Tag Archives: parenting special needs children

Muffin Bed

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Last week I was up early baking Paleo muffins.  Yesterday, while looking for a lost remote, I found one of them under the bed covers of “YOU know who.”  Hoarding has long been an urge for both of my children.  It may be for your child, too.
 
Children from difficult beginnings hoard for a variety of reasons.  Here are a few:
 
  • They were not feed regularly enough as babies or young children and have starvation imprinted in their pre-verbal, felt memory–food insecurity. 
  • They lost the most important thing in the world to them when they were little, and they cannot stand letting go of anything (including an unwanted muffin).
  • They feel deprived at the core and try to fill up the hole with food and other stuff.
  • They rarely feel the satisfaction of “enough.”
  • Stuff is comforting.
  • Hoarding gives a big sense of control over powerlessness.
What is a parent to do?  
  • First, severe restriction is not the answer. That will make it worse.  Try to relax your own fear.
  • Allowing power and control over food intake and stuff will allow the obsessive hoarding to slowly dissipate over months and years.
  • Offer food and snacks every two hours–high protein foods.
  • Provide a snack drawer or bowl that is always full with nutrient rich foods.
  • Stay away from cereal products, sugary foods, highly processed foods.  Allow tasty, sweet treats once in a while though. Over-strict rules will increase hoarding.
  • Encourage eating until full.  Don’t worry about obesity. Our kids need YOU to cool your jets on this American obsession–weight control.  Even if weight gain is at hand.  
  • Provide a hoarding bin for stuff.  
  • Create a weekly give away or throw away ritual.
  • Help your child think through what needs to be discarded or given away each week.  Resist making your child figure it out alone.  They need your loving support to feel secure enough to let stuff (even empty smashed boxes and broken-up toys) go.
  • Be gentle, accepting, understanding and non-shaming.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
Huge shout out to those of YOU who have given so generously to our Love Matters Scholarship Fund. YOU know who YOU are: Mary, Patti, Sharon, Mike, Ann, Greg, Sarah, Tom. 
 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training.   Sign up here.
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.
  • Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014.  Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.

Complex Trauma

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What the heck is Complex Trauma anyway, sometimes referred to as Complex Developmental Trauma?  That is what most of our kids are experiencing and that you are trying to parent–attachment trauma and maltreatment trauma that interrupts human development and hardwires survival styles.  The styles are varied and overlapping, but fall into a number of ways of dealing with the stressors of life.
 
Unfortunately, one of the ways our kids learn to cope is by cutting off their righteously angry powerless emotions they felt as a child and internalizing them against themselves (“all bad”) or against YOU (“all bad.”)  These split off parts are destructive to the fabric of their identity and can cause a trajectory change for the worse.  YOU may have noticed a flipping back and forth between the all bad self and the all bad other.  That is what I am talking about.  
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training.   Sign up here.
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.
  • Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014.  Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.

Your Child Is Not Really Angry With YOU!

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Calling all parents of angry attachment challenged teens: Hang-in, hang-on, don’t give up. They really aren’t angry at YOU.  They are, however, very wounded and have erroneously claimed their victimhood.  This error can wreak havoc without concentrated efforts to get to work on the inside.  YOU may need help from a therapist to do this. Find one that understands the underbelly of abandoned children who can move beyond the surface anger at YOU into the subterranean pain at the root.
 
Under that anger is a hardwired attachment wound that cannot repair or be healed without digging-in, excavating, feeling the pain, soothing the core, understanding the cause, changing the internal whispering demon dialogue, learning to care about the past/present/future, taking responsibility for hurtful behavior, making new choices, staking a claim, grieving the losses, letting go, forgiving, and accepting the challenge to live a different life with love and support from an attached family.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • This upcoming weekend we are holding our Trust-based Parent Training.   Sign up here.
  • Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014.  Email for more information:  jennifer@attachplace.com.
  • Save the Date: Next Trust-based Parent Training is September 27th and October 4th, 2014.  Email for more information: ce@attachplace.com.

I Wish

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There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t have so darned much to offer in this daily email.  I wish my life were smooth as silk and I woke up each morning digging through the reference books for something salient to say that would help you, rather than simply tuning into my own life and drawing from here.  I know this way is more helpful to YOU.  I know it is and that, of course, is why I write it.  I want desperately for my attachment challenged life to have meaning beyond itself…that is the “why” I write this for me.

So many times I have listened to parents lamenting the relentless disappointment that comes with the two step forward, one (or three) step back way our children have of learning. It is so bewildering and yet so much “how it is.”

This week I had such a wonderful all-nighter talk-a-thon with my 17-year-old son that I felt my heart fill with renewed energy and soar.  I know many of your hearts soared with me.   And, I am pleased by that.

Yesterday, “three steps back” arrived in the form of my T-Mobile phone bill.  I discovered $80.00 in gaming money surreptitiously charged to my phone.  Sure wasn’t me.  To his credit, my son did not lie or deny.  He said he felt ashamed and retreated under his bed covers.  Unfortunately, his dysregulation was great, so he skipped his chores, failed to keep a promise, and broke a house rule that day.  When I got home from work last night, he was still under the covers.

An hour later he appeared in my doorway whispering, “I’m sorry.”

Wait for it…

Emotionlessly, “Saying I am sorry won’t fix all of this this time.”

Back under the covers for another day, no doubt.  What in the world would prevent me from saying, “Thank you for the apology honey; let’s talk about it”?   Answer: painful disappointment.

Life is so delicious.  The highs and the lows make it worth living though.  I am still learning to be loving in the face of my own dysregulating emotions.  Upside: I didn’t yell or scold or punish.  I did, in the end, reject him, which shamed and caused his internalized self-hatred to spike through the roof.

Did I really need to do that to him?  Didn’t he punish himself enough already? Wasn’t my own disappointment enough?  Did I really need to rub it in, push away, incur abandonment panic in both directions?

I hope there is something in this tale for YOU.  There is nothing wrong with being accepting when your child has disappointed YOU.  It is okay; it is beautiful; it is forgiving; it is big-hearted; it is the definition love.  And love matters.

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

In A Minute

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For years, I put my children to bed with a tiny inside joke, “Get to sleep now because we have to get up in a minute.”  When they became old enough to understand the true meaning of the word play, we had brief smiles between us at bedtime.  When bedtime was not going so well, I would wait for a small window to make my inside joke and often it would turn the tide on a hellish evening.  Those were hundreds of moments of intimate connection in a life scattered with big disconnects.
 
Last night, I stayed up all night talking WITH my son.  It was delicious and I have waited 16 years for it–that is not hyperbole.  Around 5am, I found my window, “Get to sleep now, we have to get up in a minute.” He laughed hard, genuinely knowing the multiple layers of what that meant–we share history, we are family, we are glued together by love, and, literally, we had to get up in a minute.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 

The Attach Place

Center for Strengthening Relationships

http://www.attachplace.com

Hope Is Wind

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Those hot dry summer days when there isn’t a bit of relief, the air is still, oven-like, suffocating our lifeforce, hardly filling our lungs to capacity; those days are like dying only we are still alive–barely. Those days we wait impatiently for a breeze, prayerfully for a high wind, or ragefully for a little wisp of any kind to buoy us up and save us from the hot dry dog days ahead.
 
Hope is wind.  It blows in unexpectedly and disappears without footprints in the middle of the night.  
 
YOU can have faith.  It always comes again.  Until then, let your breath be your wind.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
You can sign up for this daily email distribution at http://www.attachplace.com–Daily YOU Time.

Conscious Parenting

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Respect is a two way street that starts and ends with YOU.  I think that may be some kind of mixed cul-de-sac metaphor, but I think YOU get what I mean. Parenting is a perennial exercise in self-discipline and our lapses in verbal self-control can be relationally incendiary. Kids are designed biologically to monkey see, monkey do. Wow, I am pulling out all the cliches this morning. Forgive me. Cliches are cliches for a reason, I guess.
 
Anyway, if you consciously give your respectful attention, care, and attuned listening, you are way more likely to get some of that back.  If you believe the thinking of a 14 or 15 or 16 year-old is “ridiculous,” that same child will think your 30 or 40 or 50+ year-old thinking is “ridiculous,” too.
 
Relationship is the key to winning the hearts and minds of attachment challenged children. Dismissive parenting will chill the heart right out of your child.
 
The Attach Place

The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships

Parenting takes a lot of work, whether you are engaged or disengaged, respectful or not. Conscious parenting will get you more of what you want than unconscious, but you cannot wait until you get it to give it.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT

$1 July 4th Weighted Blanket Sale

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Today Only!  July 4th $1 Weighted Blanket Sale. 

Get one of these for your child.  Works to soothe, calm, slow down, regulate and focus kids with sensory issues, which are mostly all children from difficult beginnings.
Weighted Blankets

Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible.  Yay!

Comparing Is Mental Kickball

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Last week I was getting all emotionally preeny about my life being kinda normal. Yep, I was comparing my homelife to the fantasy “Normal Family” that has lived in my head for circa 55 years now.  First of all, on the face of it, that is hysterical.  If anyone saw inside my family life last week there is no way, no how, they walk away thinking “Hey, Normal Family.” 
 
So, there you have it–my dirty little secret.  Despite my zany life mission to live “outside of the box,” I secretly wanted a little box all my own.  I thought mine might have a fabulous neon orange door, but still I was hoping for normal inside.
 
My 17.5-year-old son’s stimulant meds got held up at the doc for 8 days.  Yep, count em–8!  He is scary off meds. Darts into the street like a two-year-old.  Leaves the front door wide open while chasing a stray dog for two hours. Gets lost going to a friend’s house on Light Rail and nearly perishes walking miles in the noon heat–he had a cell phone and could have called me, but didn’t think of that. Falls asleep on a pinhead or stays awake all night every night–no rhyme nor reason to his patterns. Talks at me like I am actually standing in Alaska. Only sees one tile of kitchen counter that needs to be Ketchup free. Spends lunch money on, uh, no idea.  Thinks showering takes too long. Lives in questionable jammie-bottoms. Interrupts all conversations with nonsensical stories about cartoons and video game monsters or dreams he cannot actually remember at all. He cannot find his head anywhere, though he forgot he was looking for it.
 
Oh, there, I just heard a collective sigh.  You just now feel normal, don’t YOU.  Your life sounds like mine, sorta, right?
 
Well, that is because I am telling you about the inside of my normal life.  When you compare your “inside family life” with the “outside of someone else’s family life,” you are playing mental kickball–and YOU are the ball.
 
Let me say that again:  Comparing inside normals to outside normals is mental kickball, and YOU are the ball. 
 
Embrace your “normal life.”  You will feel so much better about it once you do.  
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here.
  • 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible.  Yay!

Developmental Trauma

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I want to straighten a little something out (from my point of view anyway.)  

trauma face

There has been an evolution for me over the last 10 years about what it is I am seeing in traumatized children and what usual diagnoses children from difficult beginnings are given by mental health professionals.
 
There are really only a few diagnoses that routinely get applied to our children: 
Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy and Early Childhood (RAD), 
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 
Bipolar Disorder 
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
 

Trauma Boy 2

The fact of the matter is that most of our children are traumatized by attachment breaks, toxins in utero, pervasive maltreatment, neglect, and other abuses in the first 10 years of life.  The abuse that takes place during the first 33 months of life, of course, globally rewires the child’s brain for high alert that becomes cellular and can last a lifetime.
 
I used to stomp my feet and insist that mental health practitioners stop misdiagnosing attachment trauma  as ADHD and PTSD because those labels were inadequate (and they still are.)  I encouraged instead using Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy and Early Childhood because it was the only diagnosis that pointed in the developmental direction and I thought early correct labeling would get better, more focused attachment treatment for our kids.  Well, I have moved on from that, too.  Calling all traumatized children RAD is not correct and again points to too narrow of a viewpoint on treatment. And, frankly, some mental health practitioners misinterpret the RAD diagnosis as a “hopeless,” untreatable condition.
 
There is a new diagnosis Developmental Trauma being bandied about, but it has not made it into the Big Book of mental health disorders, the DSM-V.  There was a whole political push for and against this diagnosis just prior to the publication of the latest DSM-V, so it was left out.  Boohoo.
 
Once again, I find myself on the side of advocating mental health labeling that is more effective for treatment.  Labels are intended to support correct treatment, nothing more. Developmental Trauma is usually what we are dealing with when we are parenting children from difficult beginnings.  If we called it by a more attuned name, perhaps we would be more attuned to the various ways their history has impacted their development.  We would also be less scared our children will grow up to be criminals, right? Developmental Trauma can be treated.
 

trauma boy

Developmental Trauma, in my opinion, is a huge public health issue across the world. I saw a statistic that nearly three million children in the U.S. alone are diagnosable with this every year.  EVERY YEAR! My heart aches about this.
 
Developmental Trauma is all about developmental deficits, relational misattunement, and chronic patterns of dysregulation that lead to life-long issues negatively impacting brain development, the nervous system, the endocrine system, and memory.  This is likely a better diagnosis for your child. RAD, PTSD, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder are all too narrow and miss the boat on effective treatment.
Love Matters,
The Attach Place Logo
Ce Eshelman, LMFT 
UPCOMING EVENTS:

  • Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th.  Sign up here
  • 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. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible.  Yay!
 
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