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The Important of REST when Parenting A Traumatized Child

parenting a traumatized child

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

Parenting a traumatized child can be challenging and exhausting work. It isn’t something that should be done alone without adequate support. Parents must take care of themselves as well as others. You can’t give away what you don’t have… Faith-based families look to God for their help (Psalms 121:1-2) and operate from a place of REST:

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

“He restores my soul.” Psalms 23:

REST stands for RE-store your Soul from Trauma. Our soul includes our entire being: body, mind/emotions and spirt. Each area requires attention. How do we do that when we have an endless to-do list, dealing with continuous problems?

The key is to find rest IN work, not FROM work. It is a mental recognition that we can be in partnership with God and others. We can set boundaries and say “No” to outside activities, not live up to others expectations, and remembering “who you are and whose you are” spiritually speaking. You have to be a “son or daughter”  before you can be a fully functioning father or mother. Seek out spiritual parents to support you as you carry on the work of parenting traumatized children.

List 5 ways you will restore your soul in the next 30 days:

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What is shame and how to heal?

By guest blogger: Stephanie Patterson, LMFT

 

According to researcher Brene Brown,

shame is defined as “the intensely painful experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”

Shame has a strong visceral reaction. One person describes it as “that feeling in the pit of your stomach that is dark and hurts like hell. You can’t talk about it and you can’t articulate how bad it feels because then everyone would know your ‘dirty little secret.’” And yet we all experience it from time to time when one of our vulnerable spots gets triggered. For example, motherhood and body image can bring a feeling of shame to women; men commonly feel ashamed of being weak.

Shame is different from guilt.

Shame is believing one is bad, while guilt is believing one did something bad

This is an important distinction.

Parents often try to shame their children into obedience, mistakenly thinking shame is a great motivator. This could not be farther from the truth. Shame disconnects us from others.  It immobilizes us. It makes us feel weak.  We want to shrivel up into a little ball and disappear. When we call children names, when we say “You’re always…(anything negative)”, or if we say, “Don’t be a…. (wimp, cry baby, drama queen, etc.),” we are shaming our kids. When we tell children, teens, or grown up children that they ARE something, they usually believe it.  Then they wear that label and inwardly feel it is true about them. Make sure you are not telling them they are something bad. That is shaming.

On the other hand, feeling bad about doing something wrong can be a great motivator for change. The difference is that when you do something wrong, you yourself are not something wrong.

There is a fine but significant distinction.

In Brene Brown’s book I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t), she shares her insights from years of studying shame and how to overcome it.

Here are her steps in a nutshell:

  1. Notice when one of your shame triggers is hit. Get to know what your body feels like and the thoughts that tend to run through your head when you feel shame.
  2. Reach out to someone you feel comfortable with. This person should be reliably supportive on the topic that you are feeling shame about. For example, I may go to my sister on topics of womanhood or dealing with family, but I may avoid topics of raising children if she sometimes makes unfavorable comparisons.
  3. The last step is the hardest: speaking shame. After you receive a healthy dose of empathy from your support person, you can then talk with the person who hurt your feelings. You can tell them what they said and how deeply it hurt you. When you are able to speak your truth about your shame, you disarm it.

We cannot always know which of our comments will hit someone’s shame target right on, but we can be fairly certain that when we respond to others with empathy, shame cannot exist. Empathy means listening to others, hearing the emotional undertone of their messages, and commenting on how the experience might feel to them. Empathy connects and heals. Shame severs and hurts.

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Great Behavior Breakdown

Why does your child lie, steal, defy, incessantly chatter, cling, or whine?
The answer is simpler than you may think: Children misbehave because they are stressed. When something is alarming, their brain is stuck reacting to fear rather than responding normally. It feels like life-or-death for the child, resulting in dysregulated behaviors. 

Parents often wonder, “What was he thinking? He knows better. He must be doing this on purpose.” The truth is, the child is not thinking at all, but merely reacting unconsciously. The solution is not doling out consequences, but rather helping your child return to regulation. Bryan Post in his book The Great Behavior Breakdown, explains how to respond to misbehaving children in a way that helps them feel safe, thus eliminating negative behaviors.

What can trigger a fear response in your child? For some children, especially those who have experienced trauma, almost anything can trigger fear. A small change in routine, such as going out to eat at a restaurant or skipping reading before bed, can illicit fear. In normal development, a brain automatically alerts to any change in environment, quickly assesses it to see if it is an emergency, and then returns to normal functioning. When a child’s development has been troubled, her brains often get stuck in alert mode. A brain that is stuck in alert is panicked, illogical, and desperate. There is only one thing that can bring the brain back to normal functioning: containment and positive feedback loops.  
Containment means eliminating extra sensory input. Often this looks like turning down the music, walking out of a store, sitting on a parent’s lap, or closing eyes. Positive feedback loop is a fancy way of saying, make it feel safe and enjoyable. When the child is full of negativity, hold on to a calm, regulated, demeanor. Be positive, low key, and non-threatening. Eventually the child will give in to your invitation to stay near until he or she feels safe enough to go back and play. 

I have used Bryan Post’s approach for years while working with adoptive and foster children. For kids with trauma, his techniques work when nothing else does. Next time your child is misbehaving, see the reaction as fear rather than anger. It will change the way you respond, change your child’s behaviors, and transform your relationship.

Guest Blogger:
Stephanie Patterson, MS, LMFT

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Family Vacation Tip: Take a time cushion and avoid time outs!

If you think it will take seven days for a vacation, plan for eight or nine. If you think it will take four hours to drive to your vacation spot, prepare for five or six. Taking a time cushion will allow you to rest and not be upset because you are late or lost. If you are a single parent, you have the job of two parents to do when on vacation. Be kind to yourself and over prepare. That extra sweater just may come in handy if someone gets theirs wet and need a new one. Those extra snacks may keep the wild things calm when you are trying to find the right turn off on the highway in the middle of the night after being hours on the road. Time cushions allow you to handle the stressors that occur when taking a nontraditional family vacation.

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7 Steps to a More Authentic Life

authenticbook

7 Steps to a More Authentic Life

By Ron Huxley, LMFT

We are all looking for that muse that can inspire more creative juices into our work and relationships. We all want to be happy, free of the black cloud that hangs over us. You probably know a few people who seem to be “naturally” like this. You really don’t trust them, do you? If you are like me, you probably think they are highly delusional or at least a big faker. And yet… Something draws you to this life of emotional freedom and simple pleasure at being alive. You want to have a passionate, authentic life. That really should be too much to ask, now should it?

Here’s seven steps to help you find a new passionate direction for living. Try them on and see what they can do for you:

1. Start off by being curious. That’s right, just like a young child that stops in the middle of the road to look at pretty flower or a odd looking bug. Stop occasionally and take something in fully. Allow yourself to be curious about people, places and things. I know how perfectionism and pessimism can shut this down. Tell the voices in your head to shut up and stop, look and listen.

2. Garbage in, Garbage out. This is an old saying and I am sure you have heard some variation of it. Perhaps you have heard the expression: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he…” What you put in your mind transforms you. You don’t have to turn off the television (although it would be a good idea), just watch one hour of the nature channel or the history channel or something other than the depressing junk that’s out there. Read a book on a topic you have never thought about before. Listen to an audio tape by a motivational speaker. Hey, podcasts are a great idea if you like to listen to stuff.

3. Post it. If you come across a saying or verse or picture that touches you in some way. Write it down or cut it out but post it where you can see it everyday. Let it do the work by absorbing into your mind on a subconcious level. Watch what it can do without you having to figure it out.

4. Say thanks. I mean really say thanks, with the whole eye contact for a full half second or more. Let the Barista at Starbucks now you really appreciate him or her. Tell your office mate thank you as sincerely as possible. Make them look you in the eye no matter how painful for them or you. And, tell you higher power thanks for your next breath, that darn cat that scratched your new coach, and your boss because even if he is a pig, at least you can get a paycheck to go to Starbucks and tell the Barista thank you.

5. Watch your language. Not just the cuss words but the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” stuff. Check how often you say things like “I always do…” or “I must have…” Life is really about a lot of choices. Good ones and bad ones. Start using words like “I choose to…” or “I want do…” Oh yeah. Avoid starting off sentences with “You…” as that make people defensive and you can’t control them anyway.

6. Keep humor at the forefront of thought, laughing at and with yourself when possible. You may find yourself quite entertaining when you loosen up! I am yet to see a comedian ever go hungry even though his jokes are as ‘old as great-grandma’. Life has so much to offer to allow you to mope around in self pity. Humor is very attractive, very passionate: life-giving.

7. Believe that you are the architect of your destiny. No one can take your passionate future from you except for you! Create your life authentically. As long as there’s still breath in your body, there is no end to how much you can accomplish in a lifetime. The concept of thinking big is all about enjoying your work, which would lead to celebrate a discovery that is born within your hands. Watch everything flow into place with perfect, passionate precision.

Read Ron’s ebook on “Living More Abundantly: Simple Steps to a Happier Life”

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“Pull Yourself Together”: Trauma and Sensory Integration Issues

 

Our bodies have 5 senses and 7 sensory data inputs:

1.Sight

2. Smell

3. Hearing

4. Taste

5. Touch

6. Balance

7. Body Position

All of our senses organize information from inside and outside our body and communicate the “data” to the brain. This organization allows us to know where our body is in time and space, to feel safe in one’s own body, and to perceive our body’s relationship to others and the environment.

A child who has experienced trauma typically has a dysintegration of sensory information that will result in a dysregulation of thinking and emotion. They will not be aware of where their bodies are in time and space, cannot feel safe in their own body, and are unable to make connections to others and the environment.

Stressful sensory input is handled by the lower levels of the brain (brain stem and limbic system) and the body and overseen by the higher, executive level of the brain. If the stressful input is mild, normal coordination between all levels of the brain and the body coordinate smoothly. If the stress is high and overwhelming, the lower levels will “hijack” the higher levels to protect the body. This is called the “fight or flight” reaction to perceived danger. If these two mechanisms are not able to bring the body back into a place of safety, the brain will react by “freezing” or shutting down.

The fight, flight and freeze reactions are designed to allow the higher order areas of the brain to continue operating so that is appears that traumatized children are functioning in some areas of life but there will continue to be gross areas of dysfunction in development. This will manifest in “gaps” between a child’s age and stage of development. They may be 15 years of age chronologically but act like a 5 year old socially and emotionally. Parenting strategies will have to adjust to meet both the 5 year old and the 15 year to close the gap.

Sensory “confusion” will drive traumatized children to be sensory seekers and/or sensory defenders. Sensory seekers look a lot like children diagnosed with attentional deficits. They appear impulsive, can’t sit still, wiggle a lot, touch things, put things in their mouths, tear things apart, easily distracted, etc. These are attempts to get more information about themselves and the world around them. Sensory defenders are quickly overwhelmed by certain sensory information in one or more of the sensory systems: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, oral, and olfactory. They will complain about the brightness of lights, the hum of electric motors, dislike loud noises, be irritated by the feel of clothing on their skins, be picky eaters, sensitive to perfumes and candles, etc. Children can have combinations of both sensory seeking and sensory defending.

There are 4 treatment strategies to help traumatized children with sensory integration issues:

1. Awareness

2. Adaption

3. Exposure

4. Advocacy

Awareness allows parents and children to be aware of their sensory triggers and needs. Adaption provides assistance to the child to get the sensory information they need or takes steps to avoid sensory overload. Exposure, in small increments over time, helps children build tolerance and increase functioning. Advocacy requests support from the child’s academic and social environment so that teachers and friends understand the issues and incorporate adaptations as well.

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How To (Re)Wire Your Child’s Brain By Ron Huxley, LMFT

 

Brains that fire together, wire together: Children heal in family relationship that are based on attunement, nonjudgement, and structure. Children act badly because they feel badly about themselves, their world, and caregivers. Traumatized children will re-act out their trauma inside of themselves despite their outer circumstances. You can rewire a child’s brain by allowing them to have new, positive experiences. This requires parents to focus on attachment as well as behavior. When they are in the middle of a meltdown, try to “connect, then re-direct”. Use short, concise words oozing with empathy. Once the child is calm, engage (don’t enrage) the child’s thinking brain to come up with ways they can “clean up the mess” that has been made. There is no shame in this scenario. Just learning how to repair a relationship and build connections. If forgiveness needs to be asked for or given, help the child go through the steps with you or another person. Have them write, draw or act out what “yucky” thought they were thinking and then come up with opposite, more positive thoughts.

Brains are malleable and experience dependent: This may sound confusing but it is a hope-filled statement! No matter what your child’s trauma, he or she can heal. Because malleability means flexible and plastic it can also mean repair through new, healing experiences. Our brains are experience-dependent referring to how they require external input. If they learn negative ways to think and act (surviving), then they can re-learn positive ways to think and act (thriving). This may require that we turn down the sensitivity of the “fight and flight” system in the brain that sees everything as a threat or potential harm. This is why children sabotage good things in their life. They don’t believe they deserve it even if on a subconscious level. We can help them change this perspective by teaching how to repair (connection) after a rupture (disconnection) through forgiveness and “cleaning up our messes”. Faith enters by helping them learn who God creating them to be. Our “orphans” have orphan mentalities that must be rewired!

When we are traumatize, we believe lies about ourselves that are inherently negative. Take these thoughts captive and replace them with new ideas about who they are as “son’s and daughters”.

Get more information on holding a trauma-informed, attachment focused, and faith-based seminar for your organization or association by contacting Ron at rehuxley@gmail.com