Real Illusion

By:  Marc Deprey

Perhaps our suffering is a wake up call that our investment in what we call reality—feelings, forms—is misplaced. We are more than just individual life, but life itself. I’m always struck with the limitations of language and the assumptions inherent within. Words relate to the experience of physical reality. Yet much of what words mean is metaphorical. You see a tree and call it such, but what is the reality of a plant that is connected to the ground and the air and sun for food?  At an atomic level there is no “place” where the “tree” starts and the “not-tree” begins. Atoms are 99.9% space. What we see are merely vibrations that seem like dense forms.

What’s in a Name? Part 3 – Misdiagnoses/Misunderstandings

By:  Julie Beem

My child has __________________ (pick one or several: Bipolar, ADHD, autism, ODD, anxiety, executive functioning problems).  When parents of traumatized children turn to professionals for diagnoses and treatment, coming away with at RAD or Developmental Trauma Disorder diagnosis isn’t a sure thing.  If I had a dollar for every time a parent told me, “but my child has only been diagnosed with ADHD,” I could fund ATN’s activities well into the next decade.  Nearly every child I’ve met with attachment or trauma problems carries an ADD or ADHD diagnosis.  Don’t misunderstand me, children can have both attachment & trauma problems and ADHD.  But do they always co-exist?  No.

This Ain't My Mama's Broken Heart

By: Gari Lister

Four years ago today -- May 17, 2009 – my 17 year old daughter broke my heart and changed my life forever.  She packed a bag, told her little sister not to tell us, and ran away from home with a boy she’d met a handful of times – a boy who murdered two people within a few months (literally).  I didn’t realize what a pivotal moment it was right away; I thought it was just another episode in a series of Katya crises.  

We responded as we always do to crises – efficiently and intensively.  Within 24 hours, we rallied the troops: her friends, contacts in DC and in law enforcement, not only locally but also nationally.  And in addition to the official channels, we got the local press to run an article, wrote an ad for the papers we thought she might see, and made a flyer.  I’m a litigator and strategist and my husband is a press hack who loves networking; when faced with a family crisis, we do not mess around.  When the police told us they had tracked the boy’s phone to North Carolina, we put the “littles” (our two younger kids) in the car and drove there with hundreds of flyers.  We charmed the local police into giving us local addresses, and we papered the town – each flyer with a hand-written note asking Katya to come home.  She came back the following Saturday.

We learned lots of devastating things that week, but one of the hardest for us to understand given our action mentality was the fact that she had told the boy’s family that we wouldn’t look for her or come after her.  She thought we had gone through too much for her, and that we would be glad to have her gone. 

But we moved on from our inability to understand, and we pretty much went through the next several months in crisis mode: we sent Katya to Outward Bound, which helped for a short time.  She fell for another messed up boy, started skipping school, and after three truancy cases dropped out of school and moved out.

And about that time, crisis over, I collapsed, physically devastated from the stress and heartbreak.  I spent all winter in bed, too tired to do much of anything.  I couldn’t carry luggage for two years, and I couldn’t go for long walks, let alone run.  It’s taken me three years and lots of yoga to recover.

So why write this?  Because I have recovered, and I am stronger than I ever was.  And I have learned two lessons.  First, our traumatized kids need us to be strong – not only emotionally, but also physically.  We can’t help them if they can kill us.  And Katya almost killed me.  If she had, where would my other kids have been?  So sometimes, the best thing you can do for your traumatized child is go to yoga.  Or go run.  Or go riding.  Anything to keep your body strong enough to handle the stress.  Don’t make the mistake I made in all my action – don’t overlook your own oxygen when you’re focused on landing the plane.

And the second lesson is that Katya ultimately ran away – and is still running away – not because of me, not because of the boy, but because she does not believe she is “worth it.”  That’s not new – any expert will tell you that – but I think it is a concept that gets lost in all the therapy.  My kids know they’re messed up – and if they didn’t, how many times do we remind them (with the best of intentions)?  Katya taught me that we have to not only help them heal; we have to also help them believe.  And to believe, they need to be fabulous at something -- anything.  So now my top priorities aren't only therapeutic -- they're also volleyball and ice skating because those seem to be my girls’ “things.” 

Batten Down The Hatches

by: Julie Beem

It’s nearly Mother’s Day.  And thanks to retailers, schools, churches, we hear the message of “celebrating your mom” broadcasted from the rooftops.  In a normal world, this would be a great thing.  Motherhood is truly one of the highest callings.  But what about children for whom their first relationship with a mother didn’t go well, didn’t last, produced trauma?

Getting Their Ticket Punched

By Marc Deprey

I’m not sure this is some great revelation, but this idea came to me this morning and it put a lot into perspective for me. We all know as adults (or at least I hope we all do) that we can’t expect the world to fit to us, that we know down deep that we need to fit the world and meet its basic requirements. That’s a fundamental truth we accept almost unconsciously and it allows us to navigate things pretty successfully overall.

But we forget that this was not always true for us. When we were born, we got a free pass as far as any expectations. Back then, we had no ability to fit into the world. We were completely unable to meet any of its requirements. As a baby, we depended solely on caregivers to meet our needs unconditionally and our caregiver had no expectations for us either. Our needs were anticipated, our moods quelled, our excretions removed—we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to and not face any consequences.

As we grew up things changed. More and more we were expected to understand limits, be respectful of others feelings, to be civil and flexible. Now doesn’t it seem interesting that our kids with attachment trauma cannot do these very things? Is it possible that since they didn’t get their unconditional free pass at the very beginning of their lives, they are still waiting for it to happen? That they are insisting that their ticket get punched now?

If there is any central issue that characterizes my kids’ dysfunction it is their complete lack of flexibility and cooperation—their inability to meet the world. They assume the world must fulfill their needs, that things must line up neatly, and on their schedule, that parents are here to do as instructed, to please them and never correct them or upset them. It’s as if they are demanding to be able to be like babies, but with kid bodies, appetites, vocabulary, etc.  They’re insisting that they get what everyone else got, even though it’s simply too late to get it. 

Why?  Because they’re living with a ticket missing the first hole.

With their ticket unpunched, they look for the train conductor who will never come--stuck on a train that doesn't move, baffled by their plight. We tell them they must grieve this loss and move on, but because they are unable, they wait and wait. We wait with them--stuck on the tracks--in developmental limbo.

Hope Overcomes Heartbreak

By Gari Lister

My post last week was scary and sad for some of you, but please do not confuse heartbreak with a lack of hope.   I have a huge amount of hope for our kids, and for the progress that we are making in helping them.  For every child like my Katya, there are many, many more children who can and who do heal.  My youngest, in fact, is a poster child for healing – at 10, she is perhaps a little odd, and she is certainly a little quiet.  But she has an amazing sense of humor, she loves to ice skate and take ballet and she can talk my ear off when she wants to – a far cry from the little girl who screamed for hours every night when we brought her home and from the 5 year old who didn’t and wouldn’t talk.  Now, yes, we haven’t lived through her teenage years, so perhaps there are crises yet to come.

Attachment -- Barbie Style

By Gari Lister

Our attachment therapist a long time ago suggested that if my girls had a difficult time with my massaging and touching them, I could have them rub lotion on me.  Well, I started out with lotion, but I have three girls so . . .  the lotion turned into nail polish, and the nail polish turned into hair styling, and the hair styling turned into makeup.  Every so often, one of my little girls runs into the bathroom and runs out with a lotion or a blush or a handful of hair accessories and gives me a hopeful look.

Never Let Them See You Sweat

By Julie Beem

Every Monday my daughter (let’s call her LuLu) goes to a social skills class.  Most of the children are on the autism spectrum and that seems to work fine for her, even though I truly believe her developmental issues are trauma-related and not true autism (or at least not entirely autism-related).  It’s a nice bit of downtime for me, given that she’s in virtual school and I’m her daily learning coach.  Chatting with the other mothers is my own social break.  One of the mothers recently revealed that her daughter was also adopted and did it in the context of exploring why she acted the way she did.  We’ve since discussed ways that her daughter’s autism diagnosis doesn’t quite “fit” some behaviors and maybe there was something more there.  (Yes, I believe there is – early childhood trauma.)

No, My Kids are Not Like Everyone Else’s

by Gari Lister

Until today, my first blog was going to be uplifting.  I have three girls affected to varying degrees by their early trauma in orphanages in Russia and Ukraine, and things seemed to be going really well.  We just finished a wonderful vacation with the two younger girls, and the third had returned home in October after years of living “on-her-own-traumatized-child-style,” which means she dropped out of high school and generally could not handle being part of a family.  Unfortunately, though, we made the mistake that all of us moms and dads of traumatized children sometimes do.  We forgot.  We forgot she wasn’t like other teenagers, or us, or even the 11 year old (she’s 21).  We forgot how messed up her brain is when she makes decisions – or doesn’t make decisions.  We believed that she could handle what seemed so simple – feeding our cats and cleaning up after them.  She doesn’t have a job (long story), and we agreed to pay her to feed them so she would have a little spending money.  We asked neighbors to keep an eye out on things, and put our dogs in boarding.  

2012: It was a Good Year for Trauma

by: Julie Beem

Let’s say Goodbye to 2012…one of the best years for early childhood trauma we’ve seen in a long time.  Yes, I suppose you could see that as a crass, rather heartless prospective.  But parenting traumatized children is an isolating experience.  You feel as if you’re on your own private island of despair with a child who you long to reach, to comfort, to heal – and you’re pretty sure that the rest of the world has no idea what this is like.