Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption & Foster Care

Helping Our Kids Overcome a Traumatic Background

August 03, 2022 Creating a Family Season 16 Episode 31
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption & Foster Care
Helping Our Kids Overcome a Traumatic Background
Show Notes Transcript

We know our kids have experienced trauma, but how can we help them overcome this trauma to become healthy happy adults. We talk about resilience and overcoming an adverse beginning with Dr. Julian Ford and Dr. Amanda Zelechoski. Dr. Ford is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Law at the University of Connecticut where he directs two Treatment and Services Adaptation Centers in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Dr. Ford is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and has published more than 250 articles and book chapters and is the author or editor of 10 books. Dr. Amanda Zelechoski is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist specializing in trauma. She is a professor of psychology and Director of Clinical Training at Purdue University Northwest.

In this episode, we cover:

  • What are some of the different types of events/situations that can be traumatic to a child?
  • Do different types of trauma affect children differently? Short term but intense trauma. Long term trauma at the hands of a primary caregiver. Neglect? Witnessing domestic violence? Prenatal trauma?
  • Why does early life trauma make it harder for kids to succeed at life?
  • What are some signs of trauma by age of child? Preschool? Elementary? Middle and High School? (learning, physical health, mental health, trouble with the law, etc.)
  • How to help our kids overcome their traumatic background and thrive? 
  • How to rewire the neurons?
  • Triggers
  • Emotional regulation.
  • What can parents do to help their kids bounce back from their early life trauma?
  • What is the key element to resilience?
  • How can parents encourage resilience?
  • What role does temperament or personality play in resilience to trauma?
  • How long does it take for kids to “heal” from trauma?
  • Are there specific types of therapy that are more effective than others for helping children overcome trauma? Does it differ depending on the type of trauma?

Resources: Roadmap to Resilience Podcast series. www.roadmaptoreslience.org


This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

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Please pardon the errors, this is an automatic transcription.
0:00  
Welcome, everyone to Creating a Family talk about adoption and foster care. I'm Dawn Davenport. I'm both the host of the show as well as the director of a nonprofit, creating a family.org. Today we're going to be talking about helping our kids overcome a traumatic background. We will be talking with Dr. Julian Ford, who is a Board Certified Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and law at the University of Connecticut, where he directs to treatment and service addiction centers and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. The first is the Center for Trauma Recovery and juvenile justice. And the second is the center for the treatment of developmental trauma disorders. Dr. Ford is past president of the International Society of traumatic stress studies, and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has published and get ready guys More than 250 articles and book chapters as the author or editor of 10 books. That's a lot. We will also be talking with Dr. Amanda Zelechoski, she is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist and attorney specializing in trauma. In addition to serving as professor of psychology and director of clinical training at Purdue University Northwest. She is also co founder of the nonprofit organization, pandemic parenting, and she is co host of the roadmap to resilience podcast series, which we will talk about some at the end. Most of the kids for our audience have experienced trauma in some form before they came to our homes. And we want to talk today about how to help our kids overcome or succeed in spite of this early trauma. And I do think that those of us who are adoption Foster and kinship educators tend to focus a lot on trauma, the impact of trauma, everything trauma related, because it is important, but I also think we need to focus equally on how kids recover from that trauma and, and whether kids can recover. So let's start by talking about some of the different types of events or situations that can be traumatic for a child. That's a really general question. But I do want to begin in a more general way. Dr. Zelechoski? What are some of the types of events and situations that we consider traumatic? Sure. So I think we talk a lot about childhood trauma exposure, broken down in a couple of different ways. So we'll talk a lot about acute traumas, right? So single events, typically limited in time, things like car accidents, natural disasters, you know, instances of community violence, that kind of thing. Kids can also face more chronic traumas. So things like child abuse and neglect, long standing, you know, pervasive trauma throughout their young lives, or a series of events that happen in sequence, those are more chronic type traumas. And Julian and I also spend a lot of time thinking about developmental and complex trauma, so trauma that might occur, you know, within the caregiving system. So for example, somebody who is entrusted to nurture and support and take care of a child is in fact, the one inflicting harm. So you can see the the layers of complexity there for a child trying to make sense of their world. So I think there's many different trauma types that kids can be exposed to. What's important to remember, though, is that it is a combination of both the trauma event or type but also how it's impacted that child, right? Because we can have kids go through the same things, but be impacted in very different ways. Some in more intense ways. And some maybe not much at all, for a variety of reasons, I'm sure we'll get into does it does a type of trauma, you've just outlined a number of different traumas, this is a type of trauma impact the way most children are going to respond, Dr. Ford, and what I mean here is short term versus intense or long term trauma, and long term trauma at the primary or the hands of a primary caregiver, things such as that, and then neglect which many of our children have also experienced, which is a different type of trauma.

4:07  
Absolutely. And what I would add is that it's not only what happens directly to children, but also what they see and hear. And so unfortunately, many times children who have been who are adopted or are in foster care, have witnessed violence in their homes between their parents or their adults or their caregivers. They've often witnessed community violence as well, and sometimes even a single incident. That is truly horrific. And that just shakes their the foundations of their sense of security, like some of the very tragic shootings that we have seen very recently. And that go back over many years. The the Newtown experience, Sandy Hook experience is one that that I was involved with, in the aftermath as well. So yes,

5:00  
Children then adapt in very different ways to the more immediate acute trauma, like a very severe accident or even a disaster, that's a situation where kids usually get on guard. And they're, they feel some anxiety in the aftermath. And they really benefit a great deal from the security that parents and other caregivers can provide teachers, other adults in the community. And just a sense of security, knowing that even though we've been through something that's really scary, whether it was something that happened to me alone as a child or to others that I saw, or to my whole community, knowing that there's security again, and that we're getting back to the life that we knew, even though it will never be entirely the same. So that's, that's really crucial when there is a relatively acute trauma, when it's ongoing. What happens is that kids basically learn how to adapt and become survivors. And in order to become a survivor, you have to do a number of things. Basically, you have to learn how to keep your emotions under control, and often shut them off entirely, which is a tragic thing that kids should never have to do. But sometimes they do in order to protect themselves or others. And you also have to be on guard, and not only on guard, because something one thing happened but on guard almost all the time and looking for any sign that something terrible might happen again. And that's where kids then can can actually seem to be behaving very irrationally, like they're upset in situations where everything is fine, or they don't seem to feel calm and relaxed when a adoptive parent or a foster parent is being really good and very thoughtful for them. And it may be that in that case, that child is essentially saying, you know, I feel safe now, but I'm always watchful, because I know what can happen.

6:55  
And and it seems like then, as you describe the trauma that is an intense trauma event, but it's a one time children heal through the presence of their caregivers, and they're the adults in their lives. And so trauma that is impacting a child when the trauma is caused by their caretaker, then they have no safe place. It and that must be the it's such a devastating type of trauma because their their security because they can't go to their primary caretaker to help regulate and to become secure. Exactly.

7:32  
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8:29  
So Dr. Zola, Husky. Why does early life trauma make it harder for kids to succeed at life? And does it matter whether it's what age the and in this case, let's let's not talk about the one time event because honestly most of our children have had, it's been ongoing, whether it be neglect, which is its own form of trauma, or whether it be abuse, verbal, physical, sexual, whatever type of abuse, it's usually not a one time event. So, but it can happen at different stages. So why does early life trauma? Why is that in particularly harder for children? Right, there's just so much happening developmentally in those early years in the first weeks and months of an infant's life, you know, on through early childhood, it's a really, really rapid time of growth. There are all kinds of neurological pathways being laid down, you know, and formed because of the experiences a child is having, or in many cases like you're talking about with neglect is not having right so interpersonal development attachment, you know, the ability to to trust your environment around you find that safety and security that Julian was describing is so critical in those first weeks and months and years. That that's why we see the impact of some of these early traumatic experiences, having such a profound impact on a child's long term development and just even the way they sort of move through the world you know, how they interact with others how they are

10:00  
I'm curious and exploring the environments around them, like we want them to or intentionally not, again, as Julian was describing, because they are afraid or are sort of conditioned in a way to be so hyper vigilant or on alert all the time to scan their community or their environment for safety. So I think it's just the importance of those early developmental stages are why we see such a profound, long term impact of some of those experiences. And I would add, children constantly being if you're constantly surveilling your environment, constantly trying to protect yourself, you don't have a lot of energy to explore and to learn. I mean, that's, that's time consuming.

10:43  
That's described as being very cognitively and emotionally expensive for kids. And I think it's such a great way to think about it, that that's where all their energy is going versus being curious and exploring. Yeah, and you know, that, that triggered for me when I when I learned about that, as a psychologist, and I learned this primarily from the clients I see not from the books that I read,

11:05  
even though those are can be helpful, I realized that those those experiences, early on, they're shaping not only how a child interacts with others and the world, but they're also they're actually shaping brain development. Now, trauma does not cause brain damage, I think that's very important that we all understand that. But what it does is it it requires a child to shift the way they're using the brain. And so children are, are just biologically programmed to be learners, as you were saying, gone and learning through play through all kinds of experiences. Curiosity, when you're surveilling the environment, when you have to be vigilant to protect yourself, because you don't feel that anyone will protect you, or will actually help you if you're in danger, then that shifts the way the brain works. And so now we have a brain that is focused not on learning, but on survival. And literally, that that's really the hallmark of what happens for children, their brains shift from being learning brains to becoming survival brains. And we know that there's a there's a phrase, I'm not, I'm not a neurobiologist, myself at all I just a consumer, but there's a phrase that neurons that fire together wire together. So when a child is basically experiencing a world in which they don't feel safe, and which things are happening, that they don't fully understand, but that feel wrong, or even feel horrible and scary at times, then the way in which their brains are processing that is basically shifting, so that now the brain is setting up a system to protect the child, rather than to help the child to go out and just venture out into the world and explore. I'm going to remember that neurons that fire together, wire together, meaning that if you have if your neurons have all have, and that also could be used to explain why our kids seem to so often react bigger or less sometimes, depending on the situation that you're what you would expect. But their neurons have been wired to react in a specific way. It seems bigger or lesser than than what we think but then we haven't had those experiences that caused at a young age caused our neurons to be firing that way. That's exactly. That's a fascinating thing. And I just want to add, I know we'll talk more about this, but I want to make sure that it's very clear to everyone who's listening, that that is not a permanent change that cannot ever be altered. That is a yes, change that can be changed again. That's the crucial aspect of resilience. And that is the heart of why we're talking today is how is how do they change again, but before we start on that, I do want to pick up on some of the signs of trauma by age of the child. And again, we expect that many of our children, although not all of them have experienced some form of trauma. So this is break the kids into say preschool age, elementary school age, and then we'll we'll lump middle and high school together. Dr. Zola husky, what would be some of the signs of trauma, say for preschoolers? Yeah, so if you think about what are the normal developmental tasks we want to see kids accomplish in that preschool age group, you know, they're starting to be more independent, you know, take risks, be curious, explore the world around them. So if you think about sort of the opposite of some of those things, that's often what we tend to see when preschool aged children have been impacted by trauma. So things like separation anxiety, being afraid to be separated from a parent or caregiver increase in tantrums, crying, screaming a lot, maybe having really sort of extreme what might seem like extreme emotional reactions to things that you wouldn't

15:00  
Usually would warrant that physiologically we might see changes, maybe they're losing weight, they're eating poorly. And certainly sleep is a big indicator we know from sleep, that's a big clue when young children are starting to have more nightmares or being afraid to go to sleep. So these are all things I would anticipate seeing some regression in or increase in problems around that preschool age. Okay, and now let's move to the elementary age, Dr. Ford.

15:28  
Well, at that point, we know that children are, they're really focused on learning on being in school, being with their peers, getting along with other kids, getting the kind of affirmation that comes from being successful as a student or as an athlete or as a musician, or whatever pursuits. So trauma really holds kids back in the sense that they cannot focus entirely on those primary objectives. Instead, they have to constantly be thinking, what am I going to have to deal have to deal with when I go home, what's going to happen if somebody gets angry, what happens if I walk down the wrong street? What happens if I do something that makes my mom or my dad angry. And again, this is not to say that these are moms or dads, or communities where there's there's violence, necessarily, but having come from those experiences, then children, almost always by default, they, they basically say, you know, if it's happened once and I wasn't prepared, I'm never going to be unprepared again. So what that really does is then that, that slows them down in all of those areas, and they can seem less intelligent, they can do much less well in school. And they can seem as though they are not actually capable of being good students or, or other engaging in other pursuits, sports and the music and all that. So it really does make a kid look like they just don't have the abilities. And yet, what we know is because of the expense and the costs, they're directing those abilities towards making sure that they're safe, and they don't even know that they're doing it. It's so second nature.

17:07  
And then it was removed. As we age these children into middle and high school, I would assume that we will see trouble with the law. So Dr. Zaleski, what would be some of the other things we might see for our middle and high school kids or our children approaching adulthood? Yeah, I think a big clue for that age group is withdrawing from activities and things they used to enjoy. So friendships, peer relationships, people, they seem to enjoy spending time with that now, they really aren't. They're kind of withdrawing from those relationships. Same with activities, extracurricular activities, sports clubs, you know, music lessons, things they really enjoy, you just tend to see them withdrawn from a lot of that or avoiding things. They previously seemed to master or find pleasure in feelings of, you know, depression, anxiety, feeling alone, feeling isolated, those are all some clues that something might be going on, or that they're struggling to deal with situations that maybe they previously seemed to have dealt with. Well, in more serious cases, you know, things like developing maybe eating disorder behaviors, self harming behavior is taking risks that lead to things like juvenile justice involvement, like you mentioned, done, beginning to experiment with drugs and alcohol may be risky sexual behavior. So ways that they are trying to sort of exert control over their lives. Remember, trauma is about something that happened outside of your control that you didn't want to happen. So I think for adolescents and young adults, we start to see these different areas where they're trying to have control or use some of these behaviors or actions to manage how they're feeling. You know, whether that's to mute extreme feelings they're having or to stimulate feelings, they might not be having kind of manage hyper or hypo arousal. Those are some of the things we might see for that age group.

18:56  
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19:55  
Okay, now I want to move to the more hopeful part, which is what Dr. Ford said before

20:00  
or this is not written in stone children who have experienced trauma are not basket cases are not necessarily going to be basket cases for life. That is a professional term, you can look that one up too, right? So that we want to talk about how can we help our kids overcome their traumatic backgrounds and thrive? So let's start by talking about Dr. Ford with the key, what are some of the key elements to resilience? And is it maybe I should ask the beginning question is resilience one way that children overcome their traumatic backgrounds? Yes, in the sense that resilience is being able to bounce back from stress or from difficulties, that what we're really talking about here are kids that are not just bouncing back, they're having to actually find a new path, rather than feeling that they have to constantly be on guard, and always reacting to protect themselves and prevent things from happening. And I think one of the keys is to recognize and I'm going to go back to the adolescence for just a moment, say that the one other thing that I would highlight is that very often, kids who have experienced a great deal of trauma, they become oppositional. Now, it is the teenagers job description to be feisty. To be contrarians, we should always assume that. But I know personally, as well as professionally, are very defiant, traumatized children can be and they're not doing this because they are essentially angry. They may feel angry at times, but they're not doing it because they don't want to get along or because they're not good people. They're doing it because sometimes the best defense is a good offense. And what we need to then do in terms of helping them to find a path to recovery and to feel that they don't have to constantly be protecting themselves because they are indeed safe, is to actually find ways in which we can honor what they are the principles that they're trying to speak up for. So I think of for example, one young man who I stopped, I won't give any identifying details, of course, but one young man who I saw in our Child Trauma clinic, who was constantly getting in trouble at school and getting expelled because he did get into angry confrontations with teachers. And every time he would do that, he then was told, you know, you've got an anger management problem, and you've got to go to work on your anger. And nobody ever asked him what he was angry about. Well, when he was talking with me about this, I did want to know what he was angry about. And he was angry that teachers and other adults were treating some of his friends and his cousins in a way that he felt was disrespectful. And he thought that that was violating a fundamental value that people shouldn't treat each other that way, especially people in power. And when we were able to talk about that, that didn't change everything for him. But I think that the acknowledgement that I was able to provide, and then others in his environment, also that he's actually not an angry young man. He's a young man who's standing up for principles that he feels he has to stand up for assertively, if we can help kids to recognize and help to recognize in what they are telling us whether they're withdrawing, or whether they are pushing back, if we can figure out and help them, figure out what they're standing for and what values and what goals they have, and then support them in that. That's a fundamental shift. Now somebody's actually helping me and not just to be safe, but actually to accomplish what I want to accomplish. That shifts the whole paradigm. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, you talked before about the neurons that fire together wire together, how do we rewire the neurons? They have been trained to be going and they've been trained one way? How do we redirect them? Dr. Ford, since you are the one who gave me the say the the quote, which I liked so much, I will, I'll direct this question to you then. Okay, I'll start with that. I'm sure that Dr. Selim Husky can can add more to this. So I have a simple way of thinking about this, I think of the brain as having three fundamental areas that we need to be concerned about as parents and caregivers, for ourselves, as well as for our children, there is an alarm in the brain. And that is an area in the brain that gets very activated when we're in danger, or when we just need to pay attention. And it's literally called the amygdala. But we just think of it as an alarm. When trauma happens to to children or at any age, but especially to children, that part of the brain becomes very, very active. And it really is a kind of a self protective function. Then there's another area of the brain that retrieves our memories. And when the alarm is turned on in the brain, the memories that get retrieved are memories of bad things that have happened, because those are the things that you need to remember in order to make sure that they're not happening again. And so when the alarm gets turned on, and the memories are fired up all about bad things. That's when kids

25:00  
Let's react in ways that don't seem to make any sense or that seem excessive or withdraw in ways that we don't understand. That is because the the alarm is basically cueing their memory filing center to come up with the trauma memories, not intentional, this is not something that they're aware of, or that we're aware. So how do you reset that? Well, fortunately, there's a third part of the brain that we call the thinking center. And it's really, it's the prefrontal cortex, it's the area right at the very front and top of our heads. And that's the area where we're able to think consciously make decisions, make plans where we know what we're feeling. So the way to help kids to reset, what's happened to change the firing of those neurons and the wiring of those neurons, is to help them to activate that thinking center in a way that signals to the alarm in their brain that they don't have to constantly be on guard. And that's really what good therapy does. But it's also what mentors do when they teach kids how to focus in on their core values, and act on the basis of what they really believe is right and wrong. And when they model that for kids so that kids see that it's not just talk, it's also action. So the rewiring really is a shift where the boy or the girl learns that they can use their ability to think clearly in order to reset an area of their brain that they didn't even know they had, but that had been going off constantly. And once that area gets reset, it's a work in progress. But it literally does shift the way that the brain is activated, and the alarm does turn down rather than constantly being on. So that's my take on it. I hope that's not too obscure. Not at all. And we'll let's get Dr. Zaleski take on it as well about rewiring those neurons. Exactly. I think what Julian's describing in such a great way is the way that we are doing that rewiring, right, we're trying to provide kids with these reparative replacement, you know, opportunities and examples so that we're getting different neurons to fire together. So where they historically may be triggered by different things. We haven't talked too much about triggers. But you know, I can imagine for a lot of your listeners, you know, as a foster parent or an adoptive parent, like not even knowing what a child's triggers are having these experiences where a child might be oppositional, as Julian described, might be sabotaging things, you know that we're going really well. And all of a sudden, the child's doing things to make things not go well. So those are all examples, I think of different situations where they've been triggered with that alarm fires that Julian describes, but then it is our role, whether that's as a therapist, a caregiver, you know, community member, anybody who has a role in the life of this child to try to gradually and in very sort of dose ways, provide these reparative experiences, it's not going to happen overnight. But it's these little moments that moments then turn into longer experiences where a child can see okay, I've had time to build up and trust this adult, or trust this environment, this experience to know that this person is not going to hurt me. And so my alarm system starts to calm down, I'm able to then engage in different ways over time. And that's what I think is really beautiful. It's this neuroplasticity, we're sort of describing the brain's ability to change and fire differently once a child feels safe. And I think a big key to that is the regulation, right? We've been talking about sort of ways of emotionally regulating a child gradually building in these opportunities for them to feel safe and replace those maybe earlier developmental experiences with more trusted and consistent kinds of contexts. And by the way, when a child's alarm goes off, you can be sure that somebody else's alarm is going to go off to absolutely, that's their caregiver. And so it's just as important that we consider how caregivers are aware of their own internal alarms, not necessarily because of trauma, because we all have an alarm in our brain. And it may or may not be turned on because of trauma, but it gets it does get turned on. I know what as an adoptive and step parent myself, my alarm got turned on all the time. And my kids alarms got turned on. And I had to be aware of that and recognize, oh, well, it's, it's not that they're doing this to me. And they're not doing this because they don't care about me or they don't value what I can provide to them. Even though I doubted that at times, of course as we all do. It's because they are they're going through the process that they've had to go through to protect themselves. If I can show them that there's a different way not by lecture but by calm example. Then they will pick up on that and realize that it's possible to not go into that kind of alarm state even

30:00  
When you're triggered, because I've seen my father, mother, stepfather, adoptive parents, I've seen my teachers do that. When kids see adults who handle stress calmly, that is one of the most important things that can ever, ever contribute to resilience. And that is I wanted to talk to him about emotional regulation. And I'm and one way is by modeling an appropriate calm response to maybe not always calm but in an appropriate response to our emotions. It could be even expressing strong emotions, but doing so without hitting without belittling without doing it's not. It's not necessarily always a Zen moment, but it can be it can still be a an emotionally regulated moment. So by modeling is certainly one way that I heard you say, Dr. Sal husky, what would be another way that we can help our children with emotional regulation? Because if I

30:59  
emotional self regulation, because if I heard you correctly, that is a prime way that we can help our kids overcome their traumatic background. Yeah, I think a big key is we have to teach them replacements, alternative strategies for what they've been using, right? We can't just tell kids, you know, calm down, stop crying, don't yell. Like there's a lot of don'ts and you can't in there, but what are we replacing it with? So if we aren't teaching them, you know, different strategies, whether that's, you know, breathing, mindfulness, sensory experiences, there's so many different ways to teach kids, emotion regulation, strategies and tools. I mean, just Google it, you'll find lots of wonderful examples out there. But if we don't sort of help them, find which ones work for them, help them practice in situations where they aren't really amped up. And in the moment, you know, already dysregulated that's not the time to say, Stop yelling at me, I need you to do that, you know, calm breathing, we practiced yelling, yelling, Breathe calmly, it's ugly.

32:02  
Yeah, right. And like Julian said that the there's a big likelihood that the grownup trying to support them is also a bit dysregulated. In these moments, like, I can think about this a lot myself as a parent, you know, when I am yelling at my young child to tell them to stop yelling, like, I'm yelling, like, how can I expect from them when I am doing and so, you know, in times when you are calm, and you can sort of after the fact do a bit of that sort of postgame analysis, like, you know, let's talk about what happened, here's how I was really kind of ramped up, here's how you were, what are some things we might try together, what might work for you really empower them to be part of coming up with some of those strategies or offering them suggestions and having them think about which ones they might want to try having a go to list? So you know, again, you've practiced this, it's familiar, so that in the moment, we both know, okay, we're gonna go over to your strategies, and we're gonna pick one, right, we don't have to appeal to a lot of those high level cognitive decision making capacities when we're really ramped up emotionally. So I think it's, we just have to prepare, practice, you know, make it start to become muscle memory, to give them alternatives, so that they start to feel success in that, like, it may not be perfect all the time, they may have situations where they really just can't, but the more you can kind of keep coming back. And, you know, reviewing those things processing together, well, how did that go? It seems like that strategy wasn't really effective. Let's, let's replace that and try this other one next time. And giving them opportunities to succeed, I think goes a long way to really help strengthen these emotional regulation skills. You know, and I'm gonna go back to something that I think it was Dr. Ford said about modeling. Sometimes as an adult, we don't necessarily, we don't do it outwardly as we're calming ourselves. But for parents who are parenting a child who has experienced trauma and is struggling with self regulation, sometimes bringing our internal self regulatory method methods out by when you're angry.

33:59  
Even if you're angry at the child saying, I need to step back for a moment, I need to breathe and we used to do the pizza breathing, you know where you hold, pick the pizza up to your pick the imaginary pizza up to your hand, and breathe deeply. And then exhale, and actually doing it even though it feels a little stupid as an adult, because we're somewhat past that but by or we think we are anyway. But by doing it and doing it in front of the child, even though they may roll their eyes and it sometimes can make them angry because they know what we're doing. But still, by doing it, we're modeling that this is helping me so bringing it bringing our own methods up to the front and actually showing them as opposed to just doing them internally it can be effective, and sometimes doing it with a play by play narrative.

34:45  
Like give me an example like okay, my child is throwing a fit in the grocery store and I'm going to kill them. And so I'm going to try to illustrate use the grocery store so public let's say just in the house the kid is throwing a fit and I'm I'm have reached the end of my proverbial rope.

35:00  
Then what would you walk me through the self narrative that I would say? Well,

35:05  
if that was me, I would say, Okay, I think I think I've just about reached the end of my rope. I need to calm down now. And you know what I know, I have some strategies for calming down. So I think I'm going to use one of those strategies right now, my strategy right at the moment is, I'm just going to close my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths. And when I do that, I'm just gonna remember that I really love you don't like what you're doing right this moment. And I also am going to remember that we can figure out a way to solve this problem, even though I know you don't think there's any solution, that we're going to figure out a way to solve this problem. And then when I open my eyes again, I know we're still going to have a lot to do. But I'm going to feel a lot calmer. And you know what, if you'd like to do that with me, please feel free to or if you think it's too stupid, you don't have to. But I have to tell you, I feel a lot better right now.

35:58  
Yeah, I could see that as as being very effective. If nothing else, you believe it? Well, and you've also bought yourself some time, if nothing else. And as your mind is trying to think, Okay, let me assess the situation and and see, what is our what is that hard work that's going to follow with open my eyes? Great. What are we going to do? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So certainly one of the keys for helping to rewire those neurons is recognizing our child's triggers, as well as our triggers, and emotional teaching emotional regulation, self regulation, and practicing it, which sometimes is the harder part there.

36:39  
One, Yep. Absolutely. Just from hearing you both to it. And just thinking about, you know, again, the population you're focused on to like, I think in addition to both of those things, it's also trying, which Julian mentioned a bit to not take this personally, like recognizing that for the kids we're talking about here. In many ways, they are going to show you their worst, they are trying to sort of test, can you handle me at my worst. And I actually think there's some beauty in that, from the standpoint that you must have established enough sort of trust and reliability and consistency and stability for them, that they are bringing you You're their worst, right? In some ways, whether it's to kind of test the waters and see how if you can handle them, but because they're also, I think, for many of these kids hoping that you'll be able to contain it because they don't know how to contain it themselves. And so I know that's been helpful for me in contexts with very, very difficult kids like Julian has described, you know, where they are just pushing and pushing and pushing. And I have to recognize, this isn't about me at all, it's about we have enough of a relationship established that they are bringing me their worst because I'm their safe haven in some ways. And they really want to make sure I can handle and contain them, to help them learn how to contain themselves and work through this in healthier ways. So I know that's easy to say now, when you're not in the worst of those moments, but but if you can just try to sort of remember like, this isn't personal. But wow, this child is really wanting me to walk this journey and they are trying to test if I can handle it.

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Dr. Ford just said it was a very backhanded compliment. Yes, exactly. Right. How lucky am I that you are bringing me your A game today? Yeah, it's a compliment that I have never really wanted to receive.

38:31  
And every time that I do receive it, I try to remember exactly what Amanda just said,

38:36  
this is actually something a statement by this child, or this young adult that they they're willing to give me a try. And they may be very skeptical. And they may act like I have been completely given up on me or like I'm a total failure, or I'm not worth anything. I can remember any number of sessions where I've done as a therapist where the young man or woman will just sit there and be on their phone and texting. And I tried to get a word in edgewise. And they go, I'm sorry, I'm busy. Could you just you know, don't just don't bother me for a minute. And I'm thinking, I am wasting their time and I'm not doing any good. I must be a horrible therapist. I would feel the same way as a parent. But the fact is that what they're doing is they're basically saying, Can you respect my space? And can you give me the opportunity to choose when and how I let you into my world.

39:28  
And also, I'm still sitting here with you. I could have walked out but I didn't. And here we are sitting together. And there's a lot of communication in that too. Great, Paul, I will say that it's easier and I think in therapy than it is in the parenting environment. Yeah, just the Yeah. But it is hopefully to remember that

39:50  
all the things you are saying that it's not. It really isn't personal. And that's why it's helpful to come back to our own triggers because there if if this

40:00  
Respect and in essence is if that was a big trigger for you to try to also say, and I speak for somebody who it is that, you know that it's helpful for me in those moments to realize that I'm being triggered. And perhaps even, it's also maybe intentional, where they know, they know my trigger. Therefore, at this point, I can either feed it or I can just accept that this is what for whatever reason they're doing it is not personal to me, although the particular method they're expressing is likely one that they realize should get a rise out of me. Yeah, yeah. And I could defy their expectations. I think the reason part of the reason it's easier for therapists is because we get breaks, we can go reset regulate ourselves, and why that's so difficult, of course, for parents and caregivers is you don't necessarily get breaks you might have this is round three today, or whatever the case might be. So I think, knowing that and recognizing like, How can I give myself some breaks, even if that's five minutes, like we said, taking a moment to go breathe, how Julian described narrating for your child, what you're doing, to give yourself just a moment to reset your own level of regulation is a big piece of it. Yeah. And when you take the break to remember that the hardest thing for me has always been to remember that this does not mean that I'm a failure as a parent, yeah, that was just gonna say what I think from a parent's standpoint, but I suspect therapists who could feel like a failure as a therapist, but I think parents often feel like, I'm going to be judged as a bad parent, this child is going to go out in the world, and they will reflect that, you know, their behavior is going to be a reflection on me. Therefore, this is a not only a failure, but a public failure. And we may want to think we're beyond that. But I think most of us do care about that absolute. So we, we hate that to be. And as far as the self care, I just wanted to touch on that. I just can't I just so agree with you that having something you're looking forward to if it's in a bad day, think of something that evening, you know, binge on Netflix after you can get the kids and just you know, if the kids are still up, as long as they're safe, just get yourself and a little treat doesn't have to be a you know, a massive treat. of it. That's good, too. But the, the just something that you're going okay, I can hang in there for another two hours have me and my computer or Mike TV are going to go have a date. Yeah.

42:32  
I want to thank one of our longtime partners and net children's connection. They have been with us maybe not from the very beginning, but for a really long time. And we really appreciate their continued support for both us this podcast as well as our general mission of educating and supporting adoptive Foster and kin families. Children's connection is an adoption agency providing services for domestic infant adoption, and embryo donation and adoption throughout the US. They also perform home studies and post adoption support to families in Texas.

43:05  
Alright, let's talk some about resilience. What a bounce back I think is what Dr. Ford called it? Is there something that we can do as parents to help our kids be more resilient? Are they just either resilient or non resilient, because that's the way they were? They were born. It's everything we've just been talking about. Because the key to resilience is self regulation. If you can self regulate, and not not easily not perfectly, not without difficult emotions at times, and frustrations and even times where it feels like like you're failing, if you can keep the self regulation going exactly the way that Amanda just described, and blend in with that some of those rewards and times where you just get to enjoy life. That's really the best formula that I know of for resilience, Dawn is to teach our children and to encourage well for ourselves as well, but for our children to encourage self regulation into work in as many ways as we can to create opportunities for them to self regulate. And is that what you're saying? Exactly? Doctors will Husky thoughts. Yeah, just I think to answer your original question there to like no children are not born resilience. You know, this is something that is developed over time. It is strengthened, it's cultivated, it's modeled for them like we've been describing. We're showing them by the way we live and regulate ourselves, by the way we tackle crises. You know, I think of various challenges people experience and how kids watch the caregivers and grownups around them navigate those is teaching them aspects of resilience, the ways we help cultivate that in themselves. And I just I think we also have to think systemically about how resilience is fostered to you know, when you have kids who grow up in

45:00  
environments experiencing poverty or discrimination, racism, you know, these are all things that chip away at at resilience at the ability to be resilient again, because these are just more layers of stress that a child is having to navigate amongst, you know, all the other kinds of trauma we've already talked about. So there are ways that the adults can support them. There are ways we can teach kids to support themselves and building resilience. But I also think we can think more at a societal and systemic level about, you know, advocating for systems to improve so that kids aren't having to navigate even more of these layers of stress or disadvantage. In our population, that the system there are many systems that impact our children, but certainly the child welfare system is often one of the big ones and, and foster parents often feel like they have very little voice, and they but they do have a voice and adoptive parents as well. And kinship, parents, all of our demographics. So there are things that we can do within the system, or at least advocate for our kids. Yeah, just at an individual level to you just made me think of one more thing done that as a foster adoptive parent, anybody in a parent or caregiving role, you have the ability to advocate for the child under your care, and really unique and important ways to you know, sometimes I think, it'd be nice if the system of like the child welfare system you described, you know, were set up in a way to take care of a lot of that. But I've certainly found that, you know, with my kids and with kids, I've supported in mental health contexts that that parent with the loud voice that is unwilling to let the system fail their child, it makes the difference. Like it changes the trajectory of this child's life, right? It's the difference of advocating to that kindergarten teacher, here's why this child is acting this way understand a bit about his background, versus that child being seen as a quote unquote, bad child disruptive child. So even our single voices as caregivers can go a long way as far as advocating to to carve a bit of an easier, more resilient path for this child. Wilson, I totally agree. So Dr. Zaleski, how long does it take? How long does it take to help our kids heal from this trauma and to develop their self regulation and grit and resilience?

47:13  
I wish there was an easy answer. That really isn't Of course, right? It depends on on so many things, it depends on what their experience of the traumatic event was, how old they were, their developmental stage, when it happened, what sorts of protective buffers are around them, you know, maybe some difficult cards that were already stacked against them, like I've been talking about systemically, their temperament, it depends whether they were, you know, a victim or a witness. So I think there are so many things that go into what a child's recovery can look like, or resilience in that path forward. But as we've been talking about, there are a lot of things we can do to ease that path to make it faster to maintain those gains. And I think the biggest key, as we've been saying is to make sure that there is a supportive, trusted, consistent and caring adult in that child's life. That's not always a parent necessarily, right, or the parent is a part of a broader team that might be the teacher or the coach or a mentor in some way, you know, but just the more we can sort of surround this child and fill his or her buckets in these different ways, the faster and I think more effective, that path toward resilience are sort of bouncing forward from these adversities will happen. And the same bucket needs to be filled for every foster and adoptive parent, because they are taking on just an enormous but very, very doable, and yet remarkable. And task that takes an enormous amount of courage and stamina. So that's something we also need to learn, we need to teach our systems to to do better, because foster parents and adoptive parents are often assumed to have all the resources they need, all the support they need. Of course, that's that's not true. So that's doesn't stop them from being incredibly courageous. And I think we need to just acknowledge that. And Dr. For there's specific types of therapy that are more effective than others for helping children overcome trauma. There are there are a wide variety of therapies that can be very helpful, that the most specific kind if if a child or a teenager or an adult has troubling memories that are particularly distressing for them, that they react to reminders of those memories, and those are the triggers, or that just simply keep coming back into their mind as as something that they can never quite get over. There are approaches to therapy that help the child or the adult to really look back at that memory carefully and safely with a with a therapist guidance in a way that they can then make some sense of what happened to them and really close the chapter on that memory. So those are sometimes called trauma focused therapies. And that can be very helpful but it's not that's not the case for every child who's experienced trauma.

50:00  
Hammer. For many, they don't have specific memories that are troubling. But they just are struggling to not be constantly on guard or or not be constantly reacting. And for those kids, I think what's really important are the kinds of therapies that help them to get in touch with their bodies to learn and understand, and actually appreciate their emotions, to be able to do things mindfully. So even some kid versions of meditative therapies, and we're, we're doing fit therapy through yoga practice and mindfulness practice with kids in juvenile justice programs. There's a range of possibilities. And it really has to be linked to what each individual child's needs are. As long as that's the case, and as long as the therapy is designed to help them to discover what they need to know in order to feel safe, and in order to feel that they can trust themselves and the people in their lives. That's That's the crucial thing. It's not just a it's not a matter of just providing emotional support. That's important. But it's also helping the child to figure out what happened to me. And how can I make sense of that so that I can go ahead with my life and not just carry this is something that I can never ever forget. Thank you so much. Dr. Julian Ford and Dr. Amanda Zilla, Husky. Now I'd love to talk to you about the roadmap to resilience podcast series. Dr. Zola husky. Tell us about this. Well, first of all, what is it? How do people access it and tell us all about it? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with how to access it, which is that WWW dot roadmap to resilience dot orc all one word. And what's really so this was a project that was actually the brainchild of an inter organizational Child Trauma taskforce that Julian convened early on in the pandemic. So I don't know if you want to speak to kind of convening that taskforce, Julian, and then we can talk about the series. Sure, well, in brief, this is a this is a taskforce that had representatives from a number of different organizations, not representing their organizations, but representing themselves and drawing on expertise in traumatic stress and dissociation, and prevention of child abuse. So some really wonderful, very talented people who psychologists, social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, pediatricians, attorneys, we had, we had the whole range of experts on children's experience and helping children recover from trauma. And as that group got together, we, we were trying to think, what can we do that fills a niche that hasn't been filled? So we're not just reinventing the wheel. And we learned about Amanda's pandemic parenting podcast. And that just sparked the idea of why don't we put together a podcast for parents and families that helps them to navigate this roadmap to resilience? Yeah, so you can find in addition to the 17 podcast episodes, which are all on every podcast platform, again, it's just called roadmap to resilience, you should be able to search it, you'll hear conversations based on theme, right? So we brought together over a dozen experts, as Julian said, from all over the world, to really kind of translate some of these best practices, you know, here are all these wonderful minds with so much rich clinical experience and knowledge across so many different settings, that you know, what they shared in terms of practical strategies and tips and ways to think about working with kids was just, I think, really moving and impactful. And there are episodes geared towards different audiences. So if you are a parent, if you're a mental health professional, if you're a nurse, or health care provider, if you're a lawyer, there are episodes really targeting all of these different populations, or what your focus area might be in the ways you either work with or care for kids who have experienced trauma. There's also a whole series of infographics that were created based on these conversations and these short sort of bite sized, you know, one to two minute frequently asked questions or clips from these experts, that were just really, really powerful. So it's all free, publicly available, please share it with others, you know, who might find it helpful, especially specific episodes again, for different professional settings or audiences, and we hope it's helpful, we really enjoyed doing it. I have to say, I learned a lot from it. All those people, they have such personal as well as professional expertise. It's just really it's a wonderful eye opening experience. And they the website where you can find both the podcast as well as the infographics is roadmap to resilience.org work got a book keep that up, put that in the show notes as well. And, and some of the topics specifically just throw out a couple of topics that our audience might be interested in. Yeah, so we start with you know, basic foundational things. There's an episode on what is trauma, one on what is resilience, one on how do we prevent trauma, one on how do we understand dissociation and then we dive into some specific traumatic experiences like

55:00  
kids who've been sexually abused kids who have lost a parent to intimate partner violence, cross cultural and immigration contexts global and collective traumas like a pandemic, or war torn, you know, countries or contexts. And then it goes into a whole series of episodes, as I said, for various specific audiences, like lawyers, healthcare providers, mental health providers, and so forth. And then the last episode is really focused on on self care, a lot of what we've been talking about. So we asked all these experts, how do you take care of yourself amidst this really difficult work and these stories you're hearing all the time? And Julian and I learned so much from our colleagues on how they care for themselves how parents might use some of these strategies also. So I think that was a really moving episode as well. Well, excellent. We will include roadmap to resilience.org in the show notes, and I am sure that everybody will want to hop over there. And any of you can also access it. As she mentioned, for many of your apps that you're currently listening to this on, just search for it. I'm sure that it will pop right up. All right. Well, thank you again, Dr. Julian Ford and Dr. Amanda's l husky. I truly appreciate your talking with us today about helping our kids overcome a traumatic background.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai