Parenting a child that’s been adopted is complicated.  To put the simply.  As you begin to enter the adoption community, unfamiliar words keep repeating: attachment, connection, Trust Based Relational Intervention, cocooning, trauma.  We knew we had our work cut out for us when it came to learning the best way to parent our child.  So when the church offered to send me to a conference on Trauma Competent Caregiving (TCC) to learn to train others, I knew enough to know I didn’t know enough, and said yes.

To say it was eye opening would be an understatement.  It’s hard to boil down 3 full days of information into a few words, but the big things I learned were:  Behavior is the language of a child who has lost his voice.  Children exhibit unwanted behavior (lying, stealing, arguing, defiance, etc) because of the abuse and neglect they have experienced in their short lives.  They learn these behaviors to survive, but also have physical and chemical changes in their brain.  Imagine this scenario: You are driving down the road, and see a police car pull out behind you.  They turn on their lights, and then someone in the car asks you figure out a complicated math problem, to remember where you left something in the house, or to simply have a conversation with you.  Is there anyway you are able to answer those questions in your current state of fear?  These kids live in that constant state of fear chronically.

As amazing as the information was, my big question walking away from the training was this: “Then why in the world does my 5 year old, who has never experienced a day of trauma in his life, behave like a trauma kid?”  I know this sounds like of dramatic, but it is true.  Among my adoptive friends, we ask ourselves a lot “where does trauma stop and personality start?”  It is a complicated question, one that never has an answer.  Thankfully, after more reading and research, I’ve realized it doesn’t really matter.  We can respond to the behavior the same way, no matter whether it’s trauma or personality.  With my son, it’s all personality.

The overall parenting/caregiving philosophy taught by this course is called connection parenting.  In short, you connect before you correct.  While I was familiar with several books such as The Connected Child (highly recommended as a first read for every family caring for an adoptive or foster child), I was thankful to find a few books by Daniel Siegel, which are geared toward non-trauma kids.  No Drama Discipline has helped me bridge the gap to understand why my non-trauma kid has similar behavior.  Spoiled alert: it’s because he’s a kid.

So, what’s the point of all of this?  Two things.  One, if you have a non-trauma kid and constantly feel defeated, frustrated and overwhelmed by your kids behavior, I highly recommend reading the books by Siegel.  They have helped us tremendously.  If you are an adoptive, foster, safe families mom or plan to be one day, please please please immerse yourself in as much connection parenting for trauma kids as possible.  I’d be happy to share lots of resources with you.  I don’t think it was on accident that I ended up at the conference.  I think God wanted me there to share the information with others, which is what I plan to do.  I will start by teaching Trauma Competent Caregiving the second Tuesday of every months at the women’s fellowships at Traders Point (7pm, room 200).  I truly believe this is the best way to care for these kids, and the more people that understand it the better.

I’d love to help education and empower you on your parenting journey.  This stuff is not easy, but I truly believe together