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Tag Archives: parenting special needs children
Despicable Me
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I Owe Ya One
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Killing and Lying Are Different
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FOMO Is A Thing?
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This One Is For YOU
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Once Upon A Time
Everyone needs to make sense of their lives. Our children especially need to understand their own stories. Until they do fully, tell them stories. Once upon a time stories… I remember when stories… Moral of the story stories… Happy ending stories… I’ll start and you add-on stories… Alternative ending stories… When I was little stories… My grandfather stories… Hero stories… Good vs. Evil stories… Tell me a story about your day stories… When you were a baby, I bet stories… One time stories… Bedtime stories… Daytime stories… Story for the sake of stories stories…
Children love stories, whether you make them up, repeat a few, co-create them, imagine them, write them, share them, re-tell them, or listen to them. Do more of what your children love.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Children love stories.
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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to sign-up for Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.
Who Needs the Therapy?
Parents often call my office looking for therapy for their attachment challenged child(ren). When I share our comprehensive family approach, many are accepting and excited. Some however are white-knuckling every day, worn out to the core, and reluctant to put in even an ounce more energy. These parents are desperate to get help for their child and they focus on that.
He never does what I tell him to do.
She only cares about herself.
Something is wrong with him.
She sneaks around all the time.
He steals things from everyone.
She doesn’t have a conscience.
He lies about everything.
She is grieving about her past.
He is negative all the time.
She doesn’t care about anything.
He hurts his brother.
She hates me and her life.
He is self-centered and disrespectful.
S/He needs therapy.
I have no doubt.
Here is what I see in the room with me:
YOU are hurt.
YOU are triggered.
YOU are reactive.
YOU are adversarial.
YOU are resentful.
YOU are grieving.
YOU are angry.
YOU are depressed.
YOU are dysregulated.
YOU are exhausted.
YOU feel hopeless.
YOU need therapy.
Your whole family needs help, because YOU are the healer for your own child. Therapy isn’t effective without YOU.
The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
When YOU have trouble finding yourself,
YOU need help.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
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.
Feel free to send this link to friends or family members who you would like to sign-up for Daily YOU Time: Wisdom for Adoptive Parents.
Eyeballs
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
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.
It’s A Lying Shame
Being a card-carrying resident of “Crazy Town,” it became very clear to me that most of my children’s wacky shenanigans were about their compulsive defense against feeling shame that plagued them. The currency of our Crazy Town was nonsensical lying, sneaking, never taking responsibility, blaming, minimizing, excuse making, and becoming zero-to-60 enraged when hiding from the truth is impossible.
Sometimes it is hard for parents of attachment challenged and traumatized children to pull out of the insanity long enough to empathize with how painfully horrible it feels for a child to dip into overwhelming feelings of being “bad, hopeless, worthless and unlovable.” After all, they think their own birth parents didn’t love them enough to hold them precious, hold them emotionally, or simply hold a safe and stable space for them to grow up with a true sense of self-worth. On top of that, some of our children were harshly and excessively disciplined; they were left alone and punished with isolation; they were rejected through love-withholding and emotional cruelty; relationship repair non-existent; they were criticized for their child-like thinking, feelings and desires; and, finally, they were abandoned, thus internalizing the destruction of their birth family as “their own fault.”
Every child experiences small amounts of normally occurring shame in the first few years of life following moderate Mommy and Daddy hairy-eyeball correction. That short loss of closeness during correction helps a child develop an internalized sense of right from wrong. These experiences of shame followed by experiences of parental repair allow normal development of socially acceptable guilt and remorse for behavior that is harmful. Excessive shame defenses in children cause an extreme self-centeredness that ultimately prevents the development of empathy for others and appropriate guilt accompanied by responsibility-taking for actions that have harmed. My kids were never wrong or totally wrong. Sound familiar?
When shame is acknowledged, negative feelings embraced, and regular repairs are made by loving parents, our wounded children slowly develop what we call conscience.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Too much shame causes
compulsive, self-centered avoidance of accepting responsibility.
It’s a lying shame.
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.
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 