It’s been an exhausting weekend, I’m honestly relieved to be going back to my exhausting job, because at least there are rules and guidelines and understood deadlines and just sort of general expectations you can sort of brace yourself for. This parenting kids of trauma thing is NO JOKE.
The last few weekends have actually been pretty great (outside of work) – our family has been doing a decent job of adventuring, spending time together, and getting through the still somewhat stressful days with moments of pleasure. I managed to do not one, but TWO things with people who are not my kids or married to me!
Including spending time with some of the most bad-ass, inspirational, and supportive, women that I am so lucky to have in my life and who don’t even call me out for my sort of crappy job of friendship maintenance.
And against all odds I managed to find time to get a (significantly overdue) great haircut, which included stopping at Sift, a gluten-free bakery that has FOOD I CAN EAT!!
But this weekend was literally a nightmare – at one point I looked at my partner and I said I feel like a character in a movie, there is just no way this is real life.
It was a hard week. Truly, even with reasonably good weekends, it’s been a lot of hard weeks in a row without any breaks in intensity – still feeling like I’m failing at work while simultaneously neglecting my family during the week. And I always think if I can just get through THIS week to the next one, I can get work under control. These are the lies we tell ourselves to keep moving forwards. Each new week comes and it’s just an ugly surprise that should have been anticipated. I got a pretty significant speeding ticket this week – because I am ALWAYS FUCKING LATE because I AM ALWAYS FUCKING BEHIND and ALWAYS DOUBLE-SCHEDULED (and I am NOT a later person). This is my second speeding ticket in three months. Before that, it had been TWENTY YEARS SINCE MY LAST SPEEDING TICKET.
So we weren’t rolling into the weekend with the greatest equanimity. But still the expectations were of a bit of stress and emotional work.
Saturday, we attended a 5.5 hour training on working with children of trauma. We were a little stoked because it was NOT offered by the foster system so we hoped for something a little more practical, a little more advanced, a little more engaging. We dropped the kids off for the day with Auntie and headed over. The first 90 minutes was a really great non-sugar-coated presentation by Dr. Nancy Binford, a neuropsychologist (Ph.D. doctor, not medical doctor!). Neuropsychologists are best know as the people who do a billion tests on a person who claims to have suffered a traumatic brain injury (at least, that’s how I know them).
Dr. Binford said a lot of useful things, like “it’s almost never ADHD”, and “you cannot have ALL of these behavioral diagnoses (ODD, ADHD, etc.) at the same time”. Now, she is speaking to my confirmation bias already, but it’s so NICE to finally hear someone say, in summary, “they throw diagnoses at children of trauma because it is easier to sort them into a box they understand and can medicate”. And, to then note that medication does not WORK in these situations because they are treating a cluster of symptoms not an underlying physiological issue. AND that these diagnoses (ESPECIALLY ODD in children of color) are a pipeline to prison – they treat some symptoms (unsuccessfully) do not teach self-regulation, and these children end up “bad kids” followed by “criminal” adults. She addressed generational trauma and social concerns. Her lecture was better than any of the foster training we have attended in the last 2 years.
Dr. Binford closed her lecture with a statement I have seen frequently, again summarized, that “there is no evidence these children of trauma get better without intervention and help”. BUT she did not say the opposite and no one ever DOES they just leave the question hanging – the question that plagues foster parents day and night – IF WE DO intervene and help, what are the odds our kids can “make it” and have healthy happy lives? I found her afterwards, and she gave the following incredibly depressing answers:
- We really cannot say. There’s a decent change you cannot help these children. Children who are severely neglected during those infant years suffer irreversible damage.
- She believes that humans are “meant to be” with the humans who birthed them. The longing and emotional chaos at adolescence can happen even in children who are adopted at birth my amazing adoptive parents.
- Our job as foster parents is make sure we do each and every thing we can possibly do to intervene and help our children so that if things do not go well, at the moment we have to sever these ties, we know OUR slate is clean – we have no guilt or regrets and we know we did every single thing that we possibly could. (Like I needed MORE pressure towards perfectionism.)
The lecture itself, with the videos, and the information, and the history, and it’s interaction with my our own current lives, was emotional in and of itself. The best part of training and education around trauma effects and behaviors is that it re-centers my parenting in compassion instead of the (very real) every day difficulties and frustrations of life with a child with RAD/trauma. But at the same time, the worst part is that if I truly spend even 10 minutes at a time thinking of the neglect and abuse my child suffered while AN INFANT I just can’t even handle it and I become a person who cries all the time. I had to excuse myself briefly at only 45 minutes in because I just couldn’t stop eye-leaking. But then, to have a person who gave a lecture I respected with science that I have read and believe, to basically give me a diagnosis of “hopeless” was really. . . a lot.
I prefer that people give it to me straight but even so, I don’t entirely believe her. Partly, I don’t think there is enough years of evidence yet of treating the trauma itself – I think we have a lot of evidence of what DOES NOT work. But I just don’t think we have a lot of generational evidence of what CAN WORK to address these both historical (often racial) traumas and the immediate (abuse, neglect, abandonment) traumas. And, so far, what I’ve seen of MY kid, and through five years of therapy with my partner, is that we can’t fix our brains that were broken by trauma, but we can grow through and around it to become the people we want to be, who can create healthy mechanisms to deal with our PTSD trigger responses.
The rest of the training day was kind of “eh”. A presentation on neurofeedback training was so unengaging I just gave up and read my kindle; a presentation on EMDR therapy was somewhat interesting but wasted a ton of time showing a person working through her trauma that (a) was for sure terrible to experience but had an ENTIRELY HAPPY ENDING; and, (b) her positive mentation was rooted in god and the belief that “god has all control” which does nothing for me or pretty much anyone I know; a presentation on nutrition was just kind of lame and could be easily summed up by “just give your kid water to drink” instead of crap; and the presentation on Occupational Therapy was too basic for where we are and really most useful for teachers. The final presentation about movement was pretty good, had yoga moves that were easily implemented and helpful at our house already, good handouts on things like “heavy work”, and good websites for family meditation, yoga, and general mindfulness. It was an exhausting and emotionally draining day, but was actually tailored to children struggling with trauma, was useful for us, AND got us almost half our yearly training in one sitting, so it seemed like a good use of time.
And then we went to pick up the kids…who had played great at Auntie’s house all day, and it was great to come back and see them, and then X3 just… fell apart… in a complete and entirely overwhelming way. She didn’t rage, she didn’t fight, she just completely dissociated back to infancy right before my eyes in a matter of seconds. When we talk about dissociation today, almost no one means multiple personalities; it’s more commonly used and understood as “a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memory and sense of identity.” We had been told by her day treatment about dissociative episodes she experienced there, but ours had always been in the midst of big anger/rage/fight/trauma, with activation being so intense that getting through it was pure screaming by her and survival by us. Here, I somehow, seriously magically, spotted it immediately and so managed not to escalate, but the calm result of experiencing it WITH HER was entirely overwhelming. First, she hit the ground with a “scratchy back” – this is her usual “upset” symptom, so, it’s always a red flag. Then her eyes went dead. Then she started TWITCHING everywhere. Then language was gone… her face itself actually went soft and LOOKED like a toddler or baby. She couldn’t function. She couldn’t walk without being supported. She could not put on her own coat, or shoes. She could hold my hand and move like a robot, but boneless if left to rest without support and direction (and not like your floppy tantrum child). I did everything I have ever been taught, used every advice I have ever been given, and doing a very intensive touching limb by limb, constant calm voice narration, and alternately squishing her (gently, obviously) we got THROUGH it but it lasted like 45 minutes and it was… HORRIBLE. I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest, while simultaneously staying calm, encouraging, gentle, reassuring.
I should mention that currently, if she can see me and I am not BOTH holding her AND being really FUN X2 screams non-stop. She especially screams if I am hugging or otherwise focused on her big sister. This adds spice to a TOTALLY FUCKED UP SITUATION.
We made it through to dinner. Bath, snuggles, books, bed all ok. I was SURE she would be up at night but she slept totally great! And was totally normal this morning… when we unfortunately had ANOTHER emotional event (adult-family-therapy), during which the kids spent 1.5 hours with grandma. It was the first time they were BOTH with her solo, and it went GREAT!! Such a complete relief.
And then X3 fell apart again. Again, in SECONDS before my eyes the child we are raising just ceased to exist and became this… sassy, verbally limited, horribly confused little girl. She started walking in circles pointing at grandma and asking “Mommy?” OVER. and OVER. Explaining who we are had no effect at all. She couldn’t put on her shoes or coat or remember where we were or where we were going. She kept the ability to walk, and was definitely more like a 2/3 year old instead of an infant or her actual age.
I cried the whole ride home.
The rest of the day had somewhat normal but more extreme – more like last spring – ups and downs. We had one BIG rage flare-up, but she managed, somehow, amazingly, to self-regulate back during very monitored and controlled time-out. We had family dance-party. We read her back-story book and she asked us to use the words “Mommy” and “Daddy” instead of our names when reading it to her, and had me go back and read it that way. She passed out immediately at bedtime – I cannot even imagine how exhausted she is, because I am still considering collapsing on the stairs.
I honestly cannot remember ever being a part of something so painful and overwhelming and so entirely out of my control. Everything I did, every trick I’ve been given, every idea on how to manage it, just kept her STABLE while it was happening, but none of them brought her back to me. I can’t imagine what will happen if this happens at school, or on the bus. Or away from us as she gets older. Or if we are gone overnight and someone is babysitting the kids and has this happen. And it is so disorienting to SEE I cannot even imagine what it is like to EXPERIENCE, and I just have no frame of reference or education or ability around this. And after a lecture about “no hope” I just feel so scared for my peanut – who spends her life so so scared.
I know the trigger, here, which is that she never believes we are coming back and she always wonders if this time when we leave her is “forever” and she is moving to a new family. It’s why we only leave her with a very select few people, either our family or our near-family, because we want her to always know OF COURSE we are coming back, and these people are already always our family. And we HAVE to start moving towards being able to leave the kids, it is necessary to all our lives. We are so lucky that our family is so insanely supportive and, especially, our sisters seem to have a “well, we will just get through it if it happens” mentality. So, we are going to persevere. We are going to ask for therapeutic advice and guidance, and possibly make MORE babysitting appointments to see if we can normalize the situation. But, seriously, WOAH.