Why Tokens Aren't Working

					"If you finish your chores today, you'll earn 5 more tokens and that will help you get to your goal of 25 by the weekend, Billy!" And Billy turns to his mother and says, "It's your damn house, you do the f***ing chores!", slams his door, and remains in his room the rest of the day. Using tokens as rewards or motivators for our adopted or foster children not only does not work, it often makes it worse. There are several reasons for this, all of which stem from one word: Trauma.
Trauma. Any child who has lost his biological family, either temporarily or permanently, has experienced trauma. The event or events that led to this trauma were experiences that rendered the child to feel powerless, hopeless, and/or helpless. The result of such vulnerable feelings shifts a child from a state of love to a state of fear. The child then lives from a belief system that says, "The world is unsafe. I must protect myself. No one can be trusted. I am in charge in order to protect myself. No one, and I mean no one, will tell me what to do!"When a parent is raising a child filled with fear already, adding more fear to a child through the threat of not earning tokens, can be completely ineffective and even disastrous. Brain science is showing that when children are in a state of fear, they are not operating out of their rational brains, the neocortex. Instead, they are operating from the limbic system, the emotional brain. Their decisions reflect their emotional state (fear in this example with Billy). Their interpretation of what you say to them will not be processed from a logical, sequential, or reasonable perspective. It will be processed from a perspective of fear and negativity. Thus, what Billy hears from the parent is this, "If you don't finish your chores, you won't get 5 more tokens and that means you are a failure and nobody loves you." Billy thinks in the negative, always. That's what trauma does to children. Additionally, Billy's ability to think sequentially has been compromised by trauma. Trauma happens by surprise, so children like Billy live in a hyper-vigilant place, where they have to live moment by moment. Life happens in the next 15 seconds! There is no future. They are too consumed protecting themselves in the now. They dedicate all their resources to ensuring their survival in this moment. Thus, when a parent says, "...and that will help you get to your goal of 25 by the weekend, Billy!", Billy cannot comprehend this type of sequential logic. In his world, the weekend does not even exist...there is no future. Logical and sequential language becomes confusing and irritating to him. The result is that Billy becomes more unsettled and his negative behaviors intensify. Children with histories of severe trauma literally do not have the wiring for sequential thinking in their brains because when the traumatic event(s) happened, they experienced chaos and overwhelm. Their worlds became scattered and disorganized. Nothing made sense. All stability was gone. Because this all happens during the developmental years of a child's life, the developing brain becomes wired in a haphazard and fragmented way. Additionally, the memory of the traumatic event gets stored in fragments. Billy's understanding of the world is not sequentially based and the result is that he has difficulties understanding "how the world works." This leaves Billy in a disorganized and dysregulated state until the trauma can be processed and released and until he can learn to understand the world in reality. Using tokens, point charts, stickers, or any other type of behavioral intervention does not address these deeper issues. These behaviorally based techniques are surface solutions. It's like putting a Band-Aid on a patient who is bleeding internally. Solution. What children like Billy need first is understanding. As parents, we have to start by understanding why Billy does what he does...why he reacts the way he reacts. We have to begin to trust that what our children do is perfectly logical--logical to them. When Billy says, "It's your damn house, you do the f***ing chores!", we need to get past the attitude, the cursing, and the defiance in order to get to the heart of the matter. We all agree this is inappropriate and needs to be changed, however if you try to correct Billy in the moment, you will find yourself getting sucked back into an all too familiar vortex of negativity and resistance. Read the meaning behind the words. What Billy really is saying is, "I lost my home. Nothing will ever substitute this lose, not even this home. I don't really belong here and I don't want to even try to belong here because then I would be at risk of losing again. I can't take any responsibility because that would mean I am placing myself in a position of being vulnerable again. And I can't afford to do that. It is too painful. It's much safer to argue and resist." Billy needs to experience what it feels like to be in a safe and loving relationship, above all other lessons he needs to learn. People in his past did not take responsibility for him, so he is naturally going to be resistant to taking responsibility in return. Focus on getting Billy back into a place of safety and back into a place of security before expecting him to pleasantly adhere to the requirements of your household. Use chores as an opportunity to build relationship and focus on the process of getting the chores complete. Offer to do the chores with him in order to create time with him. If he is still resistant, offer to do it for him, while he hangs out with you. Use this time just to connect, even if it means he is not helping. That will come later. Trust that if you focus on the relationship, Billy will eventually shift back to a place of helping when he gets more secure and more settled. Additionally, Billy needs to go back developmentally and learn how to think logically and sequentially. He most likely is not "just going to pick it up." It needs to learn to think in reality and rewire his brain to understand the logical flow of how the world operates. Billy needs instruction on learning that "if A happens, then B will follow, and that will result in C happening." This instruction cannot happen in the moment like in the beginning example; he is too tied to it emotionally. Billy has to be an observer in the instruction, not in the lead role where his fear will create resistance. There are various children's learning tools to teach sequential thinking and problem solving skills by reading stories or using picture cards. Using tools like these removes Billy from his own story and his own fears. They create needed distance (safety). Continual repetition of these teachings can help Billy to eventually learn how to integrate this thinking back into his own life. Yes, the "real" world does work on more of a token/reward system, but Billy is not ready for this real world...yet. Shifting your focus and your interpretation of Billy's negative behaviors will, ironically, better prepare him for the real-world in the years to come rather than what was shown with the opening example. Billy needs emotional safety, patience, and understanding to help him heal and to help him redefine his perspective of how the world works. In short, Billy needs your full abiding love instead of tokens of your love.
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Dare to Love, and Help for Billy.

Giving Your Children Their Story

When Siblings Become Traumatized

					Q: For the past three years, our 16-year-old daughter, Jackie, has had to deal with the complete chaos of her younger adopted sister who was severely traumatized before we adopted her. Jackie was an only child before my husband and I adopted and my world revolved around Jackie. We lived a relatively peaceful, fun, and happy life. All of that drastically changed once her sister entered our family. I realize now that Jackie has been traumatized by the disruption, fear, and struggles our family has endured. What can I do to help my daughter, without dismissing the trauma she has gone through?
A: You're exactly right when your say Jackie's trauma of living with a severely traumatized younger sister cannot be dismissed. In fact, her experience needs to be maximized and brought to the surface in order for her to find healing. Jackie needs the emotional space to be heard and to be understood. However, listening to your daughter's challenges can easily evoke feelings of guilt, shame, and perhaps, resentment in you. When this happens, all too often, parents inadvertently stop listening and work to minimize or stop their child's pain, closing off this child's needed opportunity to have a voice. The first place to start is to realize that you cannot fix Jackie's experiences from the past three years. What is, is. Yet, what you can do is work to understand her experiences (getting into her shoes) and giving her the time, patience, and emotional space to discharge ALL of her feelings. It takes being willing to commiserate with her and allowing her to express her story, not just at the cognitive level, but at the emotional level. Absorbing her pain means not responding in a defensive or a minimizing manner and not giving her solutions for the moment (that can come later). A conversation might sound something like this: Mom: "Sweetheart, there is something that I haven't recognized about your life. I haven't seen how difficult it has been for you since your sister came home. For the last three years, especially when she came home, I probably ignored you sometimes, I didn't pay the same amount of attention to you, and I wasn't there for you." Jackie: "You just care for her more than you do for me!" Mom: "Is that what it feels like?" Jackie: "Yes! She gets ALL the attention. You sleep with her, you cater to her every need, and you spend all your time with her." Mom: "I do. And where does that leave you?" Jackie: "With NOTHING! Everything I ever had is gone. I'm MAD. I'm so tired of her. I'm tired of her meltdowns. I want it to go back to the way it was before she was here. I don't want it to be this way." Mom: "I hear you, honey. Tell me more. Tell me how hard this has been for you because I've expected you to be the grown up in this. Tell me how that's not fair to you." Jackie: "It isn't fair. She embarrasses me. She can't do anything. WE can't do anything and our whole life is centered around everything that SHE ever does. We can't do anything we used to do. Everything is different. I just want it to go back; I just want it to go back to the way it was before." Mom: "I know....." (quietly pausing and working to stay present with her daughter) Jackie: "I'm angry." Mom: "Are you angry at me and dad for doing this? Tell me. I can handle your anger. I want you to give it all out to me. I haven't known how angry you are at me...I'm okay with it. Tell me 'I'm mad at you, mom!'" Jackie: "I'm AM mad at you! I'm mad at everything. I hate that you and dad did this to me. Why didn't you love me enough not to mess up my entire life??!!?" This conversation might need to continue for a while, each time with mom "dancing" with whatever her daughter says in return, allowing her daughter to lead the conversation. Yet, the most important part of such a dialogue is that it happens with emotional intensity, at the heart level. Allowing Jackie the safety of a parent who is present and working to just listen, will allow her to discharge her anger, pain, and frustration now and not in the heat of a difficult moment when her sister is melting down. But perhaps you are saying that you've tried this and these types of conversations happen over and over without movement forward. If this is the case, then you have to dig deeper. Are you stopping your daughter at any level? Are you really able to handle her anger and pain? What feelings inside of you are coming up when she is expressing? Guilt? Fear of the future? Helplessness? Feeling the depth of your child's pain in these moments, coupled with your own dark feelings that have not been honored or expressed, will shut you down. Your daughter will feel this. Thus, her expression is not being heard and she stays stuck in her healing process. When this is the case, conversations like the one above will keep looping and looping, keeping everyone in a state of victimhood. You have to allow your pain to be felt, honored, and understood. In order for you to feel your child's pain, you have to feel your own pain first. This can be scary. It may seem that if you feel the depth of pain within you, opening up the floodgates, you won't be able to parent effectively and you won't be able to pull it together. Ironically, this is exactly what keeps parents from being able to parent the way their children need them to. Parents have to go deep within the caverns of their own hearts. They have to own and acknowledge their own pain. Parents have to stay in their hearts; that is where their children are living. Effective parenting ultimately comes from self-love, self-discovery, and self-understanding. Love yourself through your pain in order to get to the depth of your child's pain. Healing resides within this powerful dynamic. And remember, it isn't always about "fixing" the situation with your child. The "fixing" comes from listening, giving your child a voice, and simply being present. Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Dare to Love, and Help for Billy.

Motivating a Lazy Child

				Q: How does being extremely selfish fit into the trauma issue? Last Sunday evening, it became very obvious that my teenage daughter was not going to lift a finger to help with our Sunday family dinner when our other children and extended family were all helping out. She said she was tired. A: It fits in perfectly. When children are in survival mode or simply overwhelmed, they feel as if they have to protect themselves and
create safety for themselves. It is all about self-protection. They seek peace and peace comes from shutting down from the world. It is actually a brilliant strategy: shut down the world and you reduce the stress in your life, you deactivate the stimulus of the environment, and your nervous system has a chance to calm down. Unfortunately for those around a child in this type of self-protection mode, this brilliant strategy makes the child look rude, selfish, and lazy. In order to stay in a place of love, understanding, and tolerance as a parent for this type of behavior in your child (especially around extended family members), you have to ask yourself, "What is driving my child’s behavior?" Too often, we approach our children asking the wrong question of "How do I get my child to change her behavior?". If you ask the wrong question, you'll get the wrong answer. In this specific situation, if you only focus on the behavior alone, it will look as if your daughter is being lazy and selfish. By pushing her to change her behavior, you will come off to her as nagging and lecturing. This will only serve to increase her stress, thus pushing her further into her shut-down state. Ironically, you will actually create the exact result which you were trying to avoid. Instead, work on the core issue: OVERWHELM. Moving a child out of a state of overwhelm happens within the context of the relationship. Focus on the relationship. Also recognize that family get-togethers, while fun, are stressful. Friends, family, and more social interaction can overwhelm a child who struggles with relationships. While I'm an advocate for families, too much family outside of the nucleus family structure can be too much for many children. Their nervous systems are not equipped to handle the increase in noise, interactions, and stress of being expected to "behave." To solve this issue, do proactive work and develop a plan with your daughter. This is a child who needs you to join her and to assist her in order to keep her from automatically going into overwhelm. Shutting down is an automatic response; she doesn't have control over it. It doesn't happen at a conscious level. Helping her to create an awareness around this reaction, as well as a plan of how to deal with it in the future, is your responsibility as a parent of a child of trauma. When life gets busy, loud, and unpredictable, tell her you've noticed she doesn't seem to be as happy. Invite her to reflect about how she felt during last Sunday night's dinner and let her express herself honestly and openly. Beware, though, she may blame you for having too many people over (for example, "Why did you invite them, anyway, you know I don’t like them!" or "Sunday night dinner is stupid anyway; I'd rather be in my room or be with my friends."). You don’t have to defend your decisions or try to convince her why Sunday night dinner is important. Explore the real issue: it's too much for her and it is threatening. Say something like, "Sunday dinner isn't your favorite so maybe we can figure out a plan to help make it better. If it gets to be too much, at any time, how about you go for a walk and if you want me to go with you, I’d love to - just the two of us." You can also set the expectation that you need her to help out, but offer to help her. "I know it can feel like it's too much energy to help with the dinner or with clean-up, but what if you and I worked together? You don't have to be alone and overwhelmed anymore. I want to be here to support you and help keep your body from shutting down. Can you let me help you?" "Beyond Consequences" doesn’t mean a child can do anything she wants to. Children need boundaries; boundaries create emotional safety. Children need us to set the bar of what is expected, as well. However, due to the sensitivity of our children, it has to be done with love, kindness, and compassion. Think about it as merging the strengths of Mr. Rogers (gentleness, compassion, understanding) with those of General Patton (strong, courageous, determined).
Perhaps you're reading these suggestions and thinking, "That would be fine if she were five, but she's fifteen! Mr. Rogers is for little kids; when is it her turn to grow up and take responsibility?" Your daughter has already proven that she can't get out of overwhelm and she isn't able to take responsibility yet, at least on her own. Expecting her to simply dig deeper internally and uncover a vast source of willpower just isn't realistic. You can continue to battle it out, which is exactly what will happen if you approach it from the perspective of her being lazy and rude. It is never the facts of the situation that create frustration; it is the interpretation of the facts. For example: Fact. Your daughter isn't helping out. Interpretation. Choose one: (1) She is lazy, rude, and choosing to be disrespectful. (2) She is overwhelmed; shutting down from an automatic response controlled subconsciously by her nervous system, and needs help finding her way out in order to create a new pattern that will equip her for the future. The first interpretation perceives only the negative and puts 100% of the responsibility on the child. It is her job to change. You hold your ground as the parent in charge (General Patten without Mr. Rogers) and she is the one required to take action and change. This interpretation will keep your parent/child relationship in a "me against her" power struggle. The second interpretation sheds light on the truth about what is driving her behavior. The change in behavior shifts to a focus on improving your relationship with her. It focuses on how you can help your child, who is overwhelmed, get out of overwhelm, not go deeper into it. It takes courage to do something different. Trust that love and relationship, coupled with setting expectations and boundaries, will be the solution to getting the tasks at hand completed. Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Dare to Love, and Help for Billy.

Going Beyond the Behaviors: How to Heal from the Impact of Early Trauma

In order to understand the meaning of tall, we need to understand the meaning of short.  To know if something is hot, we must be familiar with something cold.  Likewise, good is relative to bad, wet is relative to dry, and happy is relative to sad.  The same is true in order to understand the impact of early childhood trauma and abuse on a child.  We need to first understand the impact of positive early childhood experiences in order to understand the impact of negative early childhood experiences.  With the comparison of this information, we can have insight into knowing how to parent and connect with a child who experienced early childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect.

            This article is designed first to give you the information of what happens when children are raised in environments of love and attunement and then to give you information on how to re-create interactions with an adopted child whose early life experiences were void of these positive experiences and tainted by trauma and abuse.  In order to heal the broken, we must first know what it looks like unbroken.  Tools for the adoptive parent are given in order to empower you as a parent to overcome, with your child, the effects of toxic caregiving many adopted children experience in orphanages or foster homes.

The Right Brain. 

The first relationship an infant is designed to experience is the relationship with his mother.  This relationship begins in the womb and is designed to continue at a high level of intensity for at least the next three years of the child’s life.  It is in these first three years that amazing development happens due to his mother’s attention, attunement, devotion, and connection with him.

            John Bowlby, considered the Father of Attachment Theory, identified this relationship between mother and child as critical to the development of a child’s ability to relate to others during his entire lifespan.  Bowlby stated that early life experiences create imprints that influence a child’s capacity to maintain healthy and secure relationships as an adult.  New research from neurological science reinforces this concept and shows that these early life experiences literally influence the development of a child’s neurological system and influence the circuit wiring of his brain. 

            According to Dr. Allan Shore, the “King” of affect regulation, the development of a child’s brain occurs primarily in the right brain the first few years of  life.  The right brain holds the capacity for emotional and nonverbal information processing while the left brain holds the capacity for language and logical processing.  Thus, for the infant and toddler, with no or limited language skills, communication happens primarily in the right brain.  These experiences occur at the emotional level, not at the cognitive or “thinking” level. 

            It is interesting to note that as adults, we operate from mainly our left brains.  We think logically and we use words to express ourselves—all left brain functions.  Yet, our babies and children are working from the opposite side of the brain.  If you observe a mother with her infant, she has shifted out of her left brain and into her right brain.  How logical is it to say, “Goo-goo-gaa-gaa?”  Yet, when seen in the context of the parent-child relationship, it is perfectly acceptable and, in fact, necessary, in order to connect with this a child because the child’s right brain needs emotional experiences. 

            As adults, it takes shifting back into our right brain, getting outside of being the adult, and meeting our child where he is at in order to create a healthy relationship.  As adoptive parents, we need to realize that the bond we are trying to build with our children, at whatever age, needs to happen at the emotional level first.  If we allow our children to experience what they missed with us in their early years—parenting from our right brains and being emotionally available and attuned—we will be creating an environment for healing and the development of meaningful relationships with our children.

             

Types of Communication. 

When a young child communicates with his mother, he experiences her being predictable and manipulatable.  For instance, if the baby smiles, his mother smiles back.  If the baby cries, his mother attends to him in a soft and soothing tone in order to calm him.  The child’s communication, while non-verbal, is used to make connection with his mother. 

There are three main forms of non-verbal communication prevalent between young children and their caregivers.  First, mothers and babies communicate through visual and facial expressions.  The child is reading his mother’s face and vise-versa, the mother is reading her child’s face.  The baby smiles, the mother smiles.  Through this communication, the baby develops a sense of coherence in his feelings.  If the baby smiles and the mother frowns and becomes upset, the baby becomes confused and distorted in his understanding of feelings.

Second, the mother and child make connection through physical touch and with gestures.  Think of the pleasant sensation you have when you touch a baby’s skin.  This is an important part of positive communication between parent and child.  The skin is the largest organ in the body.  It needs physical stimulation that is pleasant and enjoyable. This helps develop the child’s sensory system.  Children who are not touched or held are at risk of having sensory integration difficulties.

Third, the parent-child connection happens through the auditory senses whereby the mother’s tone of voice influences the child’s receptivity to his mother’s verbal communication.  The baby does not have the capacity to understand his mother’s words and vocabulary, thus the baby is comprehending verbal communication solely through his mother’s emotional tone of voice.  It is not what the mother is saying, but how she is saying it.  This verbal communication is essentially a function of the right brain, the feeling brain, not the left brain, the cognitive brain.

Through these non-verbal communications, the attachment system is being created by both the child and the mother.  In this attachment system, the mother is helping the child regulate his states of stress and fear.  The mother who attends to her child’s negative states is helping her child shift back into a positive state.  This is known as “affect synchrony.”  Affect synchrony is the regulatory means for developing and maintaining positive emotional states within the relationship of emotional communication.  Positive states are amplified and maximized for the child while negative states are minimized and neutralized for the child.

Regulatory Difficulties.

As babies and children experience these types of loving and calming interactions, their systems learn how to handle high levels of both positive and negative feelings.  Their internal neurological systems become equipped to calm down on their own.  Essentially, they begin to develop the ability to self-regulate. 

            For a child who misses these early positive experiences due to trauma, abuse, or neglect, he lacks the ability to read facial expressions and to feel a sense of internal security.  If his cries for help were either met with negative reactions from his parent, as in the case of abuse, or ignored by his parent, as in the case of neglect, the child quickly shifts from living in a state of love and peace to a state of fear and terror.  When children miss having the experience of a loving parent or caregiver who helps them calm down, their systems stay in a state of stress, unable to regulate back down to a calm state.  The result is a child who is very sensitive to stress and lacks the regulatory ability to calm down on his own.     

In severe cases, children living in these environments reach a state of absolute terror and plummet to a state of survival—life or death.  Their nervous systems remain in a constant state of stress and hyper-vigilance, unable to predict what type of reaction they are going to receive with each cry for help. Some children, characteristically those who are neglected, simply stop communicating and shut down from the world.

            Healing for these children happens when the adoptive parent can recreate positive experiences in order to give the children the experience of being soothed through the parent-child relationship.  The child’s nervous system needs to experience the state of calm arousal instead of staying in a state of perpetual hyper-arousal .  It takes parenting from a new understanding that says, “Children’s behaviors are a cry for regulation—a cry for relationship, not a cry for punishment and consequences.” 

The child does not know how to say, “Hey, mom!  I’m completely stressed out here!  I’m scared, in fact, I’m quite terrified because my world has been turned upside down and I need your help in soothing me-NOW!”  The only communication the child knows at this point in his development is misbehavior.  Thus, instead of parents working to extinguish and change the child’s negative behaviors, it becomes clear that the child needs to be soothed and comforted by his parent.  The child needs connection and needs interactions with his parents that provide safety, love, and security.

It takes going beyond the behaviors in order to create this necessary and essential parent-child bond.  As adoptive parents, we have to learn the rhythms and flows of our children and then modify our own to fit into a parent-child matching.  (For more information on how to do this while at the same time teaching children appropriate behaviors and maintaining boundaries, read Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control available at www.beyondconsequences.com).  The focus of parenting then shifts from the goal of changing behaviors to building relationships.  This is the essence of creating healing and safe homes in order to stabilize our children and prepare them for a future of peace, joy, and abundance. 

In the past, parenting focused on ways to decrease negative behaviors and negative emotions.  However, with this new understanding of brain development, we now see that parenting is about increasing positive emotions and creating positive experiences.  Parenting emotionally healthy children is about joy, not fear-based punishments.

Interactive Repair.

Interactive repair is the key to helping children heal from the effects of early childhood trauma.  Repair to the nervous system and to the child’s sense of self, safety, and security comes through interactions with his parent.  As the relationship develops between the two, through loving, safe, and kind experiences, the child learns to tolerate negative emotions and eventually develops his ability to self-regulate.  The key to this is the emotional availability of the parent and the intimacy offered by the parent, which is the central growth feature for all children. 

When the parent is calm, regulated, in a state of peace, and open to connecting emotionally with the child, this influences the child’s ability to shift into this state of regulation and calm.  Interactive repair is essentially a body to body connection.  In terms of these interactions, both the parent and the child are co-regulating their central nervous systems and their autonomic nervous systems. At a physiological level, the body is changing.  Cortisol levels are dropping; oxytocin is increasing.  Their endocrine systems and their immune systems are being regulated by the nature of their relationship.

Creating a Healing Environment.

            The number one person to help your adopted child is you.  Every interaction you have with your child is a healing moment—a moment for interactive repair—24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.   This is especially true during the difficult interactions when your child is demonstrating difficult behaviors. That is when he is most “raw” and needing you the most.  These are the healing moments we have traditionally missed!  Instead of punishing the behavior, step inside your child’s pain, join him in relationship, and give him understanding and the opportunity to experience love and regulation through your relationship with him.  Being mindful that his behaviors are requests for connection is essential to this process. 

            Be proactive in working to create experiences that build connection.  Here is a list of playful activities for creating secure attachments:

1. Carrying your baby
2. Rocking your child
3. Feeding your child
4. Talking (It’s not so much as what you say as how you say it—tone of voice)
5. Playing – letting the child lead the play experience
6. Hugging
7. Massage and gentle touch
8. Cuddling
9. Co-bathing (when age appropriate)
10.  Swimming (skin to skin contact)
11. Creating a life book
12. Giving your child his story
13. Playing “hide and seek” (recreating the coming and going experience)
14. Tickling
15. Wrestling (great for dads!)

Face to face play experiences feed the wiring of the brain.  Traditionally, we have underestimated the importance of play experiences in early human development.  For many children who have suffered trauma, abuse, and neglect, they do not know how to play.  Create these play experiences and you’ll be creating experiences that can truly repair the missing pieces from his past by changing his physiological system, decreasing his stress state, improving his relationship with you, and ultimately, creating the essential missing ingredient in his life:  joy!

National Adoption Month Article #2

 Every November, a Presidential Proclamation launches activities and celebrations to help build awareness of adoption throughout the nation. Thousands of community organizations arrange and host programs, events, and activities to share positive adoption stories, challenge the myths, and draw attention to the thousands of children in foster care who are waiting for permanent families. For the whole month of November I will be sharing some of my most popular articles along with various specials. Giving parents the resources they need to become a successful parent is something we are passionate about at Beyond Consequences Institute.This article was originally published in the Journal of Social Work but a great read for any adoptive parent.

Issues Facing Adoptive Mothers of Children with Special Needs

Click here to read the article:

http://www.beyondconsequences.com/issues.pdf

Beyond Consequences 101 - A Guide for Your Relative

				Q: I need a quick way to explain to my parents (who will be visiting during the holidays) what is meant by "Parenting Beyond Consequences." They don't seem to understand the way I'm parenting and are quite critical of me. They aren't interested in the neuroscience or the brain research. They're simply coming from the old school of the basics, so any help you have would be appreciated!
A: Beyond Consequences can be a difficult concept to understand and to "wrap your brain around" when you've been living in a more traditional mindset for years, even generations. Love is about meeting people where they are and respecting their perspectives. Understanding that your parents are looking through the lens of the "old school" is the first place to start. From such a point of reference, this model is sometimes interpreted as if you're coddling or babying your child. The following explanation is written in more general terms in order to help a grandparent, relative, or anyone, begin to make a shift. Remember to be patient with them; you're shifting an entire paradigm and framework of interpretation. Children need unconditional love and unconditional acceptance from their parents; we all know this and believe this. However, do we ever stop to consider how so many of the traditional parenting techniques accepted in our culture work contrary to this primal goal? Traditional parenting techniques that involve consequences, controlling directives, and punishment are fear-based and fear-driven. They have the ability to undermine the parent-child relationship and because they are tied into behavior, children easily interpret these actions to mean, "If I'm not good, I am not lovable." Thus, children often build a subconscious foundation that says that love and approval is based off of performance. Parenting from a love-based paradigm means going beyond our children's behavior and beyond consequences to first see that negative behavior is a form of communication and that negative behavior is a response to stress. If we see the kicking and screaming child as one who is having difficulty regulating due to an overflow of feelings and stress, we can learn to stay present with the child in order to help him modulate these overwhelming feelings and overabundance of stress and thus, help him to build his regulatory system. This is a child who has been "emotionally hijacked." Emotions are not logical or rational; this negative acting-out is the body's natural fear reaction gone awry. Allowing a child emotional space to safely dissipate this energy will then allow him to calm down. As we provide reassurance, unconditional love, and emotional presence for our children, the need to act-out will disappear. Many times our children act-out simply because they do not feel that they are being listened to nor do they feel as if they have been heard. Staying present and reassuring a child that you really are listening to him, can sometimes be enough to help him begin to regulate. The life lesson that the bad behavior is inappropriate does indeed need to be taught and reinforced. However, this life lesson can only happen once the child is fully regulated (when the child is calm) and his cognitive thinking is intact. This is also the time to present alternatives to the negative acting-out behavior. This is how we teach our children instead of punishing them. The definition of discipline is to teach. The more we can stay focused on the relationship with our children and strengthening this relationship instead of controlling it through consequences, logic, and control, the more we will be helping our children learn to work through their stress appropriately. Below are four pointers to going beyond consequences: 1. Just Be Happy!-But I'm not! Did anyone ever tell you, "Just think happy thoughts and it will be okay."? Did it really work? Probably not. Emotions do not simply disappear. If feelings are not acknowledged and released, they are stored and become part of our physical make-up. Research has convincingly shown that being able to express feelings like anger and grief can improve survival rates in cancer patients. With our children, feelings that become stored and "stuffed" become activators for negative behaviors. 2. ALL Feelings are Good Feelings - As parents, it is important for us to understand the necessity of emotional expression, both in teaching it to our children and in modeling it to them. Blocked feelings can inhibit growth, learning, and the building of a trusting relationship between the parent and child. The first step to take is to recognize that ALL emotions are healthy. In our culture, feelings such as joy, peace, and courage are seen as good feelings, yet feelings such as sad, mad, and scared are seen as negative feelings. We must rethink our interpretion so this: Negative feelings don't create acting-out behaviors; it is the lack of expression of the negative feelings that creates the acting out. 3. Get to the Core of the Behavior - When children are acting out and being defiant, we need to begin to understand that their behaviors are simply a communication of an dysregulated state that is driving these behaviors. If we simply address the behavior, we miss the opportunity to help children express and understand themselves from a deeper regulatory and emotional level. We need to help our children build their emotional intelligence. Start by modeling basic feeling words to your child. Keep it simple and teach the five basic feeling words: sad, mad, bad, scared, and happy. Even the youngest of children can learn to say, "I'm mad!" When the toddler is throwing his toys or the teenager is having his version of a tantrum, encourage him at that moment to get to the core of the behavior through emotional expression. Remember:…it really isn't about the behavior. They really do know better than to do these things. 4. Responding vs. Reacting - So the next time your child becomes defiant, talks back, or is simply "ugly" to you, work to be in a place not to react to the behavior, but respond to your child. Respond to your child in an open way-open to meeting him in his heart and helping him understand the overload of feelings that are driving the behaviors. He doesn't need a consequence or another parental directive at that moment; he just needs you to be present with him (this does not mean you agree with the behavior, it means you are not correlating his behavior with your acceptance of him as a person). As your child learns to respond back to you positively through the parent-child relationship, he won't have the need to communicate through negative behaviors anymore. You'll both have more energy for each other, building a relationship that will last a lifetime and more energy to learn how to do it differently the next time. For more parenting tips, check out some of my videos on Youtube:       1.)  Sibling Rivalry       2.)  The Missing Piece       3.)  The Parent's Stress       4.)  Chores       5.)  Overwhelm Happy hoidays and remember, it's not a behavioral problem; it's a regulatory problem! Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, Dare to Love, and Help for Billy.

Suffering Consequences or Avoiding Consequences?

					Q: If a child is not taught through consequences, how will he ever learn to live in a world filled with consequences? A: When you are teaching your children to drive a car, do you teach them how to get into an accident so they are prepared for one in the future? I hope not! Instead, we teach our children how to be defensive drivers in order to prevent and be free of accidents.
This analogy demonstrates the idea of teaching our children consequences because we live in a world filled with consequences. Think about this important concept: Instead of teaching our children how to suffer consequences, we need to teach them how to stay regulated in order to avoid consequences. The first is reactive parenting. The second is proactive parenting. Reactive parenting is characterized by consequences and control that is focused solely on behavior in order to have compliant children who do as they are told. Proactive parenting is teaching our children how to stay regulated during stressful times in order to develop their own internal control mechanisms. Reactive parenting leaves children living in a fear-based world, where they make decisions and choices based on the consequences of their actions, rather than making decisions based on how their choices can help or benefit those around them. Decisions are made based on "What will happen to me if I do this?" This is a limiting way to get our children to think. Proactive parenting allows children to live within a much more open internal framework of love and acceptance, giving them the space and freedom to make decisions based on their own internal moral compass. Parenting beyond consequences, logic, and control helps give our children the practice during childhood to develop their own internal controls. This prepares them to be able to function at a higher level of consciousness when they are adults. It gives them the ability to live beyond the fear of consequences. Living in fear limits us, makes life harder than it should be, and creates unnecessary barriers. The dominant belief in our culture is that we need external measures in order to keep us living an ethical and moral life. The deeper truth is that we have the ability to develop all of this within ourselves through adopting core values and through our ability to connect with others in loving and respectful relationships. Core values that are given the space to have a voice determine our behavior. Loving relationships create desire and internal motivation to live by these values. When we are connected with others in safe relationships, we have empathy and are in touch with our feelings. We are able to live far beyond our primal needs whereby we can tap into the deeper levels within us that distinguish us from all other creatures on this planet. Consequences, as the primary motivator and enforcer from parents, teach fear and rejection. This fear and rejection then transcends to teaching the child self-rejection. "If my parents don't love me, then I must not be worthy. I must not deserve love." Self-acceptance, self-validation, and self-worth are absent or limited within the child's framework. Yet, these are qualities that we want to instill in our children based on who they are, not on what they do or how they act. Our children need to know they are intrinsically valuable, worthy, and deserving of unconditional love. When these qualities make up the blueprint of their personality and their inner selves, they do not need external consequences to keep them within the parameters of society. They develop much stronger boundaries and a powerful sense of right and wrong from within themselves. We figure out very early in life that the external consequences used to enforce boundaries only apply if you get caught. It is a tragedy to think about how much time and energy is spent making sure we do not get caught in order to avoid consequences. We are all guilty of speeding down the street and then hitting the brakes when we see a police car. What would it take to shift your thinking to that of, "I'm going to go the speed limit in order to be safe for myself and for those around me," instead of, "I'm going to go the speed limit because I can't afford a ticket or for my insurance rates to increase"? It is self-love that breeds respect for ourselves and for others. Self-love and self-respect keep us in a place of integrity and keep us moving forward in our lives. Self-motivation, self-discipline, and self-awareness are all by-products of this love for self. These internal controls, not consequences created by parents or society, are the original design to keep us on the straight and narrow path. We need to stop living our lives in a pool of fear. It keeps us treading water in the shallow end, constricted and limited and it makes our lives complicated and turbulent. Love allows us to swim in the deep end, free to live a fulfilling life and free to think beyond consequences in order to dream big and live in peace, abundance, and happiness. Love allows us to develop the ability to self-regulate in times of stress in order to stay calm enough to make the right decisions and choices. Through our parenting, we have the ability to give our children the gift of self-regulation so they may live productive, happy, and abundant lives in a world filled with consequences. Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, and Dare to Love

Ask the Wrong Question, Get the Wrong Answer

		Asking the Right Question After reading parenting book after parenting book, I have come to one very important conclusion. We have been asking the wrong question. We have been asking, "How do I get my child to change his behavior?" The focus has been on moving a child from negative behavior to positive behavior. You know the routine: sticker charts, taking away privileges, responding only to nice talk, rewarding good behavior with a prize or that treasured new toy, and the like. Are these working? Do they create lasting change or do you find yourself constantly digging into your bag of "tricks" to find something new and innovative because the old techniques are not
working anymore? Or worse, do you find that all those tricks and techniques you try actually make the situation between you and your child worse? Ask the wrong question and you will get the wrong answer. This is why those sticker charts are not working. In order to get the solution, we need to start asking the right question. Children are emotional beings. They are deeply emotional and spiritual creatures that we have somehow come to view as "little rational and logical thinking adults." But this is not who they are. The right question needs to stem from the understanding that children operate from an emotional platform, not a behavioral framework. Thus, the question we need to start asking ourselves is, "What is driving my child’s behavior?" When we begin to ask this question, we switch our focus to that which is at the core of our children's negative behavior. At this core is a state of fear, pain, and/or overwhelm that comes from a child being outside of his window of stress tolerance. Children do not act out from a conscious place. It goes much deeper than this. As adults, we have shifted into a place of intellect, rationalization, and logical thinking because it is a safer place from which to operate. Logic is much more predictable than emotions, thus more comfortable. As human beings, we have a need for certainty. This certainty is found through intellectual thinking and rational thought. For many of us, our childhood experiences moved us into this realm of thinking because feelings of anger, fear, and sadness became unsafe and people got either emotionally and/or physically hurt. This is exactly why children are in our lives. They are our examples to return us back to our natural state of emotional living. This is where life exists at a deeper and more meaningful level. We find our purpose and our passion for who we are and the reason we are on this planet when we operate out of a state of emotional expression and capture the essence of what distinguishes us from all other mammals on this planet. Our children are in our lives to challenge us to Dare to Love again. In order to connect with who they are, we must shift ourselves back to living from love, not fear; living from emotional expression, not logical thought; and learning the difference between unconditional love and conditional love. Effective and rewarding parenting takes going beyond the behaviors, beyond dishing out consequences, beyond thinking logically, and beyond trying to control our children. It takes putting love into action in a whole new way and connecting with your child at a deep, intrinsic level--a whole new dimension of parenting. Switching your thinking from a behavioral framework to a love-based framework that is focused on emotional connection will not be easy. Daring to love your children beyond consequences, logic, and control, will take courage, faith, commitment, and follow through. When you learn how to put unconditional love into action, you have the power to change any family situation. Parenting through power and authority over our children comes from fear and ultimately undermines a child's ability to trust and relate to both themselves and others. Conversely, parenting through unconditional love and relationship equips our children to develop their own internal sense of control and empowers them to enter the world with a strong sense of self, well-developed love for self, and an ability to relate to others through tolerance, patience, and understanding. It simply starts by asking the right question, "What is driving my child's behavior?" Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Note: This article came from Heather’s best seller, "Dare to Love." For more examples of how to answer this driving question, click here to purchase this empowering book.