When CPS, Child Protective Services, receives a phone call alleging abuse, an intake worker determines if the situation should be checked out by a worker. If the situation warrants further investigation, a CPS worker will be assigned to the case. The worker will make an unexpected visit to the family home to determine if the alleged abuse is occurring. The worker will interview the parents letting them know what the charges are, and ask if they are true. The parents may offer a rebuttal at this time. Anyone else residing in the home at the time will also be interviewed, or visually inspected in the case of very young children and severely mentally impaired. After the interviews and visual inspection the worker will decide whether to continue the investigation or close the file.

A reader would like to talk about parenting for the emotional age of the adopted child. I live this every day, so I feel well-qualified to talk about this topic. I am posting this blog entry under Trauma Tuesday because many abused foster and adopted children have emotional ages that are different from their chronological ages due to the trauma that they suffered. However, a child can have emotional delays even without experiencing trauma. (My adopted child is an example of this.)

First, let me explain what I mean by “emotional age.” My son is 9-1/2 years old, but he still likes to watch TV shows intended for preschool children. He knows that his friends prefer to watch shows for older kids (and my son likes those shows, too), so he does not share this interest publicly. If a typical 9-year-old child watched one of these shows, he would complain about it being “boring” and “stupid.” However, my son will giggle and take pride in knowing the answers to the questions being asked. It seems to build his confidence that he knows all of the answers.

My son has across-the-board learning disabilities, which accounts for the lower emotional age. However, traumatized children also frequently have a lower emotional age. The reason for this is unmet needs, which I have blogged about a few times:

A reader wants to know about “cold chills” experienced by abused children and adult survivors of child abuse. The reader says that, when she talks about sensitive topics, she gets a “cold chill” over her entire body as if she was “frozen” inside.

I spent most of my life feeling cold and “frozen inside,” so I know exactly what she is talking about. In fact, I could feel myself “thaw” inside as I went through therapy and healed from the child abuse. The coolest thing was that my Reiki master could “feel” it, too. I started seeing a Reiki master when I had been in therapy for about a year. When she did Reiki, I could feel the energy flow in my head through my shoulders to around my chest. However, I could feel no energy whatsoever in the rest of my body.

I said nothing to the Reiki master, but she brought the topic up herself. She said that it felt like I had wood in my legs because no energy was getting through. I corrected her and said, “No, it is ice.”

Last week, I wrote a blog entry on my personal blog about the aftereffects of sexual abuse by a female perpetrator. I have decided to reprint part of it here because foster and adoptive parents need to be familiar with the warning signs. If you are parenting a foster or adopted child who was sexually abused by a woman, you need to know what to look for.

Here are 20 “red flags” that could indicate that a child has been sexually abused by a woman. These are aftereffects that I have observed in numerous people who have been sexually abused by woman. I wrote this list for adults (mostly for women), but you might notice some of these issues in your teenager. Several of the red flags are specific to mother-daughter sexual abuse (or sexual abuse by a mother figure), but others apply to sexual abuse by any woman: