Still to come… notes on a presentation by Larry Smith (co-founder of on .
And here’s a plug for an upcoming advocacy seminar. Having issues with the school, or any other legal advocacy issues, check this out: . Michele Nigliazzo is an attorney and an adoptive mom, and she “gets” trauma and attachment.
See you soon!
I shared the previous post on an online attachment disorder support forum. My final statement was, “The best predictor of treatment outcome for attachment challenged kids is NOT how disturbed the kid, but the capacity of the parent,” which was, I believe, a pretty accurate quote from Dr. Arthur Becker-Weidman.
One of the parents in the forum commented that that sounded like a lot to put on the parents’ shoulders – what about all the other factors, like age at adoption, prenatal alcohol exposure, and so on? Some kids come through like Michale Oher in The Blind Side, while others with amazingly therapeutic parents don’t seem to heal.
I made a valiant attempt to clarify myself. J The following is based on the response I shared on the board. (MY words, not Arthur Becker-Weidman’s.) Hopefully, you’ll find it helpful as well.
The best predictor of TREATMENT OUTCOME (and A B-W was speaking of attachment treatment) etc., etc.
IOW, the first assumption is that you’re working with a professional who doesn’t have his head up his @$$ (gee, sure would’ve liked to have found even one of them early on!), one who is supporting the parent, who is helping the parent(s) work through the parent’s (parents’) own stuff. FAE is another whole ball game, but as far as attachment challenges go, when the parent is able to change their own ways of responding/relating, there’s a better chance of the child changing.
Capacity of the parent refers to the parent’s insightfulness, own attachment state & state of mind, sensitivity (and I would say this might be sensitivity to the child’s state, but not sensitivity to button pushing), reflective capacity, and commitment. I would add to that, flexibility, openness, willingness to try something different; and parent training / education re: attachment & the treatment method (which I guess goes along with treatment by a decent professional).
Best predictor does not mean only predictor. I think this just means strongest statistical correlation. So… some kids are more resilient. Some kids have fewer attachment challenges, in spite of their background. (Maybe your friend’s kids?) But if your starting population is attachment challenged kids, and the family is being seen for the kid’s attachment issues AND the family dynamics, the kids who are going to do better are the ones who have parents with greater “capacity.” Statisticallyspeaking.
So, perhaps FASD kids do worse on average than do cocaine-exposed kids, or than kids who have “just” attachment issues… but the correlation, mathematically, is stronger with parent capacity than with substance exposure, or other factors – which do still play a part.
Empowering, because it means that if we have good training and support, we have a chance at making a difference… but scary as well.
And BTW – A B-W did NOT come off as if he were laying it all on parents, although he did emphasize that the parents DO need to do their own work and processing a lot of the time. He was pretty clear that raising these kids is tough, that he only sees them a couple hours a week but parents live it 24/7, and all the other stuff we know so well.
For your reference: Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute
Some notes from the sessions at the CALO annual conference
CALO = Change Academy Lake of the Ozarks – an attachment based RTC for adolescents.
First, I LOVE the fact that there are dogs EVERYWHERE. CALO uses golden retrievers for canine therapy, and the dogs are in the milieu, in classes, in kids’ rooms. Just that fact alone makes the place seem less institutional. And what a great regulator / stabilizer it is to have a dog beside you.
Second, this was the first time I heard Arthur Becker-Weidman speak, and he is awesome and I love him. 
This is a guy that “gets” attachment and trauma.
From A B-W’s various sessions:
HVAC analogy: You don’t notice your HVAC system when it’s functioning as it should; you really only notice when your house is hot, or stuffy, or too cold. Attachment is like that, too. When you have a neurotypical birth child, and the attachment occurs as a natural (and beautiful) process, it’s almost invisible unless you’re looking for it. It’s when you have a child with damaged attachment that you really notice it.
In normal attachment, a toddler may hide behind your leg when a stranger is present. A young adult may call home at a time of stress to check in.
My thoughts… and with a child with damaged attachment… the attachment-seeking behaviors aren’t as obvious, and if we’re not careful, they don’t elicit attach-able behaviors in us.
One example… Hypochondria… how many of our kids do this? Little to no response, perhaps, to a major injury, but oh my goodness, a little scratch or a minor tummy ache, and you’d think the world was coming to an end. Well, as I regularly say, Hypochondria – a safer way to ask for nurturing. (Wouldn’t that make a great Successories-type poster?)
Motivation. To be motivated, you must have a sense that your actions will somehow impact the world. If not, why bother, right? Our kids think they don’t matter. When they were little and cried, no one came. Or someone came, but the response wasn’t what they needed or wanted. At a core level, they don’t believe that their actions will result in an outcome that will benefit them – or even have an effect.
Music control room analogy: Our kids look at us like we’re the control board in a sound studio. Picture a preschooler, pushing buttons… which one gets the most exciting sounds and colors to show up? They keep pushing buttons – our buttons – until they elicit the reactions and degree of intimacy with which they’re comfortable.
We MUST disconnect our own buttons.
W e MUST create a loving emotional landscape, not one that mirrors what the kids are familiar with.
The rates of PTSD in foster kids are higher than the rates of PTSD in military veterans.
Source attribution error: Our kids do this all the time. (hey, there’s a name for it! LOL)
I’m feeling ______.
You’re here in the room.
You must be the reason I’m feeling _____.
Research shows that maternal stress affects the fetus in utero.
Smoking affects the fetus – researchers can see physiological reactions.
AND…. THINKING about smoking shows physiological responses in the fetus.
Something that was stressed in more than one presentation is something I hadn’t heard, or thought about, previously. I’m well aware that in kids with a trauma history, performance IQ often exceeds verbal IQ. What I didn’t know was that their EXPRESSIVE language skills may exceed their RECEPTIVE language skills. That’s counter-intuitive (normally receptive leads expressive), and can lead to challenges. When a child “talks a good game,” you assume he (1) understands what he’s saying and (2) understands when you reply in kind. Neither of those may be true. Hence, asking open-ended questions (tell me more about that) or asking a child to repeat to you what you have just said, but in his own words, can be useful.
Analogy: Boss asks you, “Why did you…”
What’s your reaction?
“Uh-oh, what’d I do wrong?”
Don’t ask your kids why. It’s stick-poking.
Analogy: Person at a party monologues you to death. Next time, you probably avoid that person. OR, you meet a new person who carries on a conversation, is interested in you and your interests. Next time, you’re open, even eager, to renew the acquaintance.
Ditto our kids. Who wants to be lectured or monologue? Want them to spend time with you, enjoy it, and come back for more? Ditch the lectures, and talk.
Consequences vs. restitution or repair
Restitution repairs the relationship. Restitution does as much good for the one making restitution as for the one receiving.
Punishment does not. Anger does not. Retribution does not.
Our kids’ experiences tell them that damage to a relationship, ends the relationship. They need to learn the process of rupture and REPAIR.
A child’s emotional truth may matter more (to your relationship, to their healing) than the factual truth. Especially true with respect to them being able to tell their life story – they may not know what happened to them, but it may feel like (x, y, z), and it’s OK if they make that their narrative.
Here are some good words for those of you dealing with therapists who want you to do sticker charts or behavior charts.
Stickers are a surrogate for approval. If there is no relationship, the child doesn’t care about approval. The currency is no good.
The best predictor of treatment outcome for attachment challenged kids is NOT how disturbed the kid, but the capacity of the parent.
I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. Some years ago, I, being the planner partner of the marriage, would categorize some topics, ponder on my own goals for self and family, then meet with the more spontaneous partner, and we would talk and come to agreement on goals for the year. Then I would track said goals and attempt to make our daily and weekly and monthly schedules and activities line up with the goals. Back when we were homeschooling, we also covered academic goals for each kid.
This year, I have a simple, but likely unattainable, wish.
It’s not a goal, because it’s out of my control.
It’s not even a hope – because I don’t really have any faith that it will happen.
However, my wish is for one month free of crises and drama. Just one month… OK, I know that if I experienced one month like that, I’d want more, but for now I’m just asking for a month.
My criteria:
Neither we nor any of our kids having any crisis / dramatic / involuntary /unexpected change in any of the following that require involvement on our part:
1 employment
2 romantic partner
3 housing (especially if it involves MY housing)
4 schooling (or emergency calls from school)
And no new involvement with any of these:
5 law enforcement or judicial system
6 CPS
7 emergency medical professionals
8 Nor any unexpected or avoidable requests for large sums of money from family members
From mid-December through mid January, we’re 8 for 8 on the above list, all related to adult children.
Normal people don’t live like this, do they?
Since I don’t think I’m likely to get my wish, I’m currently making plans for a month on a desert island or at least in a foreign country, with no cell phone service, and perhaps no internet access, somewhere about the time the youngest one graduates high school. If you expect to need me around May – June 2014, contact me by April, or forget it until July. Hmm, maybe that’ll give me enough time to get into swimsuit-shape…
The following post is from my daughter, Mary. Mary just turned 22. She was 9 when we adopted her and her siblings in 1999. In January, Mary and her husband will celebrate their third wedding anniversary – the same boy who was one of our nightmares back when she was 11-12 and he was 14-15! We are happy to have him in the family, and proud of both of them. If you think there is no hope for your child… think again. Mary lived in various RTC’s and other out-of-home placements from age 16 – 20. She moved back in with us at 20, with a 6 month old baby girl. She did some hard work moving back to us, and we love her (as always) and trust her (not so much the case in the past) and we certainly enjoy her and her family. Her two kiddos are very attached. What more could we ask?
Here’s her story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My name is Mary. I suffer from RAD, and being a mother and a wife makes it hard for me. I love my family; it hurts me bad when I notice that I’m trying to push them away.
When I was younger dating a guy that I was madly in love with. My parents tried so hard to keep us apart. When they noticed that it wasn’t working they decided to educate him on my disorder. They gave him binders of information for him to read. The funny part is he did, seventeen, eighteen year old guy. Who always made time to see, write, and call me? I was always pushing him away when he got to close. I didn’t want to hurt him but, that’s all I seemed to do. I always thought that he was too good for me, that I didn’t deserve him.
When I was nineteen I got married to this wonderful man. Not even a month later I was pushing him away. We were fighting over every little thing. I was trying so hard to hurt him so he wouldn’t want to be with me anymore. I was so scared that I let him in anymore than I have. I’ve never let a stranger in this close to me it scared me.
I finally thought of a way to hurt him. But not realizing it was hurting me to. I was a wife that was pregnant with a baby. I kept threading him with an abortion. I was rubbing the past mistakes in his face. I was making our home unbearable. He would leave and go to the bar. I was freaking out that he was going to hook up with a random girl there. So, when he came home I would be extra mad not knowing what he did or who he was with. I was always thinking the worse. Nothing he could say or do could change my mind.
I went out and did my wrong. Left him and went with another guy that didn’t amount to who or what he was. He was abusive to an extent that I wanted to leave but when I did he’d always come chancing me and telling me that it would never happen again. I think that the only reason I stayed was because he always said he needed me.
When I found out I was going to be a mom, I was so scared of what kind of mother I was going to be. How I was going to love a child when I couldn’t love myself. I kept thinking how I was so scared I was going to neglect her and not be a mother to her.
I have always been the motherly type of girl to my brothers and to anyone that would let me. I think it was just scary for me because she was my child. I’ve always wanted to fix the mistakes the parent’s made with their kids that weren’t mine. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes my birth parents did.
When the time came to have my baby, I didn’t feel connected to her. It made me sad. I wanted to feel close to her but I felt like something was hold me back form connecting with her. A couple of weeks later after getting to her and not feeling threatened by her presence I started to open up and get to know my little girl.
I haven’t found myself trying to pull away from my daughter, I actually find myself changed I want her to know I’m here and that I’ll always will be.
My husband and I got back together when my daughter was nine months. It’s been a year and three months and we have a beautiful son who is almost four months. I still find myself trying to pull away from him. I fight it and push closer to him. It’s going to be a challenge but I’m willing to fight for the ones I love. Especially, once I’ve known what it feels like to have someone that loves you for who you are.
~ Mary
This is not a thorough, detailed, well-researched and documented post. This is an off-the-cuff compare and contrast list. I’ve attended trainings by all below but Hand in Hand Parenting.
All of these are relationship-based approaches rather than rules and control-based programs.
Several of them target and are marketed to parents, especially adoptive parents, but all are also applicable to raising neurotypical “normal” kids.
As applicable, I have listed what I see as the strength or difference for each one that sets it apart from the other programs.
Heather Forbes – Beyond Consequences
Adoptive mom, architect, later became LCSW
Great online resources (some free)
Great live presentations –free Saturday seminars in various locations “Beyond Consequences Live” – the role plays Heather does are fabulous, concrete, and really get the point across, in support of the other material she presents.
Books – Heather has written and published several books. Some parents find the books extremely helpful, while others have trouble “getting it” from the books – but find her BC Live events (or the BC Live DVD she sells on her web site) life-changing.
Strength: Role-plays at the live events, online support at Yahoogroups “Daily Parenting Reflections”
Bryan Post – The Post Institute
Helene Timpone – The Post Institute
Bryan was adopted as a child, and brings that perspective to his work. Helene is an adoptive mom.
Great online resources (some free)
Bryan and Helene do camps for families and therapists, as well as other live training presentations.
Both also do intensive retreats, complete with experiential work for the participants.
Bryan co-wrote the first Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control book with Heather Forbes, and he has other books as well. The Great Behavior Breakdown focuses specifically and in detail a number of behaviors that parents see as problems and addresses them from a relationship perspective.
Some find Post’s marketing approach somewhat heavy-handed, and he has been controversial at times, but he absolutely has a big heart for children and families who are hurting.
Eric Guy – Center for Victory
Eric is also an LCSW and partnered with Heather Forbes to create the Beyond Consequences Live event DVD that is available on both their sites. If you can’t get to a BC Live event, or you want to review the principles at home, or share the material with family members, friends, or other members on your support team – it is well worth the purchase.
Eric provides training live events and has partnered with Heather Forbes recently to create an online seminar series on “Beyond Consequences in the Classroom.”
Eric’s intensive retreats also include experiential work. When couples attend, their experiential work focuses on bringing them together as a couple so they are better able to support each other.
Eric’s seminars include personality, values, and attribute assessments and discussion that provide additional personal insights for participants
Strength: Couples approach to experiential work, gender perspectives, personality and attribute assessments
Karyn Purvis – TCU Institute of Child Development
TCU Institute of Child Development
Karyn Purvis – Empowered to Connect
Karyn Purvis’ book, The Connected Child: Bringing Hope and Healing to your Adoptive Family, is excellent.
She runs a summer camp for children from “hard places” at TCU that is very effective.
Her live training events are clear, entertaining, and easy to understand. Her material is fully researched and evidence-based.
Karyn has numerous free training video clips on the Empowered to Connect site, and a variety of products for sale (DVDs, books, etc.)
In addition to being relationship based, Karyn takes a holistic approach – many of these kids from the “hard places” have missed developmental steps and need other interventions (dietary, supplements, movement, OT, etc.) to achieve their potential.
Strength: Free video resources, holistic approach
Hand in Hand Parenting
I am less familiar with this approach, and some parents raising children with a trauma history and significant behavioral challenges may find some of the stories and examples rather simplistic. However, the principles espoused in this approach are valid, and the online email list at yahoogroups is supportive.
Risking Connection
Traumatic Stress Institute
Risking Connection Training
This systematic approach, unlike the ones described above, targets mainly professionals working in residential treatment facilities, foster care agencies, and other family-supporting agencies, rather than directly targeting parents and families.
This approach is very compatible with the approaches described above, and vice versa.
The approach has the backing of a large organization and seems to be structured and supported sufficiently to make it last in an organization, yet flexible enough to be individualized. The implementation approach in an agency seems to be designed on a large enough scale to really get the ball rolling.
From an adoptive parent’s perspective – I want this approach in all agencies and support groups I have to deal with. I’d love to not have to explain relationship based parenting methods to every doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, case manager, educator, and RTF staff that we come in contact with.
Strength: Comprehensive approach for professional programs; spreading, grass-roots awareness.
And last but not least, myself:
Katheen Benckendorf, Attachment and Integration Methods
Adoptive parent – learned everything the hard way
I train using a relationship model / approach, as do all of those above.
Strength: My own specific flavor is to include some basic info on other developmental approaches, such as reflex integration, movement therapies, sensory therapies, and some alternative methods such as tapping and BIT.
I’m trying to convince my educational advocate – who is AWESOME, and force to be reckoned with – and oh by the way, was adopted at age five, so she GETS the whole trauma thing – to do a webinar or webinar series.
If you could ask an educational advocate any question you wanted, what would you ask?
If you could stipulate the course content, what would you include?
Parenting a traumatized child is traumatizing to the parent. Give yourself credit for what you do right, and extend yourself grace for where you fail to meet your own standards. Realize that much of what you feel, want, regret, struggle with – is similar to what your traumatized child also feels – and s/he is even less equipped to deal with it or express it than you are.
It’s really tough to be therapeutic 24/7. Some days, your therapeutic best may be … not so great. Sometimes, your therapeutic best may be GONE – on vacation, out the window, gone long gone. What do you do then? Self-care in whatever way works for you, then pick up the pieces after.
For me, speaking honestly and with love works when I need to pick up the pieces (and I had one of those experiences this past weekend) – at least sometimes! (Nothing works exactly the same, all the time). I might tell my child, “I love you, I really do, but I get so frustrated/annoyed/scared when _____. I really want to [behavior you meant to exhibit] but sometimes instead I [xxxx] and then I feel [xxx]. Is it like that for you, too?”
We’ve become accustomed to using the terms “regulated” and “dysregulated” in my house. I tell the kids when I’m feeling dysregulated. Everyone feels that way sometimes. It’s OK to feel it – and it’s important to RECOGNIZE it.
We’ve also used a graphic display to indicate everyone’s level of regulation. We used a cork bulletin board – I marked lines across it in rainbow colors – purple & blue on the bottom (calm & regulated), red at the top (about to boil over). We used push pins with name tags to indicate how we were feeling. It worked great for one who felt uncomfortable telling us that in words sometimes. It was also a great way for me to let the kids know when I was having a rough day – and sometimes it even got me offers to help with dinner!
We want them to learn to express their fears to us (eventually verbally), instead of with their behaviors. Modeling the behavior we want beats lecturing hands down – we have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
I think their feelings and actions are scary to them. I know OUR feelings are scary to them – especially because they imagine that every time they perceive us having a negative feeling, (1) it’s directed toward them and (2) it could lead to another life or death situation for them. Seeing the similarity between their feelings and ours can actually be a bonding thing! They may also learn that Mom’s anger or fear isn’t even as extreme as they thought it was – like the monster under the bed, our imagination makes scary things bigger and badder, so dealing with it up-front can be helpful.
This, I believe, may be the root of much of my son’s dysregulation over the past week. Frankly, writing is so difficult for him that ANY writing assignment is likely to dysregulate him.This one, however, has lots of special meaning for him (or any other child of trauma).
The personal narrative essay had two options:
Then and Now
Choose a person, a place, or an object you knew as a young child and also as a teenager. Describe the way you saw it then. Describe the way you see it now. You may wish to create two separate scenes and just let the contrast speak for itself. Or you may decide to include some narration to connect the two descriptions. In either case, the contrast in the descriptions should reveal something about you, the narrator.
OK, so basically anything that makes him think about life when he was a young child is going to bring up trauma, loss, abandonment issues. Anything that was part of his life when he was a young child – pretty much is no longer part of his life, with the exception of his bio half-siblings, so even aside from the trauma, this would be difficult for him to complete.
Pivotal Event
Write about a pivotal event in your life: one day, one event, one scene, in the drama of your life when you knew that you were no longer a child. Describe this pivotal event by showing, not telling, what happened. The reader should be able to infer that this moment represented a transition in your life. Use action, description, and dialogue. The focus of your narrative should be what happened at that moment. At the same time, you may provide some thoughts—especially toward the end of the narrative—from your viewpoint now.
To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where this one would take him. Maybe thinking about how he was deprived of anything like a normal childhood? Was he ever a child? OTOH, his healing has progressed a lot – maybe he’s more of a child now at 16 than he ever could be when he was small. I don’t know. I just know that his stress level jumped up about the time this assignment was given, and although he doesn’t connect the two, I do – as do his case manager and his therapist.
The thing is – I think this could be a therapeutic assignment for him – now that I KNOW about it and can support him through it. Unfortunately, however, he’s pretty much wasted a week of school since the assignment was given – not just this class. He’s been sleeping more than I did the first trimester of either pregnancy. Not doing assignments. Asking not to go to school. Asking to be picked up early from school.
We are living back-to-school trauma this year. Jake is at the large, local, public high school after two years in very small, contained programs. It’s not going well. No suspensions, no violence, that much is true, but Jake is sleeping during most of his non-school hours – a sure sign of stress – and he’s starting to ask to stay home from school, or to leave school early. The last two years, that didn’t happen until nearly the semester end. It’s not good for that to be starting so soon.
I gave a presentation at the school to acquaint his team with the potential effects of RAD and PTSD at school – behaviors they might see but not recognize as coming from his early trauma. I gave them tools and suggestions. Some of the teachers were thrilled with the presentation and thought it offered helpful info they could use with other students in their other classes as well. Some teachers obviously didn’t get it. One told me at open house that she was happy to have X in her classroom, and she was sure already that he felt comfortable talking to her about any problems he might have.
Ummmm…. can you say RAD? Can you say honeymoon? Can you say, “Being friendly and getting the teacher on my side keeps me feeling safe”???
This same teacher violated Jake’s IEP this week. One of the criteria in his IEP is that he is notified of any potential changes to his schedule in advance. Understandably, sometimes this is not possible. A teacher might call in sick – no way to predict that. However, in this instance, the school has a new policy this year that any student who is currently failing any class must go to the commons area during their “free” period (which is when he has this teacher) and study under the watchful eyes of… I’m not exactly sure who.
Jake apparently didn’t realize he was already failing Biology, so when the teacher told him to get his things and go to the commons, it was a surprise, as well as an abrupt change. And of course the commons is probably SUCH a regulated environment. Having the top principal confront him there was also quite regulating for him… not. (Principal didn’t know him from Adam, so I don’t fault her for the confrontation.)
He was stressed for unknown reasons before the change in schedule, and he had already texted me to “I need to get out of here cannot do anything to confused a fraighed to do anything something might go rong.” I didn’t see the message immediately, but we exchanged several other texts throughout the morning. My husband couldn’t reach either the grade-level principal (good guy and I think he at least somewhat gets it) or his counselor, and I couldn’t leave work immediately. I tried to convince him to go see his grade-level principal, but he didn’t. When I eventually picked him up at 1pm, we did run into said principal, who questioned Jake as to why he hadn’t come to see him and ask for help. Jake “didn’t want to bother him.”
Hopefully, this will pass and he will become more comfortable using the resources we have put in place for him at the school. However, I’m actually not too put out by the idea that MOM seemed like the best and safest solution to his distress. We have come a LONG way.
Last night he commented that he didn’t want to have any situations where he blew up or did something stupid. I pointed out some of the progress he’s made. Before, he would have just acted out or blown up. He’s made many steps of improvement:
Yesterday he was still super-stressed, but he went to school and made it through the day. I doubt much learning went on, but he didn’t blow out.
The rest of this week I plan to stay home with him in the mornings (I usually leave for work about the time he gets up) and work on some regulating exercises and activities with him so that hopefully he can get off to a better start each day. After that, we’ll see.
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