Manipulation Madness

Q: My foster child can be amazingly manipulative, all the time! If I lovingly respond to her, am I not just reinforcing this behavior?

My Daughter is Ruining My Time!

		Q: When trying to embrace my daughter (age 13) during stressful times, I began to realize that she has created crises over and over to receive that kind of love and attention. It ended up whenever I had a plan and it didn't include her (work, coffee with a friend, etc.), she'd have a crisis (feel sick, kick the wall and insist on a trip to the E.R., lock herself in her room). Then, when I started to include her in everything, she'd sabotage it (push the table over in the restaurant, break equipment at work, ruin clothes in stores at the mall, etc.). I felt like I was being completely controlled and "trained" to focus only on her all of the time. How do you manage that in moderation?
A: There are several dynamics going on in the relationship between you and your daughter. First, let's look beyond the behavior to determine why children "create crises." The voice of this type of behavior is saying, "I need to feel loved and I need to have attention so I know I won't be lost in this world!" Behavior is the language of our children. As adults, we communicate verbally and miss the voice of our children because these behaviors interrupt the flow of our day and are often so nerve grinding, we can't listen to them! Your daughter is expressing that she is insecure in her attachment relationship with you. When you leave home without her, the acting out or sicknesses begin. Although I do not have her exact history, this tells me that she has experienced severe abandonment in the past. She is terrified of you leaving her…it feels like you won't ever come back. Her perception and fear of you leaving her is more than just an idea -- it is her reality. Our thoughts become our reality. Try to relate to her fear in a situation in your life. If you were convinced, for some reason, that your husband would be injured in a car accident on his way to work, you would do EVERYTHING in your power to keep him from leaving the house. You might yell in desperation to get him to understand the seriousness of this issue. You might even feign an illness in your efforts to have him stay home with you. This is your daughter's story. Her fear of losing you is driving these behaviors. Then, when you took her with you, I have a feeling that she was with you simply out of desperation on your part. However, even though she was with you, I suspect you weren't really with her 100%. You didn't want her there because this was supposed to be your time to take care of yourself and you felt like you didn't have any other choice but to take her with you. This is all understandable, and unfortunately, happens too many times to parents simply out of their own survival. However, we need to look openly and honestly at the dynamic that is created in such a scenario. So you take her with you, all the while, the monsters of resentment, anger, regressive attitude of "whatever," and intolerance raise their ugly heads. These stressors become barriers to your connection with her. You are physically with her, but not emotionally engaged and not paying attention to her from an intrinsic, core level within you. Your daughter is very intuitive; she can sense the barriers of your resentment and your state of survival. If you are in a place of survival, you cannot be in a place of unconditional love for someone else. Your focus is on you, leaving no emotional space for your child and rendering you unable to respond to your child in an authentic and personal way. Due to her intense fear of losing you, she needs you to connect with her at every level possible. This means connecting with her through your metacommunication (your tone of voice, timing of your responses, inflection in your voice, your physical touch, your body posture and body language, your facial expressions, your eye contact, etc.). It takes using all of your senses to fully be in relationship with your child in order to create security with a child who is so overtly insecure. When you're unable to do this, the result is that your daughter is left feeling even more unsafe, unprotected, and insecure. At this point, you are now in a public place and she is sensing your disconnect and, additionally, she becomes overwhelmed and threatened by being in a new environment. She shifts into a place of complete overwhelm and her behaviors are out of control. The mother/daughter connection is lost, so efforts to regulate her and calm her prove futile. You become stressed and the public humiliation is making the hair on the back of your neck rise. Your thought process goes something like this, "She's ruining my time, again! I should have just left her home!" Disaster strikes once again. There is a better way. Understanding this dynamic, let's look at what can be done to create security for her. We know that children become secure when they feel accepted, approved, validated, and acknowledged. It will take having some experiences with her, just the two of you, to create this security. It can be as simple as a "Girl's Night Out" and driving down to have ice cream or something special in a quiet and calm environment, just the two of you. It isn't about the ice cream, though. It is about your relationship with her. It requires you to be authentic and fully present with her. She is old enough to be able to express her fears of you leaving her. Point out what would happen in the past when you left. Let her know that you now understand that these behaviors were signals of her being so scared of you leaving. Apologize for not "hearing" her. Commit to making it different with her. Help her to express her fears when you are both calm and regulated. It will help diffuse the ignition of acting out behaviors the next time you leave without her. Validate her fears. Acknowledge how scary it must feel every time you leave home without her. Accept her reaction to your absence. Reassure her that you want to make this better for her. The next time you have to leave, spend at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time with her prior to leaving. Set up a plan for her to call you when she feels scared. Make your time away from her short at first. Prolonged absences can be too overwhelming to her regulatory system. You can begin to build on these times away, but start slowly. Remember that children heal through relationships. Therapeutic worksheets, behavior charts, and logical consequences don't promote in-depth healing. It takes you being 100% present in relationship when you are with her in order for her to begin to feel safe when you're not with her.

Celebrate and Stop the Crazy Loop

					Q: I have a 15-year-old son who has established a pattern of running away. I've been advised to call the police when this occurs. What do you suggest? A: Running away is indicative of a child who has entered a fear state. When we, and all animals in the animal kingdom become threatened, we go into a primitive response called the "Fight or Flight" response. It is an inborn genetic response, which helps to protect us; it is a survival response.
With this understanding, it perplexes me to think that calling the police on a child in this survival response pattern would ever be recommended. Why would you call out the police to address a child who is simply acting from his body's primitive, automatic, and inborn response? Your child is acting from an unconscious level. It isn't a conscious response; it is an unconscious reaction. Addressing it from an authoritarian and fear based approach will only keep your child in this pattern; hence, you described it as an "established pattern." We have somehow come to believe that we can force change by provoking fear and threat. This is completely unnatural. Have you ever seen nature force a seedling to grow? This is a choice that has to come from an internal place from within a person. To give such advice about sending the police is an example of doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result (this of course, is the definition of insanity). Statistics reveal that more than one in 100 adults in the United States have been in jail or prison. This is an all time high. When are we going to realize that this isn't working? Our own fear keeps us in a constricted place, locked in from seeing other alternatives. Fear keeps us in a crazy loop of trying harder, "upping the ante," and driving more consequences in order to get our children to behave and to be compliant. Here is the traditional parenting crazy loop: For young children, we start by picking them up and putting them in the time-out chair. When they get too old to sit in time out, we began removing privileges in order to get them to comply. When this becomes ineffective with a "whatever" response from them, we increase the stakes and ground them for a week. Finally, as teenagers, they realize they have the ability to just leave and run away. Then we call in the big guns and call the police. None of the craziness above is effective in the long-term, and only limited in the short-term. This problem is, love has not been a part of the solution...that is why the crazy loop has continued. If you want to end the cyclical turmoil in a family, put love into action. Unfortunately, many of us have no blueprint for what this looks like, so it challenges us at a deep level to consider that it would actually work. The next time your son runs away (and I also suggest looking closely at the circumstances that led up to this event and determine how much fear from both you and him contributed to the situation), I want you to plan a celebration for his return. Instead of calling the police, call the caterer! Seriously, bake a cake or some cookies. Make a banner that says, "Welcome home, son. We missed you." When a child returns, what we typically do is dump our fear onto the child. Instead of saying, "I was scared for you," we typically say, "How dare you leave this house and not tell us where you were going!" We need to realize that it took a tremendous amount of courage for the child to walk back into that door, knowing the parent was going to lecture him about everything he had done wrong. Put love into action when he walks in the next time. "Son, I'm so glad you're home. We missed you." It takes putting your fear aside and getting down to your core feelings. You did miss him. You are glad he is home. Let him know how special he is in your life. If you've lost these loving feelings towards your child due to the intense dysregulation going on, revisit pictures of when he was younger and when times were calmer and more pleasant. Get yourself back into a loving place with him. Later in the day, take the time to be with your child and listen to him. Talk about what it is that drives him to leave. Really listen to him. Give him space to voice himself. Stay out of being defensive. Know that when he feels heard, he will be able to hear you. When you give him the gift of being understood, you then can take the opportunity to express your fear. "I just get so scared when you leave. When I don't know where you are, I can't do anything to help you at that point. I also can’t do my ultimate job for you as a parent, and that is to keep you safe." Be courageous enough to try something different. You have the capacity to interrupt the negative crazy loop and to change this established pattern with your child. It takes trusting that love never fails.

New Recipient for the Notorious Gold Star

Q: I understand many of the Beyond Consequences principles and the idea of relationship-based parenting resonates with my heart. However, could you please explain more about why I should see my child’s issues as “regulatory” instead of “behavioral” and the neuroscience that supports this concept? A: Yes, I often say, “A child’s issues are not behavioral, they are regulatory,” because we need to parent children at the level of regulation and relationship. This is imperative, especially with a child who experienced childhood trauma, because we can then more deeply address the critical forces within this child that operate at
deeply address the critical forces within this child that operate implicit levels, beyond the exchanges of language, choices, stars, and sticker charts. The brain is growing at a rapid pace the first two years of life. Forty thousand (40,000) new synapses are formed every second in the infant’s brain. This growth and maturation is experience dependent on the social interactions from right-brain to right-brain between the parent and the child. The right brain is dominant for all children during the first two years of life in order to fully receive and interact with these non-verbal visual, tactile, and verbal communications from the parent. Research suggests that the regulatory interactions between the child and parent during these primal years is essential in order for the brain’s synaptic connections to develop normally and for functional brain circuits to be established. The attachment relationship is a major organizer for the brain during these primary years due to its ability to help the infant regulate emotions and states of stress. Additionally, relationships that offer emotional availability from the parent give the child a chance to develop healthy and responsive regulatory systems. An emotionally available parent provides a dyadic interaction that is socially stimulating and rewarding. This attachment communication is dynamic, multi-sensory (facial expression, auditory, verbal, and tactile), and reciprocal. These relationship-based interactions continue to be a driving factor in a child’s development well beyond these primary years. The engaging and safe social interactions in infancy provide the foundation and backdrop needed to later communicate with and understand and successfully read future caretakers. The child’s interpersonal neurobiology continues to crave connection and relationship throughout childhood in order to ensure healthy development into adulthood. However, when much of a child’s early life experiences have activated his fear response system, the child develops a negative and hopeless blueprint rather than a blueprint organized by affection and optimism. Dominant experiences of fear, loss, abandonment, terror, distress, rage, and indifference from the parent create ill-formed neurological pathways. Overwhelming amounts of stress in childhood create a child who is limited in his window of stress tolerance and ability to modulate emotional and affective states. The good news is that children are resilient and plastic. Meaning, a child’s nervous system and neurological pathways have plasticity, the ability to change, adapt, acquire, and create new and improved neurological pathways. It was in the relationship and emotional states of fear and overwhelm that the damage happened so it stands to reason that it is in the relationship and emotional states of safety and love that the repair and healing happens. Interactive repair, or simply, a safe relationship is what it takes. The most important and most effective “behavioral technique” your child needs in order to move him back within the behavioral boundaries of your home is relationship. Too much emphasis has been placed on what behavioral technique should be used or which punishment should be imposed. Well-meaning parents, who do not understand the concept of regulation nor understand the power of the relationship, use behavioral techniques far removed from human relational experiences. These techniques continue to fail over and over, keeping the family in chaos and potentially moving the family into crisis. Historically, when techniques were used and they resulted in behavioral change, the credit was given to the technique itself. Upon closer inspection, however, the question begs to be asked, “Was the technique or the relationship the influencing factor that brought about change?” The credit should not be given to the technique but rather the relationship that is at the heart of the child’s experience. The child values the relationship and changes his behavior in order to ensure his connection. It was the power of the relationship that created change, not the threat that came with the technique. Build the relationship; it is the key. It is the relationship that does the work…that is where real change happens because it is in the right brain-to-right brain experience that children are able to get back on course. More importantly, it is change that brings not only behavioral shifts, but deep healing that permeates to the heart and soul of a child who has experienced pain and vulnerability. (Isn’t that what really deserves that gold star?).

Survey Says...

Finding solutions for our children at school has proven in the past to be an arduous and difficult task. I have sat in school meetings with over twenty professionals, ranging from teachers, principals, district personnel, caseworkers, psychiatrists, nurses, parents, education advocates, and more, all working to find solutions for one challenging student. Discussions, both pleasant and heated, have lasted for hours on end, only to come to the conclusion that another meeting needs to be scheduled in order to discuss the issues further. Through all of this, I have come to one conclusion:

This is way too complicated! We need to ask our children what they need. And I did just that. In my most recent eNote, I invited children to give their opinions about school. Here are the amazing results: 1. What do children need at school to make learning better? What would make you look forward to getting up and going to school every day? Be more understanding of our ever changing abilities (due to stress even if you don't see it). Less students and more one on one with the teacher. The students need their peers to be supportive. So maybe have a game once a week that will involve the students with their other peers working together to figure something out. By doing this, other students will get to know their classmates better and build positive relationships. Kids shouldn't have to line up and wait. They bother each other when in line. Having teachers and other people at school greet us in the morning, like they are happy to see us. I look forward to technology, because it makes me feel a part of the world. I get confused from a book. I can look up on the Internet to learn better. Teachers who are more hands on with their students. Don't just hand out assignments and lecture; they get more involved with the students. Knowing that I am waking up to a happy family. Would be great if it started later because I'm always stressed out about getting up and having to run to get dressed and rush to school. Teachers should make people feel good in the class and not bullied. Keeping things the same on set days. 2. Did you like school this past year? Why or why not? Yes, because I had the best teacher ever and she helped my class become a family. Yes, because my grades have gone up than last year. At my old school, they didn't sit down with me and explain what to do. But at my new school my teacher would always keep me after school and ask what are you having problems with and how can I help? She works with her students. No because the teachers were mean to me and punished me and put me in detention every day when I didn't even need it. YES - I liked my teachers alot better this year because they understood me. Yes, I liked playing at recess and I liked math. But I didn't like when the teacher yelled at kids, it made me scared. No, I did not like school this past year because my teacher called me stupid in front of the entire class, she sat me in the back of the classroom away from all my peers, and also by a window where she knew I would not pay attention. 3. Do you think homework helps you learn more? Please explain. No, because it just fries your brain and doesn't allow time for break and bond with your family. Homework should be school work because at home you're supposed to spend time with your family. Yes, cause sometimes you get homework that you don't know and then your parents help you with it and then you know it for the next time it comes around. No. Homework causes stress and stress causes nightmares. I don't think lots of homework is good because we want time to ourselves after school. 4. If you'd like to add anything I haven't asked in regards to school, please list it here: The teacher helped me succeed, by calling on me when I knew the answer and it made me feel better about myself. She taught me to never give up. I think they should use less books and more technology along with hands on training (everyone learns differently). I wish that other kids understood my disability better, so I would have more friends. Out of the mouths of babes, we have brilliant, yet very easy solutions that can be implemented into the classroom. Additionally, most of these solutions do not require any additional funding or resources. They all simply require being able put oneself into the perspective of the child and to feel what it is like to be the student once again. Incredibly, the responses, randomly collected from students in various grade levels, all reflected five key ingredients: Relationship Regulation Encouragement Understanding Emotional Safety And these five ingredients add up to same word: LOVE.

Back to School Success

Q: My son is an angel at school but a terror at home. He was even student of the month last school year. But when he gets home, our home is absolute chaos and he is just nasty to me.

A: Many children work to be 'normal' all day long at school so when they get home, they are exhausted. The result is they collapse into negative behaviors. When they are stressed at school, they hold it together all day long and then in their 'unwinding' of the day, they become "terrors."

Due to early experiences of trauma, children can become sensitive to environmental stressors. Their regulatory systems have been compromised and they have difficulty remaining calm and behaved when faced with the challenges of a school setting.

Additionally, children become fragmented and split between home and school. Many parents report that they literally have two different children in these two different environments. This fragmentation is not healthy to the child's overall development of the self so it is important that this be addressed effectively for the child. 

When we look at the dynamic of the school setting, consider the energy it takes for your child to maintain appropriate behaviors at school is far greater than the average student. He may look well put together externally, but internally, he is running at high speed to ensure he becomes the perfect student. Thus, when he gets home, it is as if he has run a marathon; he is exhausted, unable to hold it together anymore. 

In order to create more balance for your child, consider ways to reduce some of the major stressors he experiences at school:

Social stress - Peer interactions are exceptionally stressful, especially for children who function at a lower emotional level than their peers. Some children may need less social time and more time-in with a regulated adult at the school. 

Transitioning from one activity to another - Transitions such as going from the playground to the classroom, from art to P.E., and from the cafeteria to the classroom, are difficult for many children. Many of the traumatic experiences of children happened around transition, so they are going to be sensitive in this area and may need additional support. 

After school care - Staying at school for an additional hour or two is stressful after a full day of school. Children just need to go home after school. After-school care is typically less structured and less predictable, which is a horrible combination for a child who is already stressed out by this time of the day. 

Teachers - The type of teacher your child has can determine the entire outcome of the child's school year, both positively and negatively. A calm, regulated teacher, who has control of the classroom, well-established boundaries, and reasonable expectations for your child will help your child maintain his own level of regulation during the school day. 

Riding the school bus - If your child is sensitive to loud environments and chaotic social situations, the school bus is not an option. He needs you to take him to school and pick him up from school. Helping your child transition from home to school through a peaceful car ride can set your child up for a successful day. Remember that the number one responsibility you have as a parent is to drop your child off at school as regulated and calm as possible. This gives him at least a fighting chance and a larger window of stress tolerance as he faces a stressful day. 

Stress-inducing requirements - Alternatives that reduce stress instead of increase stress need to be explored and established for your child either through a 504 Plan or an IEP (Individualized Educational Program). Many times it is the small things that can make a huge impact. For example, timed testing can completely throw a child into a stress reaction, impacting your child’s ability to think clearly, and should be avoided. 

Also, just the thought of coming home and doing homework for many children creates a stress reaction. Some families have been able to write into the child's IEP that homework will not be required because it creates too much chaos in the home.

Another major point to consider is that your child's relationships at school are very different from his relationships at home. School relationships are indiscriminate. They don't require close connection, thus they are safer. Close relationships, like parent-child relationships, require intimacy which requires vulnerability. For children with traumatic histories, their trauma happened in the context of close relationships. This sets your child up to be in fear of connection of you, not with the milkman or of teachers, but of you, the person closest to him. 

As you are able to parent within a love-based framework, you are establishing an environment that decreases the threat of this relationship. If you need more examples of how to parent in a loving way while still maintaining rules and boundaries in your home, see my Q&A book, "Dare to Love." Real examples of how to apply the Beyond Consequences principles are given throughout the entire book.         

I also encourage you, as the parent, to check in with yourself. Determine how you are feeling and what messages are swirling around in your mind. It's easy to get into a framework that says to your child, "If you can behave for your teacher at school, then my gosh, I'm your parent...you can certainly behave for me!" 

It's very easy to take it personally and to interpret your child's negative behavior as an attack on you. As a parent, you are working so hard as to help your child, to heal them, and to love him/her. Yet, the reality is that they don't know what to do with the stress from school and they are still living in fear of connection with you. The struggle is not with you; it is with themselves. Continue to go beyond the obvious and reach to the core of the issue---fear and stress. 

Cleaning Out the Emotional Closet

Emotional ClosetQ: How do you give a narrative to a child that suffered neglect as an infant during the first three months of his life, especially when I do not know the details? A: What a great question! Children need to know their stories. This helps them understand themselves and gives them an understanding of who they are. The actual details of the story are not important, and in fact, should not be the focus. This is especially true for trauma that happened preverbally (before the child was speaking). Infants and young children are 100% emotional beings, so the story needs to be told from this level to connect with the child's early experiences. When giving your child his story, focus on how the child felt (helpless, scared, terrified, sad, hungry, etc.). A child who was neglected missed the warm and nurturing touch of a parent, so hold your child next to you or in your lap while giving him his story. The important factors are your tone of voice, facial expressions, posture, and tempo of movement and speech. These are all right brain expressions that will speak to the subconscious experiences of your child. Dr. Allan Schore, the "king" of affect regulation, explains that the right brain is the unconscious processor of the emotional self. The attachment bond is an emotional bond, so it takes expressing yourself and your child's story at the emotional level. What you say isn't as important as how you say it. A dialogue might sound something like this: "When you were a little baby, sweetheart, you were really scared. Your mommy wasn't able to help you like you needed her to. There were many times that you were left in your crib alone. Babies get super scared when this happens because they are helpless. I'm certain this is how you were feeling. It probably felt like you weren't lovable, also. I do wish I could have been there. I'm so sorry this happened to you, honey." I was speaking to a mother just the other day about giving her daughter who was severely neglected for the first year of her life her story. The mother's fear prompted these questions, "Do you think that this will just make it worse for her? Won't this only bring up bad memories and get her upset?" This is a fear that parents have…and, of course. You're just trying to get better and move on in your healing process and I'm suggesting a trip back in time to expose the pain and overwhelm. The paradox is that in order to move forward, it takes going backwards, seeing the fullness of the trauma and experiencing it at all levels. When your child's story goes unexpressed, he will be subconsciously living out it everyday. This pain and overwhelm will continue to influence him and drive him in his actions. You're not giving him anything new by giving him his story. You're simply bringing the subconscious to the conscious so it doesn't have the power to create dysregulation anymore. When these stories, connected to the feelings and emotions, can be expressed, healing happens. So the question then becomes, "Whose fear is this really about?" Resistance is about the parent's fear of going back to experience the depth of darkness that the child experienced. Just the thought of what some of our children went through is completely overwhelming to us. I remember one day my daughter, who was also severely neglected, was beginning to open up to her early life experiences. I was getting so overwhelmed by her pain that I had to call a friend over to be with me so I could stay present with her. I needed support. Interesting that it was too much for me as an adult, so why is it that we expect our children to live alone in this kind of pain by themselves and be okay? Find the courage to experience your child's early life with him, feel the impact of his feelings of being unworthy, and validate how bad it was for him. Then, you will have opened up the space for healing and a connected and happy future. Remember that attachment is about decreasing negative emotions. But even more than that, attachment is about increasing positive emotions. Clean out the closet to make room for joy, happiness, peace, and love!

Dinnertime Tantrums

				Q: My four-year-old sits down to dinner and says, "I don't like that." He either won't eat at all or won't eat his vegetables. He then gets annoyed, trying to leave the table, whining and refusing to eat. This happens five out of seven nights. How do I respond without consequences?
A: Meal times are clearly a stressful time for not only your child, but for you as well. I'm certain that for you at this point, even the thought of dinnertime creates a stress reaction in you. Create new experiences around food for you and your child (and your entire family). Have your child sit in your lap to eat. Feed him as you would feed a young toddler. Emotionally your child is probably much younger than four years old. Expecting him to be able to sit down at the table during mealtime is probably well beyond his developmental capabilities. You might even consider feeding him from a bottle during mealtimes. He may need you to allow him to regress all the way back to infancy in order to create a fresh start. Children with trauma around food missed some critical experiences that we need to recreate for them. It will give him a stronger foundation from which to grow and reach his full potential. Recognize that his behavior is being driven from fear and that it isn't about him rejecting your efforts as a mother to feed him and nurture him. When he says, "I don't like that!" what he is really saying is, "I'm too stressed out to eat this food right now!" We also need to recognize that we shouldn't eat when we are stressed anyway. Our bodies can't digest the food properly and it can become toxic in our bodies. More importantly, forcing children to eat during this time or giving consequences around food only creates negative food related issues as adults. The refusal to eat vegetables has a direct link to being stressed out. As a human species, we gravitate towards sweets, salts, and fats when we are stressed. What is your regulatory food? Chocolate or broccoli? When we are stressed, we have a difficult time eating vegetables. Think about the last time you were physically sick (where your body was stressed due to illness). Even the thought of eating a salad was enough to make you nauseous. Try feeding your child outside of mealtimes. Small snacks of carrots and celery during the day can provide nutricious intake for your child. Children are more apt to "graze" than they are to sit and eat an entire meal. While dinnertime is an important time for the entire family to come together, realize that expecting your four-year-old to be engaged at this point in his development is only creating a negative experience for everyone. As you gain a deeper understanding of the stress driving your child's behavior, you will find more solutions that work for your family. Stay focused on your child's needs and "listen" to his behavior and there you will find the answers. Keep focused on calming your child's environment around mealtime. This will in turn help your son settle his nervous system which will naturally bring back his appetite and desire to eat. -------------------------------------------------- Q: In many of your articles, you mention that the parent should calm a child down by creating security for the child. I understand that much of a child's stress and fear comes from the threat of being moved to another home. Yet as a foster mom, I can never honestly say, "You are safe. You aren't going anywhere." A: You're absolutely right. You would never want to say this to a foster child because the reality is that they probably would be moving on to another home in the future. Congratulations for being sensitive to giving your child only the truth! What you have working for you is the present moment. The only moment we have guaranteed to us is the moment we are in. Capture this moment with your child. Say to her, "You are safe, honey. You are right here with me now." You can give security and nurturing at that moment. Help your child learn how to stay present with you in this precious space in time. I recently had a foster mother relate a story to me that will help you understand the power of even short term loving relationships. This foster mother had a teenage foster child in her home for a period of only one month. Eight years later, after the child had aged out of the system and was on her own as an adult, she and the foster mother reconnected. The former foster child told this foster mother that the turning point in her life was when she was at her home. The love, safety, security, and acceptance that she was given by this foster mother changed her life and gave this former foster child the ability to move forward. She relayed how this placement, only one month in length, was the best placement she had EVER had. You are an important part of your foster child's journey. Never underestimate the importance of your time with her, whether it is short or long term, and your ability to create safety and security in each moment, despite an uncertain future.

Car Bashing

					Q: My adopted son, 11 years old, was getting very aggressive in the car. He was hitting his sister and yelling. We were about five houses away from our home so I told my son to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way home. He was not happy about it but got out and walked home. Once he got home, he kicked the car multiple times and dented the back of it. I was so upset that he caused damage that I had him go with me to get an estimate for the cost of the repairs. I needed him to understand that this was a big deal and the importance of working hard to stay in control. I told
him he needed to do some jobs for me to pay for the damage to the car. Was there a better way to handle this? A: I do believe in restitution and teaching our children to be responsible but let’s back up. We first want to ask the question, "What was driving his behavior?". We always want to look at what caused the negative behavior and in this case, what brought on the aggressive behavior. In many cases, it does become an absolute safety issue when a child becomes aggressive in the car. The parent needs to address it because it is never okay for anyone in the family to be put at risk. If a child is becoming upset and aggressive in the car, the parent should pull over and stop the car in a safe place. However, too often, the parent is scared herself and projects this fear onto an already dysregulated child: "You need to stop that right now, Billy!" The parent's fear then adds to the dysregulation and the chances of increasing the safety for the family are almost non-existent. A child with a trauma history of rejection and abandonment absolutely needs a loving approach over a traditional fear-based approach (like the one you took with your son). When your son was asked to get out of the car (even five blocks away from home), his core pain was triggered. In his view, he was rejected from the family and abandoned to be on his own, not just temporarily but forever. Most children with trauma histories have black and white thinking. They can't comprehend it is only a temporary disconnect. He did not learn a lesson about being nice to his sister or being safe in the car. The main lesson he learned was that he was not lovable or good enough and he re-learned the lesson of rejection and abandonment. He also learned that his family was not able to handle him and that he was not welcome in his family anymore. With this kind of perspective, it makes sense why he became so outraged when you got home and he then severely damaged your car. Most traditional parents handle this type of scenario in the way you did, yet their children do not react in such a dramatic way. The difference comes down to one word: TRAUMA. Your son is hard-wired differently and until deep healing has happened, he will continue to react out of fear and be exaggerated in his reactions compared to other children. Past trauma is stored within the body and it has to be discharged. When children get triggered, as in the case with your son, their behavior can be reflective of their attempt at releasing the trauma that has opened up. When your son was feeling like he was not lovable, a pocket of dormant trauma opened up bigger than he was. He was not given space to discharge it verbally, so he picked the physical route of discharge and hit the family car once he got home. At some level, we can have a new perspective and actually acknowledge that he did not hit you or another family member when he was that angry. This may be a big stretch, but when we understand that your son was overloaded and overwhelmed, he actually had great self-control in only hitting the car. Breaking the cycle to his reactive patterns and creating healing for him comes with responding differently as a parent each time he becomes dysregulated. Breaking this pattern will not come through logic and consequences. Telling him in the moment that he is not being nice to his sister or telling him to get himself under control will only ignite him and keep him focused on the belief that he is a bad child. Instead, address your child's emotional state, not his behavioral state. "Billy, you're not in trouble. I pulled over because you're really upset right now and it is always my job to make sure you're okay and to make sure everybody is safe. What's going on, sweetie?" You could invite Billy to come sit up in the front seat next to you and focus on connection and emotional safety with him. Your conversation with him has one goal: to answer the question of "What is driving his behavior?". Expanding on this question further would add sub-questions such as, "What is pushing Billy over his limit? Why is he feeling so insecure that he has to hurt his sister? What can I do, as the parent, to calm the chaos that is churning inside of Billy?". If you can't figure out what to say to in the moment with your child, simply look him straight in the eyes and say, "I love you. You're going to be okay. We are going to be able to work this out. There's always a way." As far as what to do with the car, I think it is our responsibility to teach children that their actions do make a difference. However, what typically happens is that the child gets blamed for the incident 100%. "Look what he did! He kicked in the car; he needs to pay for it." What happened with your son was a result of both your action and his action. This is a two-part system; a parent-child relationship is a dyad. Consider going back to your son and saying, "When I asked you to get out of the car, I was really scared. I didn't know what to do. I wanted you to learn a lesson and I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't understand how badly that felt for you. It wasn't okay to damage the car but I was a part of it, as well. How about we both work together to find a way to pay for it and create something different between the two of us? I'm sorry." When you can change your perspective to that which is driving a child's behavior, it all begins to make more sense. This is not so much a new parenting technique as it is a way of looking at our children differently in order to understand their internal worlds. Any child that has such an exaggerated response is simply reacting from a very deep place of pain.

Perception Is Everything

						I have recently had several phone consults with therapists and case workers seeking advice on how to help children exhibiting difficult behaviors. Listening to their descriptions of these children has painfully reinforced to me how one's perception of a child is paramount. It directly influences whether the child has a chance for healing or whether he will be targeted as the "problem" before he even enters the starting gates. Traditionally, when a child misbehaves, he is viewed as the "Identified Patient" in therapy. The approach is to describe the child's behaviors and then determine how to "fix" or "change" the behaviors.
While this traditional approach is designed to be accomplished from a strictly objective perspective, the reality is that the perspective taken is the adult's. Herein lies the problem. The behaviors are viewed through the lenses of the adult, not the child. The behaviors are viewed as acts against the adults, against the rules, and against what is age appropriate. When these behaviors do include the emotional context of the child, the interpretation of how the child is feeling is again viewed from the perspective of the adult, not the child. Let us take an example of a description of a 10-year-old boy to give more definition to the idea that perception is everything: Traditional View
		This is a 10-year-old boy who is out of control. He lives with his mother and stepfather. He demonstrates defiant and aggressive behaviors towards his stepfather. The child works hard to divide and conquer his mother and stepfather. This child is demanding all of the time. He sabotages everything that his mother tries to do to make things better for her son. He is dangerously manipulative at home and at school. His history includes abuse by his biological father. His mother left him with his father who physically and sexually abused him. However, this was years ago and his father's parental rights have been terminated. This child has been in a safe environment with his mother for the past five years, yet he continues to be destructive and his mother is exhausted. The family is looking at placing this child in a residential treatment center. Would this be the best course of action?
New View The description above is not an objective description of this child. It is judgmental. It is saying in short, "This child is acting badly and he needs to change." Some would even go so far as to say, "This is a bad child and he needs to be shape up or ship out." Instead, from the child's perspective, a more comprehensive and accurate description would be as follows:
		This is a 10-year-old boy in need of healing. He is communicating his level of fear and pain through his behaviors. Due to a past trauma history that has not been processed, heard, or understood, he is insecure, scared, and does not feel safe in his world. His behaviors towards his mother and stepfather are showing that he is scared of his mother abandoning him to another father. He is working to separate the mother from the stepfather in order to ensure his connection to his mother. He is scared she loves his stepfather more than she loves him. From this child's perspective, his mother left him to the abusive hands of his biological father. His mother did not keep him safe and he is trying to voice this to his mother through his behaviors. Additionally, he feels very unsafe with his stepfather (because of his history of being abused by his biological father). While his stepfather may be a loving and kind person, the child's perception from his past tells him differently. His aggressive behaviors towards the stepfather are reflective of this fear of being hurt by him. The child's philosophy is, "I will hurt you before you hurt me. I will NEVER be vulnerable or helpless ever again." The mother has been raising a child with challenging behaviors for several years now, doing the best she can but without much success. She is tired, frustrated, and worn down. She is more than likely not even wanting this child in her home because she is feeling unsafe and scared his behavior will split up her new marriage.
With the correct perception, the answers about what to do and what not to do become clear. Sending this child away to a residential treatment center would only create more of what he is already fearing--abandonment. It would confirm his fear that his mother would choose his stepfather over him (as he would be the one sent away, not the stepfather). In short, this course of action would recreate the child's original trauma. This is an issue within the dynamics of the family, not with the child alone. First course of treatment would be to work with the mother to help her get back to a place of recapturing her desire to be a mother to this child, flushing out her guilt for what happened in the past, and allowing her space to acknowledge her feeling like an unsuccessful parent. She needs support, love, and validation, as well as education to understand what is driving her child's behaviors. This child needs help in processing the past trauma with his father. He needs to be able to express the helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness that occurred during that time. He also needs to have a voice about his current fears and have these received by his mother in order to create more security in their relationship. He needs empathy instead of blame. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Dr. Wayne Dyer: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." For this little boy, when we change the way we look at his behaviors, it changes everything. His acting out begins to make perfect sense. Perception is truly EVERYTHING. If we are going to effectively help our children, we must first see and feel things from their perspective. Once we understand what is driving the child's behavior, the "what to do" will unfold with clarity.

Fun is Always Available

				Q: When I try to have fun times with my 10-year-old son (who has a trauma history), I hesitate because during games and activities, he gets frustrated and rude. It isn't fun for either of us. A: One of the key elements that happens in families once the stress level rises, is a massive decrease in fun. In my trainings and my Online Parent Trainings, I always encourage parents to find ways to put fun back into their families. Yet, as the parent is describing above, this is not an easy task. Even when you plan fun and consciously make time for it, it seems as if your child does everything possible to sabotage the fun. In these moments when the fun turns to frustration, it is too easy to have a response such as: "I have to teach this child to be a good sport,
otherwise he will never be able to function on a team. He won't be able to socialize and will always get shunned by his peers if I don’t fix this now." This type of parental reaction is fear-based and it does not take into consideration why the child is acting this way. For children with a history of trauma, playing games inherently presents a threat of losing, and thus, the threat of someone else winning over them. Here are four reasons why children can react so negatively:
		1. Small Window of Stress Tolerance. When a child is living only moments away from his/her breaking point, the child is incapable of demonstrating tolerance and patience. The child will blow-up over what the parent would consider "little things" and the child is challenged to see anything from another person's perspective. 2. Survival. When a child has a traumatic history, he will have experienced the intense feelings of being helpless, powerless, and hopeless. The result is a child who now lives in a place of "survival" and he develops an unbending commitment to himself to always win and never be vulnerable. Playing a simple board game will trigger this survival response. He "must" win...losing is NOT an option. It is a matter of life or death, no matter how many times you reassure that it is simply a game. 3. Belief System.When children are not cared for and their needs are not met (when trauma happens), they internalize these experiences as their fault. Internal negative beliefs develop such as:
			- I'm stupid. - I'm not lovable. - I don't deserve fun. - If I'm not perfect, my parents won't love me. - I'm not good enough.
		Games and fun activities will bring these beliefs up to the surface and make the child feel horrible about himself. This negative belief system can instantly lead him to be rude and short-fused. 4. Fear of Intimacy. One-on-one play with a parent is an intimate experience. The parent, simply by being in the role of a parent, presents a threat to the child. The parent has the ability to reject and abandon this child at any moment. The child can't trust the parent--at least not yet--due to a history of vulnerability at a very young age. The child responds to this level of vulnerability by ruining the game. It is a simple philosophy: "If I ruin this game first, you won't have a chance to ruin me."
With understanding, patience, and adjustments, all four of these critical issues can be overcome. First, expect the fun activity or game to be difficult (I know, that isn't much fun!). Such activities need to be viewed as teaching moments in the beginning. You have to overcome issues on several different levels. If you know from the start what your child can or cannot handle, it gives you, the parent, a greater amount of patience to start. You are also going into the activity with more realistic expectations, which will decrease your level of disappointment. Secondly, redefine fun. Redefine how fun can be created in the smaller moments of your everyday life. Since games are now classified as learning activities, look for other ways to create fun. Think outside the box, be creative, and look to activities already in your daily routine. Here are a few ideas:
		1. Make the bed together but instead of the mundane, make the bed with your child still in it (or vise versa). 2. Hop on one leg as you two take out the garbage together. 3. Give each plate or glass a name as you empty the dishwasher together. 4. Play dance music while folding the laundry together.
Fun does not have to mean a day at Disney World or even a board game like Candyland. It can't for your child. These activities--at this point in your child's healing process--are more than what his system can handle from the perspective of fun. Stop and enjoy the moments within your child's capacity of fun and be creative. It is easy to push and expect your child to be able to do activities that the world considers "age appropriate." But so many of these activities are simply outside of his range. Trust that each small fun activity will pave the way to an increased capacity for larger fun activities. Don't ever give up on fun. Simply modify and redefine what fun looks like for the present moment! Fun is always available.

Love is Not a Commodity

					Q: I adopted my daughter as an infant and to this day, 16 years later, she still resists everything I offer. I ask her to empty the dishwasher and she resists. Everything turns into a blow up--she tells me that I am not her "real" mom and that her birth mom would make a "way better mother." She doesn't know her birth mom so it's as if she says this because she knows it hurts me. A: This is a common issue for adoptive parents, as well as foster parents, stepparents, and grandparents raising their grandchildren. As parents, one of our roles is to acknowledge our children's emotional struggles yet
at the same time, teach them to function in daily life. Finding the balance between the two with a child who refuses our help can prove to be beyond difficult. Let's discuss what your daughter might be feeling. She gets upset, refuses to take responsibility and blames you, and then she offers the dagger of all daggers: "You're not my real mom!" I know this is frustrating, not to mention hurtful. The only way to work with statements such as this is to take your daughter's perspective and put yourself into her reality. Through the lenses of her abandonment, she is right...you are not her mother. Children have an internal bond with their biological mothers that I believe will and can not ever be severed. It is a deep primal connection that transcends all other experiences in the child's world. A biological mother carries the baby for the first nine months of its life. The baby fetus knows her mother's heartbeat, the sound of her mother's voice, and the smell of her mother's skin. This is what is familiar to this baby and once she is born, if she is removed from the mother (even for loving reasons), everything is lost for this baby. EVERYTHING. At that moment, as a vulnerable baby with no coping skills, nothing is familiar and nothing feels safe. The nine months in the biological mother's womb is a time where a bond greater than any other bond known to mankind is created. It cannot be broken nor does it need to be for this child, even if you are her "real" mom now. As a mother (or father) to a child who is not biologically connected to you, you have to be able to think outside the box. The traditional belief that a child has "one and only one" mother (or father) for life needs to be questioned. As parents, we get rigid in our thinking; we feel the need to say (or think), "I'm your mother now," implying that the relationship with the biological mother needs to be severed. Love is not a commodity. There is plenty of it to go around. There is enough room in your daughter's heart to have two mothers. Being her adoptive mother does not make you second best. It simply means you are on this part of her journey with her. Embracing this concept will allow space for her to feel like she can also embrace two mothers without betraying her biological mother. Will your connection to your daughter ever be as strong as the primal connection she has with her biological mother? Maybe yes but maybe no. It depends on a child's internal make-up and her personality. One is not right or wrong. Love looks different sometimes. Additionally, many adopted children fantasize about their biological families. Your daughter is probably doing this, as well. Even though she does not know her biological mother and never has, she still feels a deep internal connection. It can be as if her birth family (and her biological mother, especially) is the only one to whom she can be loyal. She is caught between two mothers--wanting and needing you, yet feeling as if she will betray her biological mother in the process. Your daughter makes negative statements to you, not to hurt you, but to give expression to the loyalty she feels towards her biological mother. Giving your daughter permission to have two mothers is the key to returning your home back from chaos to peace and to helping your daughter heal a very deep wound. In your heart, can you find acceptance and room for your daughter to have two mommies? Do some self-analysis and self-reflection to see what resistance comes up from within you. Does this concept make you feel "less" of a mother or even inadequate as a mother? Let the traditional idea of "only one mother for life" be gone. You are perfectly her mother now and any statements she makes to you that contradict your role in her life now, are simply expressions of her internal struggle. They are NOT about you personally. In the heat of the moment next time, dance with her statements. When she says, "You're not my real mom," reply, "You're right. I'm not." Affirm your daughter. Ask for more and let her know you want to understand how much it hurts that she is not with her biological mother right now. Let her know that you are sad that her biological mother was not able to care for her and that she feels you do not meet the standards she holds true for her mom. Allow her the space to express her feelings towards her mom and towards you. Open the space for the building of a relationship instead of fighting the relationship. Once she can express her true feelings and thoughts with you, it is certainly appropriate and a part of your responsibility as a good parent to set boundaries. Disrespecting you and making hurtful statements needs to be changed. Stress that your home is a place of emotional safety for everyone, always. Explain that comments she has been making are negative, hurtful, and inappropriate. You will notice, however, that by giving her permission to have two mothers along with permission to express her fears and sadness, the negativity and disrespect will actually dissipate on its own. It is our job, as parents, to ensure there is balance within the home and within our relationship with our children. We need to allow our children the space to be "bound" to their biological parents. Yet we also must reinforce that we are here, in the present, right here and now and that to make a family functional, we must all work lovingly together. For some it may look like just coming to an agreement that the child will respect the parent as their caregiver and for others it may be the child breaking down and finally allowing the parent to be in charge, fully. Love simply allows each child his or her own process.

Beyond Consequences 101 - A Guide for Your Relatives

				Q: I need a quick way to explain to my parents (who will be visiting during the holidays) what is meant by "Parenting Beyond Consequences." They don't seem to understand the way I'm parenting and are quite critical of me. They aren't interested in the neuroscience or the brain research. They're simply coming from the old school of the basics, so any help you have would be appreciated!
A: Beyond Consequences can be a difficult concept to understand and to "wrap your brain around" when you've been living in a more traditional mindset for years, even generations. Love is about meeting people where they are and respecting their perspectives. Understanding that your parents are looking through the lens of the "old school" is the first place to start. From such a point of reference, this model is sometimes interpreted as if you're coddling or babying your child. The following explanation is written in more general terms in order to help a grandparent, relative, or anyone, begin to make a shift. Remember to be patient with them; you're shifting an entire paradigm and framework of interpretation. Children need unconditional love and unconditional acceptance from their parents; we all know this and believe this. However, do we ever stop to consider how so many of the traditional parenting techniques accepted in our culture work contrary to this primal goal? Traditional parenting techniques that involve consequences, controlling directives, and punishment are fear-based and fear-driven. They have the ability to undermine the parent-child relationship and because they are tied into behavior, children easily interpret these actions to mean, "If I'm not good, I am not lovable." Thus, children often build a subconscious foundation that says that love and approval is based off of performance. Parenting from a love-based paradigm means going beyond our children's behavior and beyond consequences to first see that negative behavior is a form of communication and that negative behavior is a response to stress. If we see the kicking and screaming child as one who is having difficulty regulating due to an overflow of feelings and stress, we can learn to stay present with the child in order to help him modulate these overwhelming feelings and overabundance of stress and thus, help him to build his regulatory system. This is a child who has been "emotionally hijacked." Emotions are not logical or rational; this negative acting-out is the body's natural fear reaction gone awry. Allowing a child emotional space to safely dissipate this energy will then allow him to calm down. As we provide reassurance, unconditional love, and emotional presence for our children, the need to act-out will disappear. Many times our children act-out simply because they do not feel that they are being listened to nor do they feel as if they have been heard. Staying present and reassuring a child that you really are listening to him, can sometimes be enough to help him begin to regulate. The life lesson that the bad behavior is inappropriate does indeed need to be taught and reinforced. However, this life lesson can only happen once the child is fully regulated (when the child is calm) and his cognitive thinking is intact. This is also the time to present alternatives to the negative acting-out behavior. This is how we teach our children instead of punishing them. The definition of discipline is to teach. The more we can stay focused on the relationship with our children and strengthening this relationship instead of controlling it through consequences, logic, and control, the more we will be helping our children learn to work through their stress appropriately. Below are four pointers to going beyond consequences: 1. Just Be Happy!-But I'm not! Did anyone ever tell you, "Just think happy thoughts and it will be okay."? Did it really work? Probably not. Emotions do not simply disappear. If feelings are not acknowledged and released, they are stored and become part of our physical make-up. Research has convincingly shown that being able to express feelings like anger and grief can improve survival rates in cancer patients. With our children, feelings that become stored and "stuffed" become activators for negative behaviors. 2. ALL Feelings are Good Feelings - As parents, it is important for us to understand the necessity of emotional expression, both in teaching it to our children and in modeling it to them. Blocked feelings can inhibit growth, learning, and the building of a trusting relationship between the parent and child. The first step to take is to recognize that ALL emotions are healthy. In our culture, feelings such as joy, peace, and courage are seen as good feelings, yet feelings such as sad, mad, and scared are seen as negative feelings. We must rethink our interpretion so this: Negative feelings don't create acting-out behaviors; it is the lack of expression of the negative feelings that creates the acting out. 3. Get to the Core of the Behavior - When children are acting out and being defiant, we need to begin to understand that their behaviors are simply a communication of an dysregulated state that is driving these behaviors. If we simply address the behavior, we miss the opportunity to help children express and understand themselves from a deeper regulatory and emotional level. We need to help our children build their emotional intelligence. Start by modeling basic feeling words to your child. Keep it simple and teach the five basic feeling words: sad, mad, bad, scared, and happy. Even the youngest of children can learn to say, "I'm mad!" When the toddler is throwing his toys or the teenager is having his version of a tantrum, encourage him at that moment to get to the core of the behavior through emotional expression. Remember:…it really isn't about the behavior. They really do know better than to do these things. 4. Responding vs. Reacting - So the next time your child becomes defiant, talks back, or is simply "ugly" to you, work to be in a place not to react to the behavior, but respond to your child. Respond to your child in an open way-open to meeting him in his heart and helping him understand the overload of feelings that are driving the behaviors. He doesn't need a consequence or another parental directive at that moment; he just needs you to be present with him (this does not mean you agree with the behavior, it means you are not correlating his behavior with your acceptance of him as a person). As your child learns to respond back to you positively through the parent-child relationship, he won't have the need to communicate through negative behaviors anymore. You'll both have more energy for each other, building a relationship that will last a lifetime and more energy to learn how to do it differently the next time.

The Power of Negative Beliefs

				Q: My son had a terrible early childhood history and constantly tells me he is a bad boy and that nobody loves him. Yet, no matter how much we tell him what a good boy he is or how much we love him, nothing seems to help. How can he continually reject these positive messages? A: From the moment a child is born, the child is dependent on others to care for him, nurture him, and teach him about the world. The child has no other option but to trust that the
information being given to him is the truth. He has no filters...he accepts everything as fact. For a child who goes through early childhood trauma, he lives in a world of false messages that are absorbed as truth. Everything that is said to him becomes his reality. Everything that is done to him becomes a reflection of who he is. For example, if a child is emotionally abused and told he is worthless, that he won't amount to anything, or that the parent wishes he was never born, this child's internal belief system develops from these messages. This child believes he is worthless. His belief is that he is not lovable and that he should not be on the planet earth. Neurologically, we know that neurons that fire together wire together. So this belief system becomes ingrained and accepted at a deep subconscious and neurological level. These beliefs lay down the neural circuitry that then governs how this child behaves and responds to life events. We then place this child in a different, more loving family. He is told that he is wonderful, that he is good, and that he is loved. The external messages are now in conflict with the internal messages. Which one do you think is stronger and louder? Of course, it is the internal voice of negativity that will dominate. There is a profound gap between what others say and what the child's internal framework is saying, preventing this child from easily accepting any new messages beyond that which he already knows. The human brain is programmed to reject any belief that is not congruent (not the same) as one's own view. Think about this from your own perspective. When someone comes up with a different belief than you have, what is your first reaction? You reject it. You dismiss this person as being on the fringe and you move on, maintaining your own reality in your mind. You might even argue with this person, defending your position in order to "save face" and to protect your own belief system. Now back to the child in this example, the parent then tries to lovingly parent this child and to give this child positive messages of self-esteem and self-worth. Yet, what the parent doesn't realize is that the parent is up against the power of belief—up against the child's neurological mapping. No matter how many times this parent tells his new son, "I love you." or "You are a wonderful child." or similar positive messages, the old belief system of not being worthy and not being good enough continues to prevail. It is as if these messages are impervious to this child. These positive messages simply slide off the child as if there is a Teflon coating. The reason is that these new messages are being given to the child at a cognitive level and are simply cognitive experiences. Yet, emotions play a powerful role in neural processing, much greater than language and cognition. In order to break through the old negative beliefs of this child, the parent has to dig deep within himself to interact with this child at a deeply profound emotional level. Love has the power to do this. While the emotion of fear keeps this child locked in this negative belief system, it is also true that the emotion of love will release this child from this negative belief system. It takes parenting this child in a loving, safe, and emotionally available manner. And it won't be just one experience, but several experiences, over and over again, with this child being met at an emotional level, in order for new neural pathways to be created. A new belief system is possible. It takes time, patience, understanding, tolerance, perseverance, and most importantly, emotional impact. For more information on a child's negative belief system and more concrete and practical ways to help him "re-write" them, see Chapter 5 of my latest book, Love never fails…it simply takes learning how to love our children from their perspective and going beyond routine cognitive experiences.

Growing and Healing Through the Struggles

		From Heather's Daily Reflections: “In order for children to open up to their past trauma memories, the parent has to be willing to be a 'parental sponge'--acknowledging, absorbing, and experiencing every feeling, every tear, and every fear associated with the trauma. Now that is connection!" Question: I just read my first reflection, regarding being a parental sponge and while I agree with the spirit of it, my concern is this: “Experiencing your child's or client's trauma at such an intensity, couldn't that create trauma for the person being the 'sponge'?" I feel I am very empathic but how can I do that without hurting myself?
ANSWER: This is an insightful question. Traditionally, most of us are empathic and give compassion in a way that ultimately drains us. This is because of a core belief that tells us that by giving empathy, we will be able to make this person better or that we have the ability to "fix" the problem for this person. We own that it is up to us to get this person to shift into a calm, peaceful, and regulated state. Their issue then becomes our issue and we stay focused on the outcome of them being better. It becomes a simple mathematical equation. If I give empathy (E), if I listen (L), and if I spend my time with this person (T) , he will be better (B). E + L + T = B Yet, when we give these three and the result is not what we expected, we feel a sense of failure. We turn it back on ourselves and hear the old negative tapes playing in our head, "I didn't try hard enough." "I'm not good enough." "I should have done something different." BAM! The negative feedback loop then feeds on itself right within our own mind. Fatigue, overwhelm, and even resentment begin to brew within our internal selves. In order to be a sponge, the only action we need to take is to simply be present with our child (or friend, spouse, coworker). It is not up to us to make this person better. The reality is that we cannot change or fix another person. We can surround them with support; we can love them unconditionally, free of judgment or control; we can set appropriate boundaries, and we can align with their pain. Yet in doing this, it is still ultimately up to them to make their life work. Additionally, if we enter into an interaction with a child, expecting him to be better, we are actually adding more stress to the equation, which will create more fear and hinder the healing process. We must stay focused on giving our love without expecting anything in return. That is the essential definition of love. Entering into an interaction with an expectation of an outcome is not true love. This is conditional love. Conditional love drains us. Unconditional love energizes and liberates us. So that is the theory and I know you are reading this and wanting some meat to chew on--you want application to your 16-year-old teenager whose girlfriend just dumped him and he is feeling like the entire world is coming to an end. You see how his past abandonment issues are being triggered and how this situation is being magnified due to his early adoption history. Reprogram your thinking to see that what he needs is your support, your attention, and your unconditional acceptance. It is not up to you to make this okay for him. Trust that it is in the struggles of life that we learn and grow to our maximum potential. By being empathetic, by listening, by spending time, and being present with him you are doing EVERYTHING for him. Stay focused on the outcome of you being the absolutely best parent you can be, no matter the outcome of his emotional state at the moment. Your "success" cannot be tied to his feeling better instantaneously. Keep being the sponge for your child’s pain. Become energized by the power of putting unconditional love into action. There is no greater state to be in on this planet!

The Power of Neurlogical Mapping

		Q: My son had a terrible early childhood history and constantly tells me he is a bad boy and that nobody loves him. Yet, no matter how much we tell him what a good boy he is or how much we love him, nothing seems to help. How can he continually reject these positive messages? A: From the moment a child is born, he is dependent on others to care for him, nurture him, and teach him about the world. This child has no other option but to trust that the information being given to him is the truth. He has no filters...he accepts everything as fact.
For a child who goes through early childhood trauma, he lives in a world of false messages that are absorbed as truth. Everything that is said to him becomes his reality. Everything that is done to him becomes a reflection of who he is. For example, if a child is emotionally abused and told he is worthless, that he won't amount to anything, or that the parent wishes he was never born, this child's internal belief system develops from these messages. This child believes he is worthless and unworthy. His belief is that he is not lovable and that he should not be on the planet earth. Neurologically, we know that neurons that fire together wire together. So this belief system becomes ingrained and accepted at a deep subconscious and neurological level. These beliefs lay down the neural circuitry that governs how this child behaves and responds to life events. We then place this child in a different, more loving family. He is told that he is wonderful, that he is good, and that he is loved. The external messages are now in conflict with the internal messages. Which one do you think is stronger and louder? The internal voice of negativity was an earlier and deeper imprint, thus it will be the dominate one. This creates a profound gap between what others are saying and what the child's internal framework is saying, preventing this child from easily accepting any new messages beyond that which he already knows. The human brain is programmed to reject any belief that is not congruent (not the same) as one’s own view. Think about this from your own perspective. When someone comes up with a different belief than you have, what is your first reaction? You reject it. You dismiss this person as being on the fringe and you move on, maintaining your own reality in your mind. You might even argue with this person, defending your position in order to "save face" and to protect your own belief system. Back to the child in this example, the parent then tries to lovingly parent this child and to give this child positive messages of self-esteem and self-worth. Yet, what the parent doesn't realize is that the parent is up against the power of belief--up against the child's neurological mapping. No matter how many times this parent tells his new son, "I love you" or "You are a wonderful child" or similar positive messages, the old belief system of not being worthy and not being good enough continues to prevail. It is as if these messages are impervious to this child. These positive messages simply slide off the child as if there is a Teflon coating. The reason is that these new messages are being given to the child at a cognitive level and are simply cognitive experiences. Yet, emotions play a powerful role in neural processing, much greater than language and cognition. In order to break through the old negative beliefs of this child, the parent has to dig deep within himself to interact with this child at a deeply profound emotional level. Love has the power to do this. While the emotion of fear keeps this child locked in this negative belief system, it is also true that the emotion of love will release this child from this negative belief system. It takes parenting this child in a loving, safe, and emotionally available manner. And it won't be just one experience, but several experiences, over and over again, with this child being met at an emotional level, in order for new neural pathways to be created. Love never fails...it simply takes learning how to love our children from their perspective and going beyond routine cognitive experiences.