in a logical order is very difficult for some of our traumatized children. I wish it were different, but it isn’t.

For the 5001st time, Well, you could do your chores or not do your chores. Since you don’t get in trouble for not doing your chores, there is nothing to fear and nothing to lie about either way. Cool, huh?

“I’m really trying Mom.”

I know, Honey. I know. Just go clean your room.

“Okay. Can I tell you about what Mr. XYZ did today?”

Yes, three seconds after you clean your room.

“You’re funny Mom.”

I know, Honey. I know. Go.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Workshop is planned for May 16th and May 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Repetition creates new neuropathways.

Brains seem made of cement around our house.

Control Is Like Air To Birds

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YOU can fight if you must, but control is the medium through which your child survives. Like air to birds, your attachment challenged child needs the predictability of control or a feeling spiral akin to falling out of the sky occurs that feels like sure death.

The overarching therapeutic parenting goal is to create a safe and predictable enough environment for your child to trust s/he is not going to smash to the ground when s/he lets go into your care.

My suggestion is to accept your child’s need for control as one of the basics–air, food, water, shelter, love. Little by little, show just how safe YOU are because you understand, share, forgive, accept and shape the internal landscape of their brains to need just a little less of it over time.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Workshop is planned for May 16th and March 23th, 10am to 3pm each day. Child care provided for an extra fee. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Fighting a starving man to give up his one slice of bread makes no sense.

Karyn Purvis in Sacramento

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Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Workshop is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day, in a back-to-back, two-day format. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Connect and learn with other parents in the same boat.

Too Much Freedom

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If your child gets into shenanigans when outside your visual supervision, then YOU have given your child too much freedom. This is on YOU, not your child. How can that be, you say?

Calibrate freedom at the level for your child’s success–shoot low to guarantee it.

I know this is contrary to awe-inspiring motivation posters about Aiming High, but you can rest assured your child will fail if you do so and they miss–over and over and over. Continuous failure insures lack of confidence, low self-esteem, lack-luster motivation, and snail-speed executive function growth over time.

Imagine what continuous success insures over time. Yay-ah Baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Parent Workshop is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day, in a back-to-back, two-day format. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Baby steps lead to success.

Forced Knowing

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Sometimes my compassion for my son is about puddle deep. I just want him to get things he doesn’t get. And yet, I keep trying to force the issue. When will you get that you have to rinse the food monoliths off the plates before you put them in the dishwasher? I know you just learned how not to leave them dirty in the sink, but just add a little step. You would think I was teaching him past participles in Hebrew.

As I think about it, that sentence to him is almost acceptable, but that is because you cannot hear the tone I used when I said it and it would have been nice to truncate that humiliating, When will you get… part.

It is all an executive function thing. I need to chill. Why in the world am I getting all flummoxed about an obvious disability? Oh, right, it isn’t that obvious, but it is a disability. I must choose to tread lightly. I can be way too hard on this boy who comes from very difficult beginnings. Up the compassion. Up the empathy, Ce. YOU can do it. YOU want to do it. YOU have enough love in your heart to be generous. Just do it.

Okay, I will. I declare my home and my mouth Compassion Zones.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

The Attach Place announces the beginning of our monthly no fee Trust-based Adoptive Parent Support Group in Sacramento, every 2nd Wednesday of each month. Come join us. Online RSVP each month required. Child care provided.

Next Trust-based Paren Workshop is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day, in a back-to-back, two-day format. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

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 could helpfully have said, Let’s work on creating a habit of rinsing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

Our dishwasher will be happier if we do.

How hard is that to say? Sheesh.

Dear YOU No Hashtag

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Turns out it is easier to write a new Daily YOU Time late than it is to send old ones on time. I am letting go of getting it done uniformly every day in favor of just getting on with life the way I enjoy it–one email at a time, when I find the time. I know YOU can relate to this. Doing it all is tough sometimes. Just got to go with the flow, even when the flow is more like Niagara Falls after the thaw.

I don’t know about YOU, but I sometime feel like I am caught in some weird reverse osmosis echo chamber (Scientists, I beg you to resist telling me my science is faulty.) My echo chamber goes something (exactly really) like this on a regular basis.

My son: “Mom, I see you moved my computer from the garage. I was wondering when you were going to do that.”

Me, knowingly lighthearted: “Because it was tempting you to break the rules?”

My son, emphatically: “No, I just keep seeing it when I go down there and I have to resist doing something I know I will get in trouble for.”

Me: “Huh,” with a V-8 smash to the forehead (mine, not his.)

If this unscientific reverse osmosis echo chamber happens at your house, trust this: You child is being literal, not disrespectful. If the words do not exactly match the thoughts, then “No” with a near identical sentiment is going to follow. It isn’t as oppositionally defiant as it feels. It is truly more about rigidity of thought in the executive function part of the brain. Try not to feel corrected by your Munchkin, as that is likely not your child’s intention.

Our children are usually simply trying to be “exactingly” right. Being right is important, because the alternative is being WRONG, which invokes an intolerable shame spiral. Show compassion in the face of this kind of opposition. YOU can take the high road. Your child often cannot.

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Next Trust-based Paren Workshop is planned for March 14th and March 15th, 10am to 3pm each day, in a back-to-back, two-day format. Sign up online at www.attachplace.com.

Next Hold Me Tight Couples Workshop by Robin Blair, LMFT at The Attach Place is planned for April 17th, 18th and 19th.

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.

Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to receive Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.

Compassion. Empathy. Acceptance. Playful. Love.

Wisdom For Adoptive Parents

Support For Parents of Traumatized, Attachment Challenged Children

Tag Archives: parenting attachment challenged children

Pigeon Holes Are Tricky

How Trauma Works

Trauma Messed With Your Child

Positive Experience Changes Brains

Fear Strikes The Core

Control Is Like Air To Birds

Karyn Purvis in Sacramento

Too Much Freedom

Forced Knowing

Dear YOU No Hashtag

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