Adoption Under One Roof

Crying is another area in which child abuse survivors tend to go to one extreme or the other. In one corner, you have the traumatized children who never, ever cry. These are the children who are more vulnerable to expressing their emotions in other ways, such as cutting or burning their pain onto their bodies. In the other corner are the traumatized children who seem to cry at the drop of a hat.

I was (and still am) one of those sensitive souls who tear up easily. The most embarrassing is when I tear up at commercials. I remember a dog food commercial that always got to me. It started with a girl playing with a puppy, then moved to a teenaged girl playing with an adult dog to a grown woman petting an old dog. Darn it if I am not tearing up now just thinking about it!

Here’s the thing, though – When I recovered the memory of my own dog being killed in front of me, I could not manage to come up with even one tear. I can talk about that traumatizing incident and show no emotion at all.

Feeling unwanted is a common aftereffect of child abuse regardless of whether the child was later put into foster care. I have previously covered feeling unwanted after being in foster care here. Of course, those feeling can compound the issue, but even if a child is removed from an abusive home and placed directly into an adoptive home, he or she might still struggle with feeling unwanted.

Feeling like someone wants you is based on several factors. For example, children need to be told that they are wanted – not necessarily by hearing the words “I want you” but being told things like “I am glad I’m your mom/dad” or equivalent. Children living in an abusive household are unlikely to hear those words or, if they do, they will have trouble believing them when the same person saying them also abuses them.

Children also need to be shown that they are wanted and are not just a burden to be endured. Parents who remind their children repeatedly about the many sacrifices they make for their children (even when this is true) are not communicating how much they want their children. Instead, children need to see that their parents enjoy spending time with them. They need their parents to show up to their school events and show some sort of interest in the things that matter to the child.

One common trait of traumatized children is being manipulative. I am not saying that all abused children are manipulative, nor am I saying that having the ability to be manipulative is, in and of itself, a “bad” thing. If you are going to parent a child with a manipulative nature, you need to be aware of it so you can stay a step ahead of your traumatized child.

I freely admit that both my sister and I can be manipulative when we want to be. We had to develop this trait to survive our childhood. We learned at an early age how to read people and then manipulate them to try to keep ourselves safe.

We are both adults now and have been free from the influence of our abusers for many years, but we still both have the ability to be manipulative when we want to be. Thankfully, we both choose to use this skill (and, believe me, being manipulative is indeed a skill) for “good” instead of “evil.”

As an example, I was a successful volunteer coordinator at my adopted child’s elementary school for three years. I took over the position from a woman who would basically call the same handful of people to help out whenever volunteers were needed. I transformed the way volunteers were recruited by using manipulation in a positive way.

If your traumatized child is having trouble working through her feelings or emotions regarding the source of her trauma, it might help to branch outside of basic therapy and journaling. Many trauma survivors find expressive therapy to be helpful.

The International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) defines expressive therapy as follows:

The expressive arts combine the visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing and other creative processes to foster deep personal growth and community development. IEATA encourages an evolving multimodal approach within psychology, organizational development, community arts and education. By integrating the arts processes and allowing one to flow into another, we gain access to our inner resources for healing, clarity, illumination and creativity. ~ IEATA

Basic examples of expressive therapy would be drawing, coloring, painting, or molding clay, but those are only the tip of the iceberg.

As most parents know, children wanting to be in control can be a normal part of development, especially as they move into the adolescent and teen years. However, traumatized children can bring this battle of fighting for control to a new level.

One reason for this is because being out of control is what the traumatized child views as the root cause of the trauma. As long as someone else was in control, such as an abusive or neglectful birth parent, the child suffered. So, some traumatized children view seizing control as a way to protect themselves from being harmed again.

For some children, this might take the form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or an eating disorder. With other children, you might find yourself going head-to-head in an all-out war for who is going to be in control, even over seemingly unimportant issues.