Tag Archives: parenting children with special needs

YOU Are Scary

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Ever wonder why your children from hard places are more shenanigan prone with YOU than with any other person?  Doesn’t it seem sometimes like your mere presence in a room invites behavior that your mother-in-law swears didn’t happen all day until YOU showed up?  Doesn’t it feel like all of these shenanigans are your fault or directed at YOU?  After all they are mostly happening when you are there.  
 
Okay, I give you credit for knowing the ins and outs of this. I know you know it is because they come from difficult beginnings and have been hurt and abandoned by the beloved.  Just to drive it home–truth be told–the real reason is simple: YOU are scary. Yep it is YOU. YOU, the current attachment object.
 
Attachment is scary.  Have you ever had the feeling that you might be falling in love and really needing someone before you know for sure they feel the same way?  Ever been hurt by someone you trusted wholeheartedly and then felt guarded and apprehensive about the next relationship?  Ever act completely a fool in the presence of someone you gave yourself to, but the relationship deal has not been struck yet?  Ever found yourself doing shenanigans that you are not proud of out of insecurity or fear of loss?  See, attachment is scary; and, you are an adult.
 
You and your child from difficult beginnings are in the scary dance of attachment.  It takes a long time for any human to give their heart vulnerably and securely to another.  If you come from your own difficult beginnings you can multiply that vulnerability by 10 or so. Our kids are right there.
 
It is NOT your fault.  It is your gift to them to hold steady, keep dancing, and be the safety, the love they don’t yet trust exists in the world.
 
Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Love the way you want to be loved–wholeheartedly.
The Attach Place Logo Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 28th and April 4th.  Save the date.
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.

Eyeballs

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When was the last time you said to your child, “Let me look at those beautiful eyeballs of yours”?  
 
When you do playfully get them gazing back, YOU can respond with a sweet, loving, eyeball-to-eyeball smile of recognition–I claim YOU, sweet child; YOU are home in my heart.
 
Soft, eye contact is a pathway to the deep heart of your child’s brain. With every intimate look, you and your child get a jolt of oxytocin and dopamine–ahhhh, love juice.
Eyeball Challenge: Consciously double your soft, playful eye contact every day for a week and see what happens.  I dare YOU.
Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

YOU must claim your child first
before expecting your child to claim YOU back.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 28th and April 4th.  Save the date.
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.

Time Flies, Except When It Stands Still

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Time is such a relative thing.  Einstein was right, I guess. (Okay, all you scientists, let me have it.)  As my son approached his 18th birthday, I felt time flying by.  I actually wanted to slow it down just a little so I could savor the great progress he was making just before the big day.  No such luck.
Once, when I was a teenager, I was the shotgun passenger in a little aluminum-can-car that spun fiercely around in circles on a black ice highway; and then, in this weird time distortion, came to a near stop facing backward on the wrong side of the road–it seemed like I could have opened the door and stepped out–before the car side-ended over a 500 foot cliff.  Every revolution of the car down the mountain-side was in slow motion; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight rolls before spearing itself on a baby pine tree growing parallel to the mountain side.  We were suspended there by that spindly toothpick about 100 feet from river rocks below.  The whole thing was surreal and I never thought of time the same again.
When my attachment challenged children were growing up, I experienced the relativity of time again. I felt like I was in a perpetual slow-mo Lifetime for Television movie, where time stood nearly still for 10 years.  Only my wrinkles and my aging husband had any speed of note. Uh, let’s keep that between us, okay?
So, if you feel up close and personal with Einstein or whomever had that time is relative thought, take heart.  Time really is relative and one day like the magic of movies it speeds up and you find that the perpetual slow-motion crash is over.  YOU just need to make sure there is more than a toothpick holding you above the rocks, when it finally ends.

 

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Slow-Mo-Life
Next Trust-based Parent Course is planned for March 28th and April 4th.  Save the date.
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.

2014 In Review–Wisdom For Adoptive Parents Blog

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 42 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Practice Regulation

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Attachment breach and abuse in the first two years of life almost always instills an inability to self-regulate emotions in a child. Providing emotion regulation is one of the fundamental functions of a mother or caregiver for a newborn baby.  That looks like consistent caregiving in the form of meeting a baby’s survival needs to be soothed, dry, full, and safe.  Separation from a birth mother or abuse by a mother or other person in this formative time prevents the child’s emotion regulatory system from developing properly, which can cause regulation problems for a lifetime.
 
As adoptive parents or parents of children from difficult beginnings, our job is to understand, teach and practice emotion regulation with our children.  When we do this, we help develop parts of the brain that are underdeveloped.  We can literally create new neuro-pathways in the brains of our children.  Cool, right?
 
So, resist the urge (and the headache) to keep your child calm “all the time.”  Instead, at regular intervals (practice every day), purposely get your child excited with sensory stimulation, then help your child calm down. That is what is needed. Being calm all the time will not teach your child to self-soothe.  In a playful manner, amping up and calming down, over and over, is the way.
 
Ready, set, go play.  Fall down, calm down, and start again.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Practice makes perfect neuro-pathways.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Milestones

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If your child is healing from Complex Developmental Trauma, ticking off milestones is a little bit foreign.  We know what two steps forward, three steps back feels like.  We know what stuck at about 2 years old feels like.  The excitement of seeing our children grow emotionally in accordance with their chronological age is rare indeed.

 
Let me share my delight last night at sending my 17-year-old son off to his very first rock concert.  I will be forever grateful to his friend’s father who said he would be the chaperone if I would foot the bill. I would have bought the tickets, stretch Hummer limo, and a Morton’s steak to get him to do it.  When my son came home this afternoon, he was all smiles and full of stories for me.  He is finally enjoying teenage things–milestone.  Delicious milestone.

The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships


Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

 Hang in there.  Milestones do show up.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Sporadic Outbursts

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Sporadic outbursting is not a sign that your regulation challenged child is a brat.  Your child’s brain is developmentally unable to manage high emotion–sometimes.  Period.
 
Outbursting needs healing, not punishment.  
 
Do your best to intervene within the first two minutes of a meltdown because you have a slight chance of turning the tables if you do.  If you wait until the tornado gets on the move, you have missed your cortisol/adrenalin window to bring the sun back.
 
Intervening looks a lot of different ways.  Here are a few:
  • Oh, did I say something that upset you Sweetheart?
  • I know you really wanted to do that longer.  How much more time do you think you need?  Let’s negotiate that to 5 more minutes.
  • You can finish that game before you take your bath in 5 minutes. Would you like to do that?
  • Which would you like to do first, clean up your room or take your bath?
  • I can see you are very upset.  I am not trying to make you mad. Tell me what you need right now Honey? I love you.
  • Oh my, Mommy said that kind of loud, huh?  I am sorry.  I must have scared you.
  • (Touch a hand, arm, back gently.) You are safe Sweetie.  
  • There is plenty of food.  Would you like another snack? 
  • I can see why you are getting upset.  Let’s figure this out together.
  • I’m sorry.
  • I didn’t mean to upset you Babe. We just don’t sing during dinner.  
  • I love you and I want you to feel safe.
  • It’s okay to be angry.  Tell me what you are angry about.
  • Uh oh, tickle time.
  • Uh oh, wild hugging time.
  • Uh oh, stomping our feet time.
  • Hey Sweetheart, look at my eyes.  Can you see the love in my eyes.  I am not mad at you.
  • It’s okay to make mistakes. That’s how we learn. I make them all the time.
  • I know you feel bad.  You are not bad.
 
The Attach Place Logo Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

YOU are a precious child in my eyes.  Make sure your eyes are saying that.

NOTE: If you are planning to sign up, please go ahead and do it because I think the space will end up being limited this time around. The next REVISED Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.  If you have been through this course in the past, you will be getting significantly more hands on experience than ever before.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

Love and Other Stuff

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Why do heaters stop working the second the temperature outside drops below 50 degrees?  Don’t answer that.
 
I am thinking about love today. Despite all of my references to love, I am not a particularly touchy feely person.  I am more of a brutally honest, blunt pragmatist with a huge dose of life experience that led me down a twisty turny path to a few solid beliefs.  Here they are: 
 
  • Life is too long and too short to be “small-minded.”
  • Nothing but love really matters in the beginning, middle or end.
  • Love is an attitude of generous abundance and acceptance, not a feeling.
  • Giving away love doesn’t hurt one little bit or cost one little cent; it’s free and healing.
 
I discovered somewhere along the line that I can love anyone, even people I don’t particularly want to have a cappuccino with.  Love is an attitude with an open heart.  
 
How this relates to attachment challenged children is simple. If love is an attitude, with or without feeling, then it is possible to give generous abundance and acceptance in the face of our children’s biggest and most painful shenanigans.  
Love is about the lover, not about the perceived lovability or worthiness of the beloved. 
 
Just a little something to chew on.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Love begets love (eventually).
Love Matters Scholarship Fund can use your contributions. Click here for more information.
 
The next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

 

Be Gentle and Kind

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When we teach scripts to parents for correcting and redirecting attachment challenged children, the first one is usually Be Gentle and Kind.  At various places around the office that direction can be heard throughout the day, every day, every week, all year long, year after year. It takes thousands of repetitions to stick the landing of a new neuropathway.
 
It occurred to me this morning that my last three Daily YOU Time emails have really fallen under the heading of Re-parenting Parents With the Script Be Gentle and Kind. 
 
I wish I had been re-parented early on to Be Gentle and Kindwith my children. I just did what was imprinted by my parents–Be Powerful and In Control.  That was misguided and made a mess of things for quite a while.
 
So, forgive me for my repetitious re-parenting script to Be Gentle and Kind.  I am simply trying to make it stick for YOU and your attachment challenged child(ren).  It makes all the difference over time.
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Love Matters Scholarship Fund can use your contributions. Click here for more information.
 
The next Trust-based Parent Training Course in Sacramento, CA is scheduled for January 24th and January 31st. Register here.
 
Please share freely.  Your community of support can sign-up for their own Daily YOU Time email by clicking here.

 Be Gentle and Kind All the Time. Why not?

Halloween Bah-Humbug

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Halloween gets my Bah-Humbug going.  
 
Where did my playful, sense of fun at any cost, dressed-up fairy-self go?  Bah-Humbug. Dysregulation is a stir, so I’ve
strapped on my Nerves of Steel spanx (big NS on the chest) for the rest of the day, and will probably wear it under my clothes throughout the weekend. 
 
From too many cupcakes at school, through too much candy door-to-door, to no candy because “Honey, you are allergic to Red dye #4, Yellow dye#2, Blue dye of any number, and sugar–sorry–here is an organic, gluten free, non GMO, cranberry edamame vegan bar. YOU loved these yesterday.”
 
Be patient. Have compassion. Expect too much sugar, too much fun, too much cortisol, and a blowout or three.  It’s Halloween! (Yay. Bah-humbug.)
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Love Matters,

Ce Eshelman, LMFT

Love Matters Scholarship Fund can use your contributions.  Click here for more information.
This is controversial: I allowed my kids to eat their Halloween candy as soon as I inspected it (yep, I’m that paranoid) and throughout the next day. Whatever was left after 24 hours was dumped.  Some years they were rolling around with tummy aches, but mostly they ate a little all day at intervals.  When I dumped it, they had had their fill and didn’t really pitch much of a fit.  To me that was better than trying to spread the sugar out in single pieces FOREVER!