Post-Permanency Newsletter

Research now tell us that when a child experiences early and prolonged trauma, other parts of development are affected. Makes sense? If you are constantly on high alert for real danger in your home, you will have trouble paying attention. What about if you frequently go to bed hungry? Or what if you don’t even have a stable place to live? Learning new things becomes a challenge. Social skills are not important to your brain as you are just trying to stay safe, fed, or housed. If you are 13 years old, people come to expect age-appropriate things from you: your parents, your teachers, and even your friends. If inside that 13-year-old body, certain areas about you are really only at an 8-year-old level, there will be a mismatch. You will get frustrated due to expectations that are too high. And because you are already stressed, a meltdown soon follows.

A typical infant and her mother play a game called serve and return. Learn why when this crucial games is missed, a whole host of problems arise. That infant never learned how to self-soothe or self-regulate. In other words, she goes straight to a meltdown when she is stressed or frustrated.

The wise director explains why some children never learned how to self-regulate due to trauma and neglect. She explains how to teach them this skill through co-regulation!

Do you remember Spirographs?  They are still out there, those silly cogs with the pen holes so you can make designs?  I loved mine as a kid.  I loved the shapes and colors and the designs. But mostly I loved how little change it took
to get a whole new pattern. Just one cog tooth over and voila! Difference! So apply that same approach to parenting your daughter  Violet when what you are doing is not working.  Change how you respond, and she will change too, and pretty soon, voila! New pattern.