Foundations 101

Foundations 101:   Understanding the child I have, not the one I expected

In this seminar we unpack the effects of relational trauma in the child’s development. The child we want to love may not be ready to be loved. First we must work to restore trust and value. Understanding the trauma history of our child is a good place to begin. The goal of this seminar is to adjust our expectations and develop a merciful mindset and rethink how to best offer healing to my child.

Foundations 201

Foundations 201:   Power, Perception and Personhood

It helps when a parent or caregiver is working to understand and empathize with the child's world. Starting with a quick overview of attachment styles, we will explore the three axes of power, perception and personhood. Respecting the history of our child will help us understand the roots of their attitudes and behavior. From this insight, we grow in our capacities to offer appropriate levels of mercy and structure to the child. Finally, we will explore several parenting strategies that can offer healing and help us in our attempts to reconstruct the child’s life.

Attachment 101

Seeing our child through the lens of attachment can help us understand their behaviors.

It is estimated that roughly 80% of older adopted children come into their new families with a chaotic or disorganized attachment style. This is not their fault – attachment styles are given to us by others. Healthy attachments are foundational to resilience, sound mental health, relational give and take, and healthy self worth. Broken attachments can experience healing and growth. We will learn the roots of attachment theory and how to assess your child’s attachment needs. We then look at various ideas designed to encourage healing.

ATTACHMENT 201

When the child's history collides with the adoptive parents past.

Many parents who adopt and foster children have their own “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” In order to offer help and healing to our child, many parents will need to first go through their own healing journey. We will attempt to discover how our own relational wounding and how it might be limiting our ability to parent our children. We will engage in several exercises designed to open the door into our own souls and work toward becoming the kind of parent our child needs. We will also explore a list of practical suggestions on how to implement your own self-care lifestyle.

Winning Trust

Seven Pathways that can Rebuild Trust and Worth

Beginning with the Children of Israel, we see that our heavenly Father is intentionally and actively working to win the hearts of His people. Often times, adopted parents find themselves needing to rebuild the foundation of the child’s belief system. We take a look at a biblical model, which offers a paradigm to do so. We then discuss day-to-day parenting strategies, which, when implemented, can help win the child’s trust and build their sense of value.

Cultivating Nurture & Providing Structure

Providing a healthy balance of nurture and structure to a child with a history of relational trauma can be complex. We want to grow in our understanding of how to do so. It is critical not to overwhelm the child, while at the same time, we do not want to limit the child’s growth. We will discuss many practical ideas that parents and caregivers can offer a child suffering from relational trauma. 

REDEEMING SHAME

Understanding the powerful affects of shame is critical to healing a child filled with neglect, abuse and relational trauma. It is important that parents discover their own shame and learn how they might be shaming their child(ren). Shame can destroy the child’s sense of feeling safe and sabotages the healing process. Learning the difference between legitimate shame and toxic shame is a good first step. Then, we will discover ways to expose harmful shame and bring it out of the shadows. Finally, we want to learn how to escape from fear, jealousy, grief and pride, which are working hard to keep shame from being exposed.

FROM CHAOS TO PEACE

Putting the Puzzle Together

We examine additional factors parents need to address if they are fostering or adopting a child. Everything changes when a wounded child is placed permanently in a new family.

Pieces of the puzzle might be: a new mindset, adjusting expectations and schedules, grieving well, understanding my shame, developing a plan to take care of self, and others.

FOR DADS ONLY  

Becoming an attentive gardener

Families who are fostering or adopting children need an attentive and mature person leading them. In this seminar we are challenging Husbands and Fathers to grow in our capacities. We can learn to better see the needs of our wives and children. We will discover ways we can be instruments of healing by looking at a  list of dos and don’ts as we help raise a distressed child. Most husbands and fathers want to become a more attentive gardener – someone who offers safety, direction and care in the home. 

TRUST BASED RELATIONAL INTERVENTION®:

TBRI® from Texas Christian University

We have received the TBRI® educator training and have been authorized to train others. This is a whole child approach designed to offer healing to the “child from a hard place.” We discuss Connecting Principles, Empowering Principles, and Correcting Principles. It is designed for parents, caregivers, orphanage workers and others who are working with traumatized children. We offer four modules of training. Each module is six hours in length.

·      Module One – Introduction and Overview

·      Module Two – Connection

·      Module Three – Empowerment

·      Module Four -- Correction

GRIEVING Losses   

Learning to grieve well

Communities often make much of the very real joy and deep privilege of rescuing a child in need. On the other side of the coin is grief and loss. Adoption and foster care wouldn’t be possible without painful losses. We must be attuned to the losses our children have and are experiencing. In order to do that well and with freedom, parents need to acknowledge and grieve what they have lost. (by adopting or fostering this child)

A HEALTHY MARRIAGE:

Staying on the same page together.

Parenting children who’ve experience relational trauma can test even the best marriages. It is important to pay close attention to our marriage relationship. Our children are watching us closely. They can easily feel discontent or disharmony in the home and this will increase anxiety and trigger disruptive behaviors. Our marriages will be tested! Through some simple exercises, we will confront barriers hindering growth in our marriages. 

Parents can Grow

Pathways of Growth for Parents

Foster and adoptive parents often find themselves struggling to understand why parenting has become so difficult. It can happen that the parent is not sure they even like their foster/adopted child anymore. Discouragement is common and others find it impossible to regulate their own negative emotions. These factors disrupt the parent/child relationship to the point where healing is not possible. In this seminar we offer a structure that can help parents grow into the kind of person their child needs. 

Parenting Teenagers:

with histories of Childhood Trauma

Parenting through the teen years can present unique challenges for adoptive and foster parents. In this seminar, we take a deep dive into underlying issues which create barriers to staying connected. We then offer ideas and strategies which hold promise to keep peace, joy, and hope alive during this turbulent season of development.

Circle of Security Parenting

This is an Evidenced Based Intervention helpful for parents of all ages, but especially useful for new parents and/or parents needing to rebuild attachment deficiencies common with children who are fostered and adopted. A lack of secure parent/child attachment can negatively impact the developmental journey across any or all domains. However, quality of attachment representations are malleable and developmental trajectories can be altered. This intervention offers concrete ways to deepen and strengthen parent child relationships.