When parenting is absent at best, “low warmth” is a kind descriptor. Throw in a nervous system exhausted by the hangover from any number of chemicals and you’ve got parental anxiety and irritability, someone who is easily startled and sleeping poorly which inevitably leads to lethargy, even more mood swings, anxiety and irritability. Not exactly a prescription for effective parenting even without the pressures of low economic status, i.e. poverty. All that irritability usually translates into an overly critical parent. Throw in “easily startled” and it isn’t hard to imagine the emotional tone in the family. Kids are noisy when they are happy so if they startle mom or dad, the response they get is anything but friendly.
I am very aware of my own transit from chaos to stability. My mantra for a while was, “This is their life, soon you’ll be free to live your own life.” I probably said this to teens a thousand times over the years when home was less than ideal.
My child self was lucky to have at least a view of stability. There were healthy families in my childhood that welcomed me into their homes and were patient with my quirks. But I also remember a birthday party when I chose to sit with the moms rather than the other girls. This parentified eldest just didn’t fit in with her silly, rambunctious age mates. I was also hungry for the attention of those generous women who eventually but gently sent me back into the fray after a few minutes of trying to hide among them.
So here’s the deal: These are the kids living in your homes now. You’ve provided them with shelter, food, and safety, both physical and emotional; all the things missing from their early lives. So why is it so hard for them to come around to this new way of life?
Before I write these columns, I typically take a look at what others are saying about any topic I choose to explore with you. I was interested in something called “creative destruction”, what happens when the old way is replaced by something completely new. It’s usually discussed in the context of changing technologies. These kind of shifts aren’t baby steps: automobiles replaced horses gradually but there wasn’t much to be seen in between: you were either moved by a gas powered engine or a grass fed horse. This change took about 10 years in cities, 50 years on farms.
Your kids are also on this kind of path of creative destruction. We usually talk about how you can provide experiences so different from their early life that, through neuroplasticity, their brains are actually rewired for this new worldview where a self-image that includes cooperation and forgiveness is finally possible. It occurs to me that this transition might just look at lot like horse to automobile: fast in some sectors, slow in others.
We create specific liminal spaces for moving between destinations: hallways, waiting rooms, airport boarding lounges. Deep sea divers ascend very slowly from the depths to the surface to avoid “the bends”. If they come up too quickly, the trapped nitrogen forms bubbles—much like opening a carbonated soda bottle too fast—which can block blood flow, damage tissues, and cause severe joint or nerve pain. Coming up slowly, provides the liminal space (and time) necessary for the nitrogen to be eliminated in one’s breath. If you’ve ever walked into another room and forgotten why you went there, you’ve experienced this “doorway effect”. Our brains need time to adjust to a new context and can momentarily forget why we are there. This is nepantla: the space in-between necessary to adjust from here to there culturally, vocationally, physically, or personally. You can’t rush nepantla.
Interestingly, other literature about creative destruction focuses on the job market. What jobs will disappear with the new technology? The news is full of pearl-clutching about what Artificial Intelligence will do for the future of computer programmer job prospects. The last election promised a return of coal mining and steel production to areas where those industries once thrived but are now dominated by imports. I find the language of creative destruction to be very helpful in regard to the healing our kids have to go through because it emphasizes the time and processes inevitable in these transitions: the Identity Crisis, Loss of Safety and Predictability, and Forced Adaptation.
Identity Crisis – Like a displaced worker, a child with a trauma history has to navigate an identity crisis. The child who believed what mama and daddy said about them or understood by their neglect or maltreatment: not worth my time, the cause of my headache, a resented burden, looks just like his good for nuthin’ daddy, reminds me of my pain in the butt sister, etc. has a doozy of an identity crisis to wade through. Those early messages are now in competition with every message you are doing your best to send them in your patience, your predictability, your presence, and your persistent optimism for their future. It isn’t surprising if it seems like they buy into this new way for a while only to be dragged back into those old ideas whenever they are faced with an experience that overwhelms their ability to keep it together. Think: “I was just pretending to be a different person, I’m really just the same old loser they said I was.” Also be ready to see a child in the throes of a parental loyalty conflict as they ease into this new way of life with you.
Loss of Safety and Predictability – Your foster, kinship, or adopted child has some serious adjustments to make. It is weird to think of that old life as safe and predictable, but it is all your child ever knew. They learned how to make it through those wild days. These new, quieter ones are strange and a bit scary. There is even a sense of “When will the other shoe drop? This peace won’t last; it never does. Better to make it fall apart now than to be surprised when it finally collapses on its own.” Consider your last job change or move to a new city and how long it took for you to feel “at home” there.
Forced Adaptation – Being removed from one’s home and family, however dysfunctional, places pressure on any child to adapt and to do it quickly. Children who remain in foster care for more than 5 years go on to leave and enter new families an average of 5 more times. That’s a boatload of “forced adaptation”. Toss in a diagnosis of ADD, ADHD, or Autism, and you enter another realm of adaptation lately called “masking”. These are the kids who are able to get through the school day without a call from the principal but arrive home exhausted from just holding it together enough to fit in, avoid bullying, avoid rejection, or just to not need anything from anyone. Note: My trauma-free granddaughter is a squeezer (like her other grandmother was before she learned to mask it) when she gets excited. She hugs herself tightly and grimaces. She has learned that the new fad for squishy toys is a socially acceptable mask for this that seems to satisfy her at school but, with me, there is still plenty of squeezing when she gets excited. No masking necessary in my company.)
So, what to do? Build on all four dimensions of their Positive Psychological Capital: self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience in order to maximize their hopes for a future marked by a higher-level well-being, life satisfaction, positive emotion, mental health and academic performance.
How?
1. Keep yourself regulated so they can look to you as the emotional rock they need to tie on to when the waters get rough and their little boat is pitching wildly.
2. Role model your own ups and downs. Playfully point out when you forget stuff, lose stuff, make mistakes, get lost, or generally aren’t your most reliable, responsible, magnificently ideal self and that you can “shake it off” and get on with your day (your resiliency).
3. Remind them of their magnificent successes (self-efficacy-even the baby steps) when those voices in their head scream otherwise and their mood betrays this identity crisis in response to a perceived failure. This is how you respect how hard “forced adaptation” is for them: celebrate the baby steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day. An out-of-work steelworker doesn’t become an HVAC or Solar specialist overnight just by showing up to a new workplace.
4. Prepare yourself for these ups and downs. Don’t rigidly expect a straight line of improvement. Respect how hard all this is for them and for you.
5. Give a medication trial a chance. You can always decide against it after an adequate trial. The relief might be worth it even if you are anti-meds. Wait out rough patches while their progress is stabilized. Don’t be in a hurry to up a dosage.
6. Build yourself an extensive support system. Bring as many people as possible into your child’s life who can enjoy them. Don’t worry about abandonment issues, one person can’t fill this bucket, it’s gonna take a team for both of you to get through this.
7. Do your best to expose your kid to only the amount of stress they can handle successfully and develop strategies for the moment those best laid plans go awry (think the mall, Disneyland, getting their hair cut/colored/braided). Intersperse regulating activities (bike riding, ball bouncing, coloring, walking, music, etc.) throughout the day so that when they really need to gather themself back together, they’ve got a proven strategy for exactly that outcome. This is how you build their resiliency.
8. Celebrate when those regulating strategies work! This is where agency and self-efficacy get to shine. This is where hope gets its feet.
9. If you know your ADD/ADHD/AUT kid is masking all day, don’t worry about the quirkiness they show at home. You are the safe place where their idiosyncrasies are welcome even if the outside world isn’t as friendly. Let home be the haven. Find peace for yourself in all the gentle reminders they need when they aren’t frantically masking or making lemonade out of a never ending stream of lemons. There you are again being the rock they need.
You are the magic. Your persistent, fresh-every-morning patient and kind love, is the magic. What do you need to be able to wake up tomorrow to do it again? Figure that out for yourself and put it on the schedule along with everything else you are keeping track of. Promise.
Peace,
Cathy
