Traumatized children

Are You Emotionally Healthy Enough to Parent an Older Adopted Child?

Submitted by JulieC on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 22:04

It seems that those who survived less than ideal childhoods go on to make some pretty amazing parents, and some especially spectacular adoptive parents. This is due to their ability to not only sympathize with their adopted child, but to empathize with their adopted child, and understand their pain of abuse and/or neglect on a very personal level. It is only those parents whom have taken the time to dig up, let loose, examine, and heal their own past wounds who will be able to handle parenting an older adopted child.

Adults, that have not taken the time to heal whatever remaining emotional scars they still carry with them from childhood, can and often do appear to be stable, happy, and well functioning people… for the most part. However, without facing, coming to terms with, accepting, and releasing their own long pent up emotional pain, it is only a matter of time before an older adopted child finds a trigger or two and unleashes the emotional floodgates of their adoptive parent(s.)

Traumatized children are expert button pushers, and even the most skilled adult at hiding past pains, will very quickly find themselves overreacting to situations that the child has created. As the child will almost instantly pick up on the adults hot buttons and what makes them tick, and they will then proceed to push every one of them continuously.

A parent who has healed the past trauma and negative energies, will be able to see through the child’s behaviors. Recognize what he or she is doing, and steer right around it, or at the very least know not to get caught up in it 

A parent who is not yet emotionally healed and healthy however, will easily be sucked into the child’s games. Then play them for quite some time before ever realizing exactly what it is they are engaged in.

Whack a Thief Get Whacked by the Police

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 23:25

John's avatar

Today's guest blog is from John, a retired commercial airline pilot who has adopted four boys from domestic foster care as a single parent. John and his family live in southern California.

 

I have written about my 18-year-old son Chad, and his medical emergency in Berlin Germany. That blog is titled “RAD DAD AND THINGS GONE BAD – UNSAFETY,” if you would like to read about it. Believe it or not this event happened earlier on the same trip. Kids make life exciting. It was a beautiful day, about 4PM. We were enjoying Frankfurt, and Chad asked to go to the train station (Hbf). We had been to Frankfurt enough that he was very familiar with the area. My son, Thomas and I, knew he was going to use a phone card and call his girl friend.

 

A lot of time passed, and we began to get concerned. Finally, he appeared, very excited. He had seen a “street person” going into the station and three German police officers. He was wearing a ‘hoody’. In the middle of the phone call to his girlfriend, someone reached around from behind him, and jerked the hood part of the hoody over his face, so he couldn’t see anything. The thief quickly took his wallet from his pants pocket, and ran off. Chad did NOT yell “HELP POLICE, THIEF.” You see, he has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ODD, so instead of ‘I won’t do it, and you can’t make me’, it becomes ‘You will not do that and let me show you why!’

RAD DAD AND THINGS GONE BAD – UNSAFETY

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 23:16

John's avatar

 

 

Today's guest blog is from John, a retired commercial airline pilot who has adopted four boys from domestic foster care as a single parent. John and his family live in southern California.

 

No, I don’t mean RAD as in Radical (Yes, I know that is dated.) I am referring to Reactive Attachment Disorder. My youngest son, Chad, age 18, has RAD. We have attached, that is a true miracle, but the disorder is not something easily disposed of. I suspect some degree of it lasts for a lifetime. He is very attached to me, fairly attached to his 20-year-old brother, and to one friend. That is the limit of real attachment. Like all RAD kids, he came home with very pronounced hyper-vigilance; he always had to be on guard for his safety. Because he was the only person he could trust. Although this has noticeably abated, it can be triggered. This is about an event that was very difficult for him to handle.  

We were on vacation in Germany. We have been there a number of times before, this time we were in Berlin, an interesting city with neat people, and Starbucks on almost every corner. Everything was going very well until Friday night when Chad developed a severe pain in his stomach. It got worse as time passed. By 9 PM, I asked the hotel to call their Doctor. He was alarmed, the pain was intense, and he wondered if there could be a perforation. We got to ride to the hospital in the ambulance. Surprise, only one Nurse spoke any English, very unlike the Berlin we had seen. After blood tests, and X-rays, the Doc had to try and tell me what was happening. Chad could tell we were having language problems (It turns out the doc was a former East German and spoke German and Russian.) so he was understandably frightened. We got it sorted out, it was something he ate, no surgery needed. The painkillers were working and we took a cab back to the hotel. He was upset, as in very very upset.