How to Balance Giving Kids Structure and Control

Question: First, I wanted to thank you for your incredible podcast. I’m not a parent (I only recently graduated from college), but I have volunteered in group homes for foster care children for the past couple of years. Your podcast has not only helped me to work more effectively with the kids I see but has also given me insight into what I want to do in my career. I hope to research and work with families involved with the foster care system in the future, and your podcast has allowed me to learn from so many interesting and diverse perspectives. My question is: how do you balance giving children who have experienced trauma both a sense of control and structure? From the kids I’ve worked with, I’ve noticed that many of them tend to act out the most when they feel like they don’t have control. This makes sense to me, as I imagine almost all kids in foster care have had a severe lack of control in their lives. However, I’ve also heard that kids who have experienced trauma benefit from having a strict structure in their lives. These two ideas seem somewhat antithetical to each other, but both seem important. How do you recommend parents and practitioners give children both a sense of control over their lives and provide them with structure so they have a sense of safety? Thank you again for your wonderful podcast, it truly has made such a difference in how I think about the foster care system. I look forward to listening to your podcast every week.

Resources:

• Free E-Guide: Parenting a Child Exposed to Trauma
• Helping a Child Heal from Trauma
• Parenting Kids with Challenging Behavior
• Raising Foster Children

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
- Welcome to this week's Weekend Wisdom. This podcast is our opportunity to answer
your questions. So send us your questions. You can send them to us at info
@creatingafamily .org or there's a link in the show notes and you can click there.
All right, today's question is a great one. It's from Maya. She says, "First,
I wanted to thank you "for your incredible podcast. I'm not a parent. I only
recently graduated from college, but I have been volunteering in a group home for
foster care children for the past couple of years. Your podcast has not only helped
me to work more effectively with the kids I see, but also has given me insight
into what I want to do in my career. I hope to research and work with families
involved with the foster care system in the future, and your podcast has allowed me
to learn from so many interesting and diverse perspectives. My question is, how do
you balance giving children who have experienced trauma both a sense of control and
structure? From the kids I've worked with, I've noticed that many of them tend to
act out the most when they feel like they don't have control. This makes sense to
me, as I imagine almost all the kids in the foster care system have had a severe
lack of control in their lives. However, I've also heard that kids who've experienced
trauma benefit from having strict structure in their lives. These two ideas seem
somewhat antithetical to each other, but both seem important. How do you recommend
parents and practitioners give children both a sense of control over their lives and
provide them with structure so that they have a sense of safety? Thank you again
for your wonderful podcast. It truly has made such a difference in how I think
about the foster care system. I look or to listening to your podcast every week.
Well, thank you Maya for both the really interesting question and for your kind
words. You know, I've often thought that the art of parenting is learning how to
balance those two things, balance the providing of structure while also allowing our
kids to have age appropriate amount of control over their lives. And how we strike
this balance, I think depends a lot on how old the child is, as well as other
factors such as how long they've been with us, their basic temperament, and their
past life experiences. With younger children, the balance between structure and control
is easier to make. You provide structure by setting up their environment to be
predictable. And predictability leads to a feeling of control because they know what's
coming and they can anticipate it. And within this structure, you let them have more
control by giving them choices that are age appropriate, such as, Do you want to
wear blue jeans or leggings? Or do you want to set the table or help with loading
the dishwasher? And this same general principle I think applies as children age,
except that they need to be given more input in creating the structure and more
choices within it. For example, do you want to do homework right after you get home
from school or wait until after some chill time? Another example, what is a
reasonable time for you to put your phone in the a charging place downstairs for
the evening, or what do you think is a reasonable time for you to come home after
the football game? They need to have input into the basic daily family routines. And
more choices within it is even more important for kids and youth who have had so
little control, as you point out, over what's happened in their lives. Really,
fundamentally, they need to feel heard and respected. And most often, when they have
been consulted and feel like their input matters in setting the structure or the
rules, they're more willing to follow them. Maya, I hope this helps, and I am so
glad you're volunteering at the group home. Our profession needs more people like
you, so thank you. And before you go, let me remind you that Creating a Family has
a monthly newsletter. It is a e -newsletter, it's free. You can sign up at
org slash newsletter. Thanks for listening and I will see you next week.