Helping your child ‘unlearn’
In the excitement of being matched with a child and the new arrival in the family, it can be easy to overlook that your adoptive or foster child has had a difficult start in life, and may not have had all the care he or she needed to develop and thrive. A loving and stable environment is important, but it isn’t always enough. So what else can you do to help your child ‘unlearn’ the behaviours they have had to develop to survive? Fran Moffat, Trainer Consultant at BAAF, shares her tips…
1. Find out more about your child
The first thing is to try and obtain as much information as possible about your child in terms of pre birth and post birth experiences. Have there been issues of abuse, substance abuse or domestic violence? How many moves has the child had, and at what stage of their development? What messages may they have received about themselves from their carers? Has there been anyone else who has offered responsive caring who may have built up positive experiences of caring?
2. Limit opportunities for stress
It is safe to assume that most of the children who need new permanent homes will have had gaps in their nurturing environment, and indeed may have missed out on the support they needed at those critical times when for example stress management, eye contact, sight or speech should have been developing. Look at your house and your routine, and think of ways of limiting stress. Can you have areas which are bright and cheerful and full of sensory experiences, and also areas with low lights and soft furnishings to help the hyperactive child relax and not to overstimulate the dissociated child?
A predictable routine with few changes and with the number of visitors to your home initially kept to a minimum will also be helpful. You might want to make a note of what it is that raises your child’s stress levels – is it people, change, excitement? For a while you may need to limit the more exciting activities that other children love, like birthday parties with stimulating games.
3. Give your child special time
Your child may not make good choices when unsupervised – they may break their toys or kick the dog. Tiring as this may seem, it will help if you keep them with you as you do your tasks, and if you only give them choices that they can manage. This may mean for a while that you have to treat them as if they are younger than they are, and of course you must do this sensitively by saying something like “it seems as if when you play with the dog you hurt him and end up getting into trouble, so until you can learn how to play well with the dog you need to sit and play with me in the kitchen”. If children seem to be in trouble all the time, then you will need to plan spontaneous times of fun or ‘special time’ to avoid the child feeling confirmed that they are a ‘bad child’. You can also teach them ways of managing stress – breathing exercises, sitting quietly (“you can either sit quietly for three minutes or noisily for ten minutes”).
4. Make up for missed out development
Many adoptive children need an opportunity to have relationship and sensory experiences that they have missed out on, and this will call on all your creative ability and fun! What can you do with your four-year-old that will echo the playful ‘dance’ that parents have with their new born – the gazing into the eyes, the sing song voice that reflects the baby’s moods and feelings, the sensual play? You can invent games suitable for the age group – mirroring facial expressions or helping them to identify feelings, activities to help them relax and develop sensory awareness (playing with bubbles in the bath or sink), games of touch (mutual foot massage, hair brushing), games to let them feel in control (‘Simon says’).
5. Help them ‘unlearn’
Your child will have learned certain behaviours as a way to get their needs met in difficult circumstances – this is clever of them, and not naughty! However, it is easy to get into a control battle. Help them learn that there are better ways of getting their needs met by modelling these, and reassure them that you will stick around while the child can change these entrenched patterns. This can be challenging when you are tired or feeling angry, but you may find it easier if you can try to see their behaviour less as a challenge to your authority than as a ‘message’ to you about an underlying need or insecurity which needs to be addressed. Don’t take it personally or feel that you have got to prove immediately to everyone what an excellent parent you are.
6. Look after yourself!
Finally, it is important that you also look after your own needs. Becoming a new parent can be stressful, and how you manage your stress and disappointments will be carefully watched by your child – an angry face may even re-traumatise him or her. Show them that it is alright to feel angry, but that anger is manageable and does not lessen your love. Also, tell your child that you are going to stick with this problem until you and the child together have worked out a better way of managing the situation. Make sure that you have a support worker or group where you can talk about how you feel about it all. Each day plan out some activity FOR YOU that gives you pleasure or helps you to relax. This is not selfishness – it is survival!
Fran Moffat
How stress affects children’s development
Recent research into how the infant brain develops both in the womb and in the first years of life shows how crucial early experiences are in enabling the child both to manage stress and to feel valued and loved for themselves. Stressful experiences in the womb – a stressed mother, substance abuse – raise the levels of cortisol in the baby, thus sensitising him or her to stress throughout his or her life. Carers can help lower cortisol levels both by modelling how to manage stress, and by helping the child learn strategies for regulating themselves through relaxation technique. Additional therapeutic support can be helpful for some children.
A difficult birth or early years’ experiences will act similarly – for example, stressful life events or domestic violence, many moves or changes of carer, physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Babies learn to manage stress through having a parent who can read their actions or facial expressions and who can respond quickly and immediately, prioritising the babies’ needs over their own mood or needs.
It is important for the parent to model that it is possible to manage stress, and if the parent cannot do this, then the baby is likely to overreact to all stressful situations – changes, moves – and even to exciting activities that other children love, like birthday parties, family gatherings or trips out.
When the baby’s needs are not met, he or she will experience stress and will react in two different ways (or a combination of both); he or she may either become hyperactive and be unable to concentrate or settle to an activity, OR become cut off and withdrawn, showing little response to any stimuli (dissociated).
Want to find out more?
Read…
Attachment,trauma and resilience, Kate Cairns (BAAF, 2002)
Attachment handbook for foster care and adoption, Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek (BAAF, 2006)
Both available from BAAF Publications
or
Building the bonds of attachment, Daniel A. Hughes (Jason Aaronson, 2006, 2nd edition)
Attend a training course…
BAAF runs two-day workshops for carers on trauma attachment. See the BAAF website for more information.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in September 2008.
This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.
Last updated: 04 September 08
