Book Excerpt: Parenting Children of Trauma

Parenting Children of Trauma by Marcy Pusey (link to buy here on Amazon)

First, a quick review: I love this book. She can truly relate as a foster mom who has parented many children of trauma. I am sharing excerpts (direct quotes) from the book because this basic knowledge will help family and friends understand our child of trauma. And for anyone else reading, I hope this gives you a deeper compassion for foster kiddos. If you have frequent interactions with foster families, please consider taking the time to buy/read the whole book!

Everything that follows is a direct quote from Marcy's book:

One of the challenges of understanding our children’s attachment is recognizing their symptoms for what they are: symptoms. They are not the core of who our child is. It’s not their fault!

Psychiatry uses the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to classify disorders. In the DSM, there is an umbrella for Specified Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders. These disorders all share on thing: exposure to a traumatic event accompanied by significant problems in relationships caused by the stress response. [side note: being removed from a biological family is always a traumatic event in and of itself]

Powerlessness is when your brain enters the Freeze part of the Fight-Flight-Freeze cycle. The only response to occur in the amygdala part of our brain. It cannot assign the trauma to a space in history [like the hippocampus] so it stays always in the present.

5 major attachment impacted disorders: Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder (DSED), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), Adjustment Disorders

Disinhibited [lack of restraint] Social Engagement Disorder (DSED): Most recognizable by the externalizing behavior and lack of inhibitions in behavior. There is an overzealous effort to form attachments. Indiscriminate affection is excessive attempts at meeting needs for comfort and affection from anyone, even total strangers.

Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD): People who have experience extreme stress or violence over a long period of time. They have persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs about themselves [ex: “I am a bad kid”].

Adjustment Disorders: Characterized by over-reactions. Symptoms usually improve with time and distance from the event.

The brain of a child of trauma has a very dark prefrontal cortex [the thinking center, good decisions, healthy relationships, strengths of our personality, empathy, morality, impulse control]. Studies are showing dark parts can be re-engaged! Something about doing life alongside a healthy child encouraged the traumatized brain to pick up and fill in some gaps. When a child gets passed from home to home, the false belief that no one can be trusted is reinforced in the brain.

Trauma kid’s survival skills (excerpts by 4 main categories):

1. Response to logic or reason: They don’t have the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex to support reasoning. The most effective brain healing that occurs, does so with experience and not straight information. You will not be able to guide them into any satisfactory conclusion around the irrationality of their decisions.

2. Sense of power: They feel safe when they have complete control over everyone around them. When we respond in anger or frustration to their behavior, we support their belief that they are in control and have all the power. Lying is a prevalent symptom. Any truth is vulnerability. They will lie to not tell the truth, thus resisting opportunities to connect with you. Give them fewer opportunities to lie by simply stating things you know are true. Trauma caught in their amygdala is triggered – it's so much bigger than lying, it’s about staying alive. Another way sense of power manifests is through triangulation. The child sees themselves in a triangle relationship with everyone they know, and they are the orchestrator of the other two points. To stay safe, they must keep everyone at odds with one another, deflecting from the child’s own issues.

3. Present focus: Trauma kids only experience the pain of poor choices for a few minutes because their resilience has saved them. Consequences must be immediate, and we can’t determine the success of the consequence based on their reaction. They can’t let you know that you have any influence over them or that means they are not in control, and that means their death.

4. Disconnected thinking: They often don’t see how their choices hurt or help others or themselves. A child won’t connect cause and effect. It’s all now, nothing connected to the second before or the second after.

Their survival behaviors: manipulation, hurting others, sabotaging relationships, dishonest to avoid intimacy all work to keep them isolated. Their foster and adoptive placements are often disrupted, families giving notice and passing them on because they cannot meet the needs of these kids, further affirming the brain’s lie that people can’t be trusted and no one will ever love them. Suffering. They are wired for love and belonging, but the very thought of it feels like a death threat.

[Marcy speaking of her experience] Our expectations were too high. We just didn’t know. But our love still matters. All the love that seemed to slide right off? It didn’t. A remnant somehow found its way down and settled in that cup.

The original birth parent failed them. Our children have a primal disappointment that is foundational to how they interact with the world.

We are not saving kids; we are equipping them <3 [my favorite quote from the book!]

[For our marriage] Commit to being each other’s biggest supports. Revive compassion and believe the best in the other person. What would it look like to support your spouse?

[For our birth children] Is there a space for a birth child to say, “No, I don’t like this.”? Some birth children have expressed feeling a great amount of regret and shame anytime they held a negative feeling about the additions to their family. Ask them about their process. Include them in decision-making. Spend intentional time with them. Don’t save the last and least for them. They really do learn compassion, grow in empathy, are slow to judge other families, develop perseverance, character, hope, and humility. Learning how to cope at such young ages has given them skills. They’ve learned how to love challenging people.

[Therapy with horses] The emotional healing that begins with the nonjudgmental acceptance of a horse enables patients to feel safe enough to be themselves. This helps bridge the barrier of PTSD isolation and facilitates the social reintegration of talk therapy with another human.

[Healing through faith] Many find healing and recovery in their engagement with faith. Specifically, the person of Jesus Christ and the unconditional love demonstrated in the Bible. [A quote from an adopted child] “The biggest thing that made the change in my life was at a Wednesday night chapel service where the preacher spoke about how no matter what the people threw at Jesus, Jesus still chose to love them and die for their sin. That got me thinking about the way I treated my family and the staff at the orphanage and for the first time in my life, I felt broken and I felt their pain.”

The most beneficial work I can do for my child, is to work on myself. Knowing my capacity and living from within it IS love. Exceeding that and living from a place of anger, frustration, and confusion certainly isn’t loving. In Jesus’s sacrificial love, He didn’t compromise on the boundaries – sin is still sin. The most compassionate people are also the most boundaried.

Many resources are given in the book. For example, this one has great relevant articles: Parenting Children & Teens with Reactive Attachment Disorder (reactiveattachment-disorder.com)

[Conclusion with parenting techniques] The techniques we are aiming for should gradually create safety for our kids to have the space to experience the love we have for them. Parenting techniques that didn’t work [all are explained in more detail in the book; I will list them]:

• reasoning/logic

• emotionally reacting to their behavior

• negotiating

• rescuing the child from the consequences of their behavior

• offering unsolicited advice

• defending the consequence

• taking responsibility for whether or not they receive your love

Parenting techniques that did work [there are many and in more detail in the book; I will list a few of my favorites]:

• not caring more about their problems than they do

• help with connections (cause and effect; feelings and emotions)

• whisper instead of yell so they will have to lean in to hear you

• work on good eye contact

• healthy touch (physical affection)

• separate now from then, ex: saying “yes that happened and it was hard. But today we’re dealing with this. So what’s your next step from this moment?”

• boundaries on material things

• find reasons to affirm your kid (somedays it may feel like “Good job, you’re still blinking!” lol)

• speak rules in positives; state the directive simply and clearly with the expectation that they’ll do what is being asked of them

• cross talking (speaking to someone else about the child/situation with the intention of the child to overhear)

• securing that I’m the parent and I’m going to take care of their needs

• do not react to displays of dramatic emotion or poor behavior

• validate their feelings showing I’m interested

• let them have control over little choices and limit choices so there aren’t too many options

• take myself out of situations where I have strong emotions until I am calm and composed

• social skill coaching