My Foster Son Was Put In a Dog Pen. How Do I Help Him Heal? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: My 4-year-old foster son moved in 9 months ago. He will likely remain with me permanently, and the application is in progress. I was his 5th foster home when he moved in. There was neglect at his birth parents and abuse in a previous foster home. Last weekend he was being babysat by my sister and brother-in-law. They went to the basement to show him a toy, and he saw a large dog cage they were planning to sell online. He was immediately triggered, ran upstairs, hid under the pillows in a bed, and it took 10 minutes to feel safe. He was obviously placed in a dog cage at some point. How do I support him, talk to him about what happened, and make him feel safe? How should I support him and help him calm his nervous system if he is triggered again?

Resources:

• A Conversation with Dr. Bruce Perry About Trauma
• 6 Crucial Things Every Adoptive Parent Must Do
• Using Scripts to Build Trust with Foster & Adopted Kids
• Suggested Book List - Kids Who Have Experienced Trauma

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome to this week's Weekend Wisdom. Our Weekend Wisdom podcast is where we answer
your questions. So we need you to send us your questions. You can do that by
sending them to info @creatingafamily .org, or you can click on the link in the show
notes to send them as well. Today's question comes from Debbie. She says, "My four
-year -old foster son moved in nine months ago. He will likely remain with me
permanently, and the application is in progress. I was his fifth foster home when he
moved in. There was neglect at his birth parents and abuse in a previous foster
home. Last weekend he was being babysat by my sister and brother -in -law. They went
to the basement to show him a toy. He saw a large dog cage they were planning to
sell online. He was immediately triggered, ran upstairs, hid under the bed, and it
took 10 minutes for him to calm down to feel safe. He was obviously placed in a
dog cage at some point. I've reported to social services. How do I support him and
talk to him about what happened and make him feel safe? How should I support him
and help calm his nervous system if he is triggered again? Wow, Debbie, poor child.
You know, it's particularly upsetting was that he was removed from a neglectful
situation and put into an abusive situation by the system. I mean, you know, talk
about a colossal failure. That is one. I am really glad that you have reported it
to social services. So your question was how to help them feel safe and calm down
his nervous system. And you're already doing the best thing you can, which is
providing him with a loving, structured, predictable, and calm home. And the second
thing I would strongly recommend is getting him into therapy, preferably something
like TheraPlay, given his age. He needs a way to express what's happening to him to
help him start the healing process. Another thing to help him calm his nervous
system is to help him learn to self -regulate or self -sews when he is triggered.
And the best way to teach self -regulation is through repeated modeling and co
-regulation with us, the adults in his life. And you know, self -seusing is a
critical skill for our kids to learn. But many of the kids who've experienced trauma
haven't yet mastered it, or they've developed unhealthy self -comforting tools that
really won't serve them in the future and probably aren't serving them well now. So
self -soothing skills are a necessary element for kids to learn and how they learn
how to self -regulate. So if you're adopted or foster child struggles with self
-soothing skills, that's hard to say, self -soothing skills. The question is, how do
you go back to work with them to help build these skills? I'm going to give you
three ways, three tips. The first is direct soothing, and that is as simple as it
sounds. It's what you do with a newborn. When a newborn cries, you pick it up, you
rub its back, you jiggle it, you bounce it up and down, you cuddle it. In some
version of that works with older kids, but you have to shift things a bit. Here's
some examples. One, hugging. Now, hopefully your child is open to that, you need to
ask, but assuming your child will allow it, good warm hug is both grounding and
soothing. And if your child is one who is not ready to be hugged by you,
you need to respect that, but there's something you could do, it's called the
butterfly hug, and you face each other and you are mirroring each other's actions,
and you hug yourself, and then you tap your tap your shoulders alternately in a
regular rhythm. And that tapping provides what they call bilateral stimulation. That's
also can be grounding. And hopefully you're moving up into a direct warm good hug.
Showers are another way of direct soothing. I hear there are some people who can be
soothed by a cold shower. I find that hard to believe since I am definitely not
one of them. But a good hot shower or a hot bath can really work to kind of
soothe the raw nerves that your child may be experiencing. And you know, one of the
best ways is through pets. If you have a pet, petting and snuggling with our furry
friends is just a wonderful way. It's a tactile way of providing a sense of safety
and physical stimulation that can often help you calm down. And hair play or back
rubs, depending on your child, you know, having their head scratched or their back
scratched or rubbed is really effective. So the second tip is deep breathing,
and that's a way to help our kids self soothe. Now you don't do this or introduce
this, you do do it, but you don't introduce it in the middle of a meltdown or
when your child is out of control, you need to start practicing this tool ahead of
time so so that they can learn it. My favorite of the deep breathing techniques is
called pizza breathing because I think it is so visual. You act like you're holding
a piece of pizza in your hand. Then you bring it up to your nose and close to
your face and breathe in deeply to catch that smell of the wonderful cheese and
gooey and hot cheese and sauce. Then you blow slowly out of your mouth,
gently onto the imaginary slice to cool them down. You got to be careful. You can't
blow too hard because you'll blow the cheese off or splatter your neighbor with the
sauce. So it's a slow intake through your nose and slow blow out through your
mouth. It's very effective. However, it's not always natural. And when your kid is
not able to focus and is in a moment of being triggered, a technique that can help
them calm down before they could practice the deep breathing or any of the other
techniques we're talking about. It's called the 5 -4 -3 -2 -1 grounding method. It's
for helping your child center and then be able to get engaged, to be able to think
about deep breathing. What this tool does, and again, you have to practice this when
you're not in the middle of the meltdown. So all of these take some practice ahead
of time. So the 5 -4 -3 -2 -1 grounding method is, First thing you do is you look
for five, you name five things you can see. Then you name four things that you can
hear. Then you name three things you can touch, two things you can smell,
and one thing you can taste. It helps bring the kids back to their current
environment and away from the trigger that's sending them off into a meltdown.
Another tip or the last tip for a dysregulated child is movement. Many,
many children will respond to increased physical activity. It helps them calm down.
Now you're going to figure out what works for your kid to burn off this energy and
when their big motions are spiraling out of control. One tip is to throw our
perhaps or roll a ball with your child while talking about what happened.
The action of the back and forth is rhythmically soothing. The added benefit is that
it teaches reciprocity by pairing it with you ask a question, then you roll it to
them, they answer. That could be very effective for kids to help calm them down.
And of course, things like jumping on a trampoline or for older kids going out for
a run or jumping up and down, doing jumping jacks, things like that can work as
well. Some other resources that I would recommend for you from our archive.
We did a terrific podcast with Dr. Bruce Perry, and I would recommend that you can
go to our site, creatingafamily .org, and just search for Dr. Bruce Perry,
and that's a podcast. We also have a tip sheet for six tips for creating
attachment, and that's from Dr. Karen Purvis. And again, you can just search for it
on our site. And the last one I would recommend is using scripts to build trust.
Again, just search for scripts to build trust on our site. And I think you'll find
that all three of those are really useful. I think that will help you in parenting
this little guy. So thanks Debbie, so much for your question. And before you go,
let me remind everybody that Creating a Family has a Facebook support group. We've
got about 11 ,000 members. If you're experiencing something, I guarantee somebody in
that group has also experienced it. We also have some adult adoptees,
former foster youth, a few birth parents. It's a really helpful place to get a
different perspective. I strongly encourage you to do that. Go over there and join
it. It is facebook .com /groups /creatingafamily.
Or just go to Facebook and type in "creatingafamily" and you'll find it that way
too. Thanks for joining us and I will see you next week.