Trauma and the Teen Years

Question:  I wish I had known what to expect when a child with trauma hit the teen years. Maybe a book suggestion of what to expect or resources on what may show up and how to handle it. Puberty and the teen years have hit our family HARD. I also notice other families with adopted children going through the same or similar things. ~Rebecca from Kansas

Resources:

• Therapy Resources for Adoptive, Foster, and Kinship Families
• Center for Parent and Teen Communication
• Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. I'm Tracy Whitney, the content manager for
Creating a Family. I'm excited about this opportunity to answer your questions. After
all, that's what Weekend Wisdom is all about. You send your questions about adoption,
foster care and kinship care to info @creatingafamily .org. We comb through our
resources to find an answer that will strengthen your family. Before we get into the
question today, let me introduce myself. I'm a mom to six great kids. They range in
age from 30 down to 13. Several of them are married and two are adopted. I also
have a new grandson with another one on the way. Obviously, with that age range,
we've navigated the teen experiences several times already. It's kind of exciting to
think that I've survived four teens and all the challenges that go with that.
Today's question is familiar territory for me. Rebecca from Kansas wrote to us for
help with her teen specifically regarding trauma. Here's what she asked. "I wish I
had known what to expect when a child with trauma hits the teen years. Maybe a
book's suggestion of what to expect or resources on what might show up or how to
handle it. Puberty and the teen years have hit our family hard. I notice other
families with adopted children are going through the same or similar things. Well
Rebecca, as I said, I get it. The struggle is real and I'm happy to share with
you a few of the things that our family has done to navigate these tween and teen
years with kids impacted by trauma. And at the end I'll offer you a couple
resources that I found valuable in these years also. The first thing that we do is
to hold on to our traditions and rituals. Even when your teen may be sneering or
rolling their eyes, try to keep up with the activities that tell your kids who your
family is. If you've always had a Friday night pizza night, let them invite a
friend, but keep up with that Friday night tradition. Maybe you could try your hands
at making your own pizza occasionally as a nod to their growing independence and
their individual tastes and preferences. If going to church every Sunday morning is
something that tells your family who they are, who you are as a family, keep going
together even if you're pretty sure your kid isn't getting anything out of it. The
second thing that we've tried to do is to be present, but not all up in their
business. When our teens or tweens are acting out, we know it, we can tell. So use
those moments to pop by their room with a good book that you just finished or
maybe invite them to watch a movie with you that you've both been waiting for. You
can bring cookies to them while they're studying and try to keep your office or
bedroom door open when you're in there. Leave space on the couch or invite them to
join you on the couch. Some kids love a good back rub or a back scratch. They
might need help braiding their hair. You want to signal with your physical presence
that you are there for them without making any demands on them. Try to find ways
to say that you enjoy being with them without actually saying it out loud because
of course that's way too cringy for teens. Third thing that we've tried is to be
consistent and firm with our boundaries. These years are full of pushing, testing,
pushing back, pulling back, all of those kinds of activities. It's exhausting,
and while it's exhausting for us, we should probably try and recognize that it's
also exhausting for them. If your tween or teen is relying on you to hold the ship
steady, even when the waters of their life feel choppy, you should investigate what
your boundaries are. So think about what your non -negotiable core values are while
raising these kids. For example, you should maintain expectations for respect and
kindness and participation in your family's most important routines. Yes, you're going
to get pushback, but also, yes, you are being the constant that they need while
they're dealing with all the changes of puberty and how to become an adult. Even
while you're holding all of those things firm, try to be flexible where you can.
Even if Those core expectations are say three or four big things. Look about your
family life to see where you can be flexible with some smaller things. For example,
we don't have a curfew written in stone for our kids. We actually never have
because we prefer to talk about the individual activity and the individual kid that's
participating in that activity. We want to work out with them what is reasonable. We
even sneak in some negotiations, skill building, when we ask them, "Hey, we were
thinking 10 o 'clock sounds good, but what do you think?" And that gives them an
opportunity to have a voice, but it also shows them that we're trying to be
flexible and not hold everything rigid and written in stone, so to speak.
Number five, we talk openly about trauma together as a family. It is so crucial
that our kids know what trauma is, how it impacts a developing brain, and how they
can support themselves to overcome those impacts in healthy ways. So we talk about
trauma generally, but then we also help them identify what their specific trauma
experiences have been. We talk about all the things that they might be feeling.
We're honest about what we don't know, or what we don't have good answers for and
we try to help them learn how to label the experience and then learn how to manage
the experience as well as the feelings and we try to develop some strategies
together that sometimes are even little signals from them to us that they're kind of
done and they can't handle it themselves anymore. Sometimes our kids need our
interventions And so we need to give them tools to help them understand what an
intervention might look like. And while we're giving them time to talk about things,
we also wanna make sure, number six, that we give them time and space not to talk.
As my teen reminds me quite frequently, sometimes they just don't wanna talk about
anything at all. And that's okay. You have to let them kind of express that safely
and kindly to you, so you can kind of toss out a conversational ball to them,
and if they don't pick that ball up and toss it back to you, then that might be
your signal that this is not a good time to talk for them. You can circle back
later and say, "Hey, I noticed the other day that you..." The "I wonder" or "I
noticed type of language lets them know that you're there, that you're aware and
then it lets them lead where they need to go in that conversation. Number seven is
one of my favorite parenting tips and it's to surround your kids with other safe
adults. I had to get okay early on in my parenting journey with the fact that my
kids might not want to talk to me about everything and that's okay. Now it was a
struggle to get okay with that in the early years but early on I told them that
if they ever wanted to talk to someone and it didn't feel comfortable to be mom
and dad, they had other safe adults to go to and so I helped them identify who
those other safe adults might be. A youth worker, an older sibling, a cousin that
they really trust, an aunt or an uncle, a coach, a therapist, make sure that they
know that they're not alone and that you are not the only safe space that they
have. And then develop a relationship with those safe adults if you don't already
have one, so that that adult knows that you're trusting them with your child and
that you can work together as a team to support your kid. And speaking of
therapists, find out how your teen or tween feels about therapy or counseling.
They might be more into it than you assume. In their peer groups right now, it's
not at all uncommon for teens and tweens to be in therapy of some kind. If you're
worried about how they're going to navigate their trauma history through these teen
and tween years, offer to find them an adoption -component therapist who can be a
safe landing place for them. We have therapy resources under the adoption topics drop
down tab on our website at www .creatingafamily .org and then you just navigate to
adoption adoption topics and you can find therapy resources there. Number nine,
we try pretty hard to model self -care. Our tweens and teens that have a history of
trauma don't always understand how to express what they need to feel refreshed or
refueled and they don't always even know why they need it. So you can show them a
great example of healthy self -care by how you take care of yourself. So you should
talk about why you schedule a regular date nights with dad or how you feel when
you end the day with a nice quiet music, book, chocolate, whatever works for you at
the end of the day. Let them join you for a yoga session or invite them to take
a walk with you when you're feeling noticeably restless or stressed. Showing them
healthy examples of relationships is also great self -care for you and for them.
And it just models other layers of how to take care of oneself. As far as
resources are concerned, on the Creating a Family website, you will find tons of
great tools for helping you raise tweens and teens who've been impacted by trauma or
impacted by prenatal substance exposure, foster tweens and teens, kinship tweens and
teens. If you just searched teens and tweens or tweens or teens or any combination
of that in our search bar, you're going to find resources that will help you. I
also really enjoy the resources from the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. You can find them at parentanteen .com and we'll
try to link that in the show notes. And a book that I found particularly helpful
when my adopted children hit the teen years was Katie Napsker's book called
"Parenting in the Eye of the Storm," "The Adoptive Parents' Guide to Navigating the
Teen Years." We'll link that in the show notes as well. She's been a guest on our
podcast several times, and her interviews are always very helpful. All of that to
say, hang in there, mom. You are not alone. The teen years are challenging,
and trauma certainly adds complexity to this season for sure. But Rebecca,
I'm certain that if you keep learning and keep connecting with resources like the
ones at creatingafamily .org, you will survive the teen years just like I have.
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