ParentLine

Dear ParentLine,

Our foster daughter, age 8, has been through a terrible time.  She was abused and neglected and was witness to some horrific events in her young life.  We are trying to understand how to help her overcome her trauma, but it’s a rough road.  Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.  We want her to feel safe in our home and know that she can trust us.  We also have a hard time getting her to open up about things and sometimes, she fakes illness so she won’t have to go to school.  Please help. 

Signed A Special Family in the Lakes Region of NH

 

To illustrate the path you will have to walk to earn your daughter’s trust, think about what it takes to get a bird to land in the palm of your hand.  Yes, indeed, you may have trouble getting this child to “open up.”  When a child experiences trauma, the only ways he/she is able to deal with memories that are terrible beyond words is to develop behaviors to avoid, defeat, and make them go away.  These coping skills can range from faking being sick to nightmares, regressive behaviors, depression, and acting out. 

An article found in Fostering Perspectives (www.unc.edu/fcrp) titled, Trauma and Children: An introduction for foster parents,” from the Jordan Institute for Families at University of North Carolina, offers the following suggestions to help you help your child.  If you have concerns, share them with your child’s social worker.

  • Don’t be afraid to talk about the traumatic event.  Children do not benefit from “not thinking about it” or “putting it out of their minds.”
  • Provide consistent, predictable pattern for the day.  Make sure the child has a structure for the day and knows the pattern. 
  • Be nurturing, comforting, and affectionate, but be sure that this is an appropriate context.  For children traumatized by physical or sexual abuse, intimacy is often associated with confusion, pain, fear, and abandonment.  A good working principle for this is to be physically affectionate when the child seeks it.  If the child walks over and touches you, return it in kind.
  • Discuss your expectations for behavior and your style of discipline with the child.  Make sure that the rules and the consequences for breaking the rules are clear.
  • Talk with the child.  Give them age-appropriate information.  The more the child knows about who, what, where, why, and how the adult world works, the easier it is to make sense of it.
  • Watch closely for signs of reenactment (in play, drawing, behaviors), avoidance (being withdrawn, daydreaming, avoiding other children) and physiological hyperactivity (anxiety, sleep problems, behavioral impulsivity).  All traumatized children exhibit some combination of these symptoms in the acute posttraumatic period.
  • Protect the child.  Do not hesitate to cut short or stop activities that are upsetting or re-traumatizing for the child.
  • Give the child choices and some sense of control.  When a child, particularly a traumatized child feels that they do not have control of a situation, they will predictably get more symptomatic. 
  • If you have a question, ask for help.

Susan Swanwick, LISCW and family therapist with Child and Family Services, says, “You didn’t say if your daughter was in therapy with someone to whom she can talk about things she witnessed and is dealing with.  If she isn’t, you may want to consider this avenue.  Therapy can be a safe place to share uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, and find ways to start to deal with stressors differently.  Your actions, more than your words about having a safe home will help your child to feel more secure with you.  You can ask her what about you and your home helps her to feel okay, and what if anything, doesn’t help her feel okay.  She may be hesitant to say things, which is the reason therapy may be a good tool.” 

Swanwick suggests that the two of you could go and speak with someone about the home environment; it being different from her earlier experience. She asks, “Would she feel comfortable to tell you what’s uncomfortable for her there or at school?  In therapy, you two could discuss your concern that sometimes she may feign being ill to avoid something at school and come up with a plan when she isn’t feeling well, such as taking her temperature and sending her to school if she doesn’t have a fever, isn’t vomiting, isn’t sharing that there is a problem there.  She may need help to learn appropriate ways to cope and manage things that are difficult especially if what she witnessed earlier in her life didn’t provide her with a model of appropriate coping mechanisms.”

Bill Chausse, Vice President of Community Services at Child and Family Services, says, “How fortunate for this young girl to have been matched with such caring and loving foster parents!  As you likely discovered from your foster parent training, structure and consistency are foundational to increase the feeling of safety for children—especially for those who have experienced trauma.  One great resource for foster parents is The New Hampshire Foster and Adoptive Parent Association: http://www.nhfapa.org .”

Chausse adds, “There are other trainings and resources to learn more about trauma.  In fact, Child and Family Services of NH has an upcoming conference and community forum, with Dr. John Woodall as keynote speaker, entitled, Road to Resilience: Trauma & Resilience in Children and Adolescents, Monday, February 11, 2008.  A conference for professionals happens during the day and a FREE forum for parents happens in the evening, from 7:00pm – 9:00pm, at Laconia High School.   Further information is available at http://www.cfsnh.org/pages/2007events/woodall.html.”

Resiliency says that the skills your daughter used to survive the terror and trauma of her young life can help her heal her wounds.  According to an article titled When to Seek Help: Bent but Not Broken: Building Resilient Adoptive Families, (www.adopting.org), experts state that resiliency is the set of characteristics that gives us strength to confront the overwhelming obstacles of life. The article suggests that by looking at the resilience, rather than vulnerability of adoptive families, it’s possible to focus on the strengths of birth parents, adoptive parents and adopted children as they move from loss to attachment, from sorrow to joy.  As the writer Anais Nin once observed, “One discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprints on childhood sensibilities.  Once the deforming mirror has been smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness.  There is a possibility of joy.”

ParentLine is a free and confidential service of Child and Family Services, a statewide, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the well-being of children and families.  Call ParentLine, 1-800-640-6486;  write ParentLine, c/o Child and Family Services, P.O. Box 448, Manchester, NH; email parentline@cfsnh.org or visit our website at www.cfsnh.org.