We are immersed in the day in and day out task of parenting our children. Often this leaves us emotionally spent. It’s easy to let our emotions fly out of control when our children are dis-regulated. But is this causing more damage than we realize?
What do you do when the child you love, parent, and pour tons of time into, continues to push you away and look for approval from everyone else besides the mother who never leaves? It’s difficult and defeating, but there is hope!
Attachment disorder is one of the hardest, loneliest, and defeating aspects of parenting children from traumatic pasts. If you’re anything like us, you struggle to not take the words and actions of your child personally. So, how do you find light at the end of a very dark and long tunnel?
In 2004 our lives, and parenting, changed forever when we realized we were parenting a child with special needs. To say it’s been a journey is an understatement. Part of the challenge has come from our encounter with professionals who fail to understand, or know how to handle, the special needs our children have.
There are classes, books, seminars, magazine articles, therapists, and websites, all at our finger tips for just about any struggle we have on the adoptive, foster and special needs journey. Most of them can help us heal from just about any wound we’ve sustained. But nothing is as healing as hearing the words, You Are Not Alone.
It’s a question we receive several times a week from people all over the country. “How do I love a child who keeps pushing me away, and could care less about me or my family?” We, along with our co-host Nicole Goerges, are right in the middle of this trench.
Back in November, we posted a video on YouTube that helped teachers understand the traumatic pasts our children have come from. The video was a hit and was shared with hundreds of schools and teachers around the country. Today, we’re including the audio version in the latest episode of Honestly Speaking… Between Nicole and her husband, and us, we’ve been in hundreds of IEP meetings with our children’s teachers and principals. We’ve had many that went extremely well, and some that…well…didn’t! What we’ve learned from our experience is that teachers really do want to understand where we’re coming from, and why
It’s a common tale in foster parenting- A couple gets excited, joins the ranks of foster parenting, begins taking placements, and just a month in they’re completely overwhelmed or defeated! How can a person enter this journey better prepared? This is the topic of today’s podcast! We figured out just months into our time as foster parents, that we were in over our head. But it really didn’t need to be this way. If only there were some folks willing to give us the inside scoop on what we could expect from this journey. Instead, we took the foster parent
We’ve often been asked how we made it through 9 years of foster parenting and 14 years as adoptive parents. Our answer is simple: We have a great support system of people who help keep us going. But how do you find a support system like this? “You’re going to be alright…this is going to be alright,” our friend said to us. “I know it feels like a dead-end street but there’s hope. I’m here for you!” She was right. More importantly, she was there. Those were two things we were certain of. In our darkest moment on the journey,
Beyond great books, insightful parenting seminars, online resources, helpful blogs, conferences and numerous podcasts, there are 3 simple words that have the power to transform your life and your perspective on the journey of special needs.
