Trauma Tuesday: Abused Adopted Children Who “Mirror” Their Peers
If you are parenting an abused adopted child, particularly a child who experienced trauma between the ages of six and twelve, you might notice that your child “mirrors” his or her peers. The child can be like a chameleon – intellectual with adults, very silly with younger children, and insolent like a particular peer group – depending upon who he is hanging around at the moment. Who your adopted child seems to be is reflective of who he is spending his time with at the moment.
Mirroring is a common phenomenon among abused children. Between the ages of six and twelve, children who are living in functional families are given the freedom and opportunity to take risks as they develop their social skills. They experiment with what works and what doesn’t as they interact with their peers, and then they develop their own style for how to interact with the world.
This process is stunted for children who are living in abusive households. Abusers frequently encourage isolation so that the child will never have the opportunity to tell another person about the abuse. The children are not permitted to experiment with different ways of interacting with others. Instead, they are sent the message that they only exist to meet their abusers’ needs.
As a result, abused children, particularly those living in an abusive environment between the ages of six and twelve, often mirror the behavior of others in order to make sure that they “look right” in their current environment. Children like this can be just like Suzy and Joe, who are nothing like each other. The child knows how to be like anyone except himself.
The child can become anxious if she is put in the position of being with members of two different peer groups at the same time because she does not know which group to mirror. Abused children who mirror can go to great lengths to keep each segment of their lives completely separate from one another.
If you notice that your abused adopted child has an issue with mirroring, try to encourage your child to explore who he or she is apart from anyone else. Your child was born into the world with her own unique personality, but she has buried her uniqueness in an effort to blend in. Help her to discover who she really is behind all of the mirroring.
Related Topic:
- Mirroring Other People’s Behavior after Child Abuse
- Unmet Needs after Child Abuse: Age Six to Twelve
Photo credit: JulieC
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Tags: child abuse, copying others, Foster adoption, Foster care, mirroring others, Older child adoption, Trauma Tuesday, Traumatized children
Thanks for providing another name for this behavior. Our children used Silly Putty, a play-doh type clay, which would provide a copy of whatever it was stuck onto. Therefore, I referred to this syndrome (for lack of a better name) as Silly Putty Syndrome.