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Trauma Thursday

Trauma Thursday: Is Being a Hoarder Child Abuse?

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 07:58
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • hoarder
  • hoarding
  • Older child adoption
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

A reader found Adoption Under One Roof seeking the answer to the question of whether “being a hoarder” is child abuse. First, let’s define what hoarding is. Hoarding is a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in which the person manages his or her anxiety by “hoarding” particular objects. For example, I have shared before that I used to hoard pens. I had to have five pens plus a spare in my purse at all times. If I dropped below this magic number, I would suffer from a panic attack. (I now recognize that this tied into my fear of being “silenced” as an abused child.)

I think we can all agree that the number of pens I choose to carry around in my purse is hardly going to create an abusive environment for my adopted child. So, hoarding, in and of itself, is not going to qualify as child abuse, and a judge is certainly not going to remove a child from a loving home just because a parent is a hoarder.

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Trauma Thursday: Gross Bedrooms

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 07:38
  • child abuse
  • feces smearing
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieCIf you are parenting a foster or adopted child with a history of trauma, your child might keep his or her bedroom “gross” for lack of a better term. My sister was this way. She would have her mattress on the floor, dirty clothing strewn everywhere, and cat urine, poop, and vomit covering the dirty clothes and carpet. I would watch sitcoms showing a dirty room, and the room on TV would be cleaner than my sister’s room. My sister was not a gross-looking person when you saw her out and about, but the smell of her bedroom could knock you over. (When we moved out of one house, we had to replace the carpet and repaint the walls to get rid of the smell.)

I couldn’t figure out why my sister was this gross because she wasn’t this way all over the house. I would have thought that she would want her bedroom to be the cleanest room since she had to sleep in it, but it was always the grossest even into early adulthood. It wasn’t until I started healing from the child abuse myself that I figured out why she did this. (I don’t even think she could have told you why she kept her room this way. She just acted like it was normal for her to live in a disgusting room like that.)

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: All Abused Children Do Not Act the Same

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 06:32
  • child abuse
  • differences in abused children
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

My goal in writing my Tuesday/Thursday Trauma blogs has always been to provide insight into the mind of an abused child. I have never parented a traumatized child, so I cannot speak to what it is like other than through observing the joys and trials that parents of foster and adopted children have endured. My goal is to empower those of you who love and care for abused children to understand what is going on in their heads.

I was taken aback by John’s concern posted to this blog entry about people possibly be “put off” from adopting older kids after reading what I wrote. That is the absolute last thing I would ever want to happen. I thought about what he said, and then it hit me – His concern is very likely due to the fact that some of you don’t know that different abused children are going to react differently to the same trauma. So, let me rectify that possible misperception in this blog entry.

Let’s use my sister and me as an example. We both endured the same traumas, and we were severely abused throughout our childhoods. By the time we reached our teen years, we were both very damaged emotionally. My sister would have had a hard time finding anyone to choose to parent her. By age 14, she had already experimented with just about any drug out there and had likely already lost count of the number of sexual partners she had. She was defiant and would tell anyone off at the drop of a hat. She skipped school regularly and dropped out after ninth grade. She had marks up and down her arm from burning herself -- hardly the kind of kid that most people are looking to adopt.

Then, there was me…

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Trauma Thursday: Contact With Abusive Birth Family

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 08:29
  • child abuse
  • contact with abusive birth family
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • Should adopted child have contact with abusive birth family?
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

If you are parenting a foster or adopted child who was abused by his birth family, you might wonder how much value, if any, there is in the child maintaining some sort of ties with the abusive birth family. Twenty years ago, I seriously doubt that many people struggled with this issue. It seemed pretty obvious that children don’t reap a lot of benefit from visiting people who beat them, rape them, or lock them in closets for hours. However, thanks to the adoption propaganda purporting the need of all adoptees to maintain contact with all birth family, I fear that common sense has gone out the window.

I was an abused child, but I was not fortunate enough to be removed from my abusers. I had to make that choice myself as an adult without any support or help from loving foster or adoptive parents. Let me assure you that I reap no benefit whatsoever out of having any contact with any of my abusers, including my own mother. I know hundreds of adult survivors of child abuse who would back me up on this.

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Trauma Thursday: Auditory Flashbacks

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 02/11/2010 - 07:45
  • auditory flashbacks
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • hearing voices
  • Older child adoption
  • PTSD
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

It looks like this is my week to talk about hearings voices! After I wrote my blog entry for Trauma Tuesday, I read John’s following comment to my blog entry entitled Why People with PTSD Don’t Talk About Their Experiences:

When you live with kids having [PTSD], it is always a consideration in your parenting decisions. Stress is a biggie, either manage stress or enjoy a very wild ride, as the stress triggers PTSD episodes. I have been on the wrong end of a knife with a son who definately intended to use it on me. Later, he explained that in his mind, he was with a different family in a different setting, and this time it was going to come out better. I would have still been the stab-ee. Your child may also hear voices due to PTSD, which is scary to the child, he is sure that proves that he is totally wacko.

What John is describing as “hearing voices” is actually an auditory flashback. It is different from what I understand is experienced by schizophrenics and others who “hear voices.” At least, that has been my experience.

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Why People with PTSD Don’t Talk About Their Experiences

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 02/04/2010 - 12:28
  • Abused Children
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • post-traumatic stress disorder
  • PTSD
  • similarities in PTSD in soldiers and abused children
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children
  • why people with PTSD don’t talk about their experiences

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

I recently read a magazine article highlighting the issues with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers. The article talked about the soldiers’ reluctance to admit that they were struggling with PTSD or talk about their experiences. Also recently, a woman shared with me that her father, who fought in World War II, told her about a battlefield experience that he had never told anyone before.

I always find it interesting to hear the speculations of people without PTSD about why those of us with PTSD do not share our stories because, in most cases, the speculations are way off base. I can tell you why – We don’t want to burden you. When you have endured something as horrifying as being locked in a box for hours covered in blood or feces, or storming a beach through the body parts of your fallen comrades, you don’t know how much the other person can handle hearing. We don’t talk about it because we don’t want to burden you with the horrors that haunt our nightmares.

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Learning How to Have Fun

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 01/14/2010 - 07:29
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • having fun
  • learning how to have fun
  • Older child adoption
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

Many traumatized children have no idea how to have fun. When you live in an abusive household, having fun is hardly a priority to those living in the home. Everything revolves around meeting the abuser’s wants/needs. There is no room for fun. Any fun that the child had was tempered with the fear of being abused again. Even worse, some “games” were used against the child to harm him.

Now that your foster or adopted child is living in your home, he needs you to teach him how to have fun. He needs to learn that it is okay to have a good time, and he might need you to show him how to do it. Your foster or adopted child might not have experienced much laughter before joining your home. Teaching him how to have fun and laugh can be a wonderful present from you to him.

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: What to Say to Your Suicidal Adopted Child

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 01/07/2010 - 07:54
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • suicidal urges
  • suicide
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieCIt is common for traumatized foster and adopted children to struggle with suicidal urges from time to time. During puberty, these urges can become even stronger. While this can be quite disturbing to you as the foster or adoptive parent, rest assured that these feelings are normal and experienced by most survivors of child abuse.

When your foster or adopted child says that he wants to die, take him seriously because he very likely means it. However, what he is really trying to say is that he is in so much pain that he is willing to do anything, even die, to make the pain stop. This is very different than having a desire to die. Dying is merely a means to an end … the end of the pain.

Your traumatized foster or adopted child has experienced pain so deep that, unless you were traumatized yourself, you cannot possibly imagine the depths of the pain. Wanting to make the pain end is a rational reaction to such deep pain.

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Where is God When Your Child is Abused?

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 07:05
  • child abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children
  • Where is God when children are abused?
  • Why does God allow child abuse?

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

A reader found Adoption Under One Roof seeking the answer to the question:

Where is God when your child is abused?

As someone who was severely abused as a child, I have wrestled with this question for years. I have written about this topic extensively on my personal blog:

  • Getting Past Feeling like God Deserted You after Child Abuse
  • Shouldn’t God be Expected to Protect Children?
  • Where is God During Child Abuse?
  • Where Was God When I Was Being Abused?
  • Why Would a Loving God Allow Pain and Child Abuse?
  • Words of Wisdom from “The Shack”: Where is God During Abuse?

After wrestling with this question for years, here are the conclusions that I have drawn in a nutshell:

  • FaithA's blog
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Trauma Thursday: Foster/Adopted Child Believing He Consented to Sexual Abuse

Submitted by FaithA on Thu, 12/03/2009 - 07:32
  • Can a child consent to sexual abuse?
  • child abuse
  • feeling responsible for sexual abuse
  • Foster adoption
  • Foster care
  • Older child adoption
  • sexual abuse
  • Trauma Thursday
  • Traumatized children

Traumatized Adopted Child (c) JulieC

On Trauma Tuesday, I wrote about sexually abused children who feel responsible for being sexually abused by older siblings. Today, I would like to broaden the scope to talk about children who feel responsible for the sexual abuse they endured.

If you were never sexually abused yourself, you might be surprised to learn that many sexual abuse survivors believe that they are at least partially responsible for the sexual abuse that they endured, even though they were only children when the abuse happened. To an adult who was never sexually abused, the truth that a child cannot possibly invite or consent to a sexual relationship is obvious. However, a normal aftereffect of sexual abuse is for the traumatized foster or adopted child to believe that he is, at least in part, responsible for the sexual abuse, even if the perpetrator was an adult.

There is actually a rational reason for sexual abuse survivors embracing this belief.

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