The New Year outlook

Major post Christmas implosion here but recovering! I went with our daughter to visit my mother over New Years. Our youngest stayed home with dad as he is now working part time. I returned to a boy enraged. It was a tough week. It took a few days before he finally was calm enough to talk. We went right back to:

"I am not going to leave you."
"I love you so much and always will."
"I miss you when I'm gone and am happy to see you again."
"The little guy inside that was abandoned is telling you it is happening again. Use the `16 year old thinking to tell him he is safe."

And now he is back. If your child has had great healing and has a regression go back to what worked. It will work again and it will pass.

Having a Healing Christmas

Here are some ways that we found helpful in handling the Christmas season.
 Extended Family events:
Bring board games. Sit down BEFORE your kids get hyper and begin playing with them. It is great family fun and you will be surprised by how many other family members will want to join in.
Relax about Attachment style parenting and let the relatives be themselves. Conflict with family members will only drive a wedge between you and your child as they will side with the other family memer against you. So let it go. It will give people a chance to say what a great mom you are (and YOU ARE A GEAT MOM) and your child needs to hear that!
Serve even more healthy foods at home than usual. Then don't police their food every place else.
Think of your child during times when they are dysregulated as a very ill child. Provide peace and quiet. Play soft music. Serve them sugar free hot chocolate and snuggle them with blankets. Have them sit near you and play. Prepare a basket full of quiet activities and you can carry it into what ever room you are in for them to use. Paper, colored pencils, puzzles, puzzle books, books, cds and a cd player, legos are all quiet activites that are very relaxing.
Take the kids to your local Y and PLAY in the gym, the swimming pool or if they are older in the work out room. Have some time when they can expend some energy every day.
Focus on the meaning of Christmas and not on the gifts. Choose a needy family from one of the trees around town and have the kids help you buy them gifts. Have them help in choosing gifts for grandparents.
Have your home be as calming and comforting as possible.
Have a healing Christmas season.

Where is your focus?

When you have a child with RAD it is so easy to become totally focused on the RAD. You start seeing RAD in your child everywhere. You over analyze their words and actions. Don't ask how I know this.

Focus on the healthy relationships in your life. Spend time laughing and hanging out with those you love and who give back healthy love to you. You need to remember how normal feels. Your family needs to see you normal. (I realize normal is completely subjective, I mean your normal)

When we focus in on the disorder (RAD) and it consumes our time and thoughts, we too become unhealthy as we begin to see our child differently and we can begin to see ourselves through their eyes, or become entirely focused on the behaviors. Bag the behaviors. What is under there? Fear, sadness, rejection, feelings of abandonment, shame.  If you focus on those feelings much of the time what will happen to your own mood. Your own sense of peace?

Look for the little signs of healng and focus in on those instead. The real hug, the look of love in their eyes, the little note left for you, the sincere apology. Frame those and hang them on your heart to get you through the rough days.

So today where is your focus? In our family it was on church this morning and on the spiritual strength we gather there. I'm heading to work out at our local YMCA. ALONE! Yes. It would be good for our child to go with me and get some exercise, but after a struggling weekend with him, I need strength to be loving. NOT to do battle, but to be loving, attuned, supportive. That is the type of parent I want to be. Spend some time with your spouse, your healthy kids and don't talk about problems. Talk about fun. Experience joy.

Focus on healthy things and have a healing day!

Children who live in fear: by Bonnie Hines

Children who live in fear may eventually pose a threat to society.  That’s a strong statement.  Let me explain.

            A child, for the most part, is born helpless.  This child depends on caretakers to get his needs met.  At any time that that system fails, fear settles in.  The newborn has no mental ability to make sense of such a failure.  The only conclusion can be that the infant feels innately bad.  The emotional construct that develops is shame and it feels horrible!

            If the caretaking system breaks down later in life, the brain will be more developed and might be able to make meaning, rather than shame, out of the experience.  Humans are the most vulnerable from birth to age two or three and the least vulnerable in the teenage or adult years.

            Children who have failed to deal with shame may feel intense fear and possibly rage at the slightest provocation.  Loving caretakers help normal toddlers deal with their normal rage until they gain the ability to get it under control themselves.

            Those children who have nobody to calm them experience the growth of shame and, therefore, the growth of fear and rage.  Children who have been neglected, abused, or abandoned may carry this intense shame, fear, and rage with them.

            Proper therapy and proper parenting or re-parenting (as in foster or adoptive parenting) techniques help a hurt child make sense of what has happened to her.  Eventually, the shame makes less and less sense and she will let all or some of it go.

            Children who live with unrelieved shame, rage and fear can become angry teenagers and young adults who do the unthinkable – like open fire in shopping malls or classrooms.  If someone is involved in the care or education of a child who rages and is no longer a toddler, help is available.