Home

Adoption Under One Roof

Covering adoption from every angle, every view, for everyone

Main Menu

  • Home
  • How To Adopt
    • Getting Started With Adoption
    • Adoption Types, Costs, Timeline
    • Hague Intercountry Adoption Treaty
    • Definition of Adoption Terms
  • Resources
    • Foster Care
      • Contests
    • After Adoption
      • Searching for a Birthmother
    • Adoption Statistics
  • Blogs
    • Guest Blogger
      • Dee Thompson
      • Janine
      • Jeanette Schnell
      • John
        • Older Child Adoption
        • humpty series-older child adoption
      • Linda Lach
      • Linny
      • Marjorie Shaw
        • A Legitimate Life: A Forbidden Journey of Self Discovery
      • Michael
      • Patricia Dischler
      • Scrapsbynobody
      • Shelia Davis
      • Susan Metters
    • Adoption Maharishi
    • Amy Adoptee
    • AngelaW
    • Ask An Adoptee
    • FaithA
      • Baby Names
      • Trauma Thursday
      • Trauma Tuesday
    • Foster Mommy
      • Educational Testing and Assessments
      • Friday Activities
    • Julia Fuller
      • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diaries
      • Parenting Mistakes Saturday
    • JulieC
      • Friday Funnies
      • How To Tuesday
        • How To Tuesday
      • Hump Day Hippie
      • JulieC's Sites to See
    • LisaS
      • Chanuka is not Christmas with a twist, teaching your adopted child's friends about Chanukah,
      • Corrupt and Questionable Adoption Agencies
      • Making the World a Better Place
      • Running With Scissors
    • Sandra Hanks Benoiton
  • Polls
  • About Us
    • Blog and Comment Posting Policy
    • Contact Us
Home Blogs FaithA's blog

Adopted Child and Self-Injury: Advice to Adoptive Parents

  • View
  • What links here
Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 03/06/2008 - 21:09
  • burning
  • cutting
  • headbanging
  • self harm
  • self-injury
  • Traumatized children

Over the past few days, I have discussed a number of topics surrounding self-injury (also known as self-harm or self-mutilation) and the adopted child. This post wraps up this topic. I would like to leave you with some advice about helping an adopted child who struggles with self-injury.

My most important advice is do not forbid your child to self-injure. Your child is using self-injury to manage very painful emotions. If you take away this coping tool before providing your child with a replacement coping strategy, you risk your child doing even more harm to himself, perhaps even permanent harm. Do not force your child into a situation where she starts cutting her skin in places that you cannot see that run a greater risk of permanent injury.

The self-injury is a symptom of very deep emotional pain. If you keep your focus on the behavior, then you are missing the bigger picture. Also, I have learned through experience that you give energy to whatever you are thinking about. If you put your child in a position of constantly thinking about the self-injury, then the urges to self-injure will only grow stronger.

Instead, start by focusing on ways to minimize the damage. Talk to your child about banging his head into a pillow instead of a wall. Encourage your child to "self-injure" with a red magic marker and see if that can replace a blade.

Next, start adding emotional coping tools to your child's toolbox. Teach your child ways to cope with pain, such as writing in a diary, talking with you about it, watching a movie, exercising, or anything else that appeals to the child.

Finally, do all you can to teach your child about how to process emotions. As your child pours the pain out of his soul, he will have less pain to "bang" back inside or "burn" into his body. The only long-term way to stop self-injuring is to heal the pain that is driving the behavior.

Related topic:

Aftereffects of Childhood Abuse: Self-injury

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

  • FaithA's blog
  • Login or register to post comments
LisaS's picture

Faith, this is such good

Submitted by LisaS on Thu, 03/06/2008 - 22:11.

Faith, this is such good information. I feel so badly for the children who are in such terrible pain.

Lisa S.

  • Login or register to post comments
KatjaMichelle's picture

other options

Submitted by KatjaMichelle on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 11:44.

Other replacement behaviors could include snapping a rubber band around one's wrist and there's another one that involves ice water but I'm drawing a blank at the moment I'll look through my notes from our DBT overview once I get to work. I believe it's running your hand under really cold water until it get to the point you can't take it anymore but I'm not sure if that was the extent of it of if there was more.

  • Login or register to post comments
FaithA's picture

Good suggestions

Submitted by FaithA on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 12:01.

Both of those are good suggestions. The purpose of both activities is to help "ground" a person who is triggered. Self-injury stuffs the emotions back down inside. Doing things to get in touch with your physical being, like you describe, can accomplish the same thing by pulling the person back to the present instead of the past.

- Faith

++++++++++

We must BE the change we wish to see in the world. - Ghandi

  • Login or register to post comments
Hope's picture

These were excellent posts.

Submitted by Hope on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 21:34.

These were excellent posts. Both informative and sensitive. I hope a lot of people were taking note of them, because I believe this issue affects far more people than we like to think. What seem to be fairly harmless, quirky kid behaviors may indicate more stress than we want to admit. And as we know, kids usually trade up to bigger badder coping strategies, as life gets harder to deal with. I would strongly suspect that no one just wakes up one day and says, "I think I'll try breaking a bone for kicks." Something has likely been there for a long time, and no one has addressed it, or tried to retrain the child.

  • Login or register to post comments

User login

  • Create new account
  • Request new password

Archive

  • August 2010 (40)
  • July 2010 (53)
  • June 2010 (46)
  • May 2010 (47)
  • April 2010 (41)
  • March 2010 (51)
  • February 2010 (49)

More >>>

Popular content

Today's:

  • Guest Blog: Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall - I’m Outta Here
  • Birth Parent, Adoptive Parent - Whose Child is it Anyway?
  • 396 Children Still Stuck in Adoption Nightmare in Guatemala; “Baby Nola” is One of Them but She is Now Almost Three

All time:

  • International Adoption Statistics for 2007
  • Guest Blog: Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall - I’m Outta Here
  • Trauma Tuesday: Orgasms During Rape and Sexual Abuse

Last viewed:

  • Educational Testing and Assessments: Slosson Oral Reading Test - Revised (SORT-R3)
  • Searching for a Birthmother – Part III: Writing a Letter and Choosing Photos for the Birthmother
  • Searching for a Birthmother - Part II: Choosing A Person to Search for Your Adopted Child’s Birthmother

Recent comments

  • I assume your son's adoption
    54 min 11 sec ago
  • This question too, is one that I often wonder about...
    2 hours 4 min ago
  • My Horrible Typo!
    11 hours 1 min ago
  • Seeding or Salting..
    12 hours 46 min ago
  • The word "not", sorry my misundetstanding.
    11 hours 21 min ago
  • Unknown Father, I just found
    15 hours 57 min ago
  • This is a great solution
    1 day 13 hours ago
  • Long Term Planned and Closed Adoption
    1 day 13 hours ago
  • I certainly will...
    1 day 20 hours ago
  • Friends of the Lesser "Jersey Rules" Adoption Attorney [revised]
    1 day 18 hours ago
Site Map
© 2010 Adoption Under One Roof LLC. All Rights Reserved. email: info at ouradopt.com
Opinions expressed in posts and blogs belong to the person who is expressing them. So then it follows that these opinions are not those of Adoption Under One Roof.
RoopleTheme