Chapter 3 - Healing Relationships

Healing Relationships KEY IDEAS •

TRAUMA HAS A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON A CHILD’S BRAIN AND MAY BE THE SOURCE OF CHALLENGING BEHAVIOURS.

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CHILDREN COMMUNICATE UNSPOKEN NEEDS THROUGH BEHAVIOUR.

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LEARNING ABOUT TRAUMA HELPS US RETHINK OUR PARENTING STYLES AND LEARN SOME NEW, MORE EFFECTIVE APPROACHES.

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POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS, EVEN BRIEF ONES CAN DRAMATICALLY CHANGE OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED TRAUMA.

All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23) but sin effects more than just each of us individually. Sin results in broken relationships with God and others and brokenness in our systems. Creation is groaning, longing to be renewed and waiting in eager expectation for God’s liberation and reconciliation and for the children of God to be revealed (Romans 18:19-21; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19). We are called to participate in this beautiful redemptive work.

We are going to look at what happens to children and young people who have experienced trauma or loss. Their wounded hearts have a difficult time communicating the pain they are experiencing and this can be expressed through behaviours that may get them labelled and moved from home to home, causing further damage.

We can adjust our eyes to see these children the way God sees them and move toward them with compassion and with a vision for what God can and is doing in their lives. We believe that God is powerful enough to shine light into the darkness within us and bring dead things to life.

We believe He can restore and heal children who have experienced neglect, abuse, and separation from their families. There is a promise that we can hold dear as we enter into situations of pain and embrace children and families who need acceptance, grace, and love, just like we do.

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Revelation 21:5 ESV

Healing Relationships

ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

In the 1990’s, the largest study in the history of public health set out to research the obesity epidemic and instead stumbled upon completely different results. It is called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) Study. Adverse Childhood Experiences is the term given to describe all types of abuse, neglect, and other traumatic experiences that occur to individuals under the age of 18.

A higher number of ACES is linked to significantly higher rates of cancer, heart disease, mental illness, violence, smoking, alcohol addiction, suicide, multiple marriages, and a shorter life span.

The study paved a way for a shift in the way many professionals approach children, learning that early experience really does impact us throughout our lives. What the ACES study also discovered was that while traumatic or adverse childhood experiences effected adults, there were also many people who had high scores but were very resilient.

In resilient adults there was a c o m m o n t h r e a d – t h e y h a d A D U LT S who were POSITIVE role models in their life, even if these adults were only in their life for a SHORT p e r i o d o f ti m e .

Healing Relationships

TRAUMA & THE BRAIN

The saying ‘knowledge is power’ applies to trauma-centred parenting. There have been many new discoveries and approaches over the last 25 years in understanding how the brain develops and heals, resilience to trauma, how early experiences shape our brain and future and the power of relationship in altering the brain. Beginning the journey of Foster Care equipped with an understanding of some of this science helps shift our approach to children who have been impacted by childhood trauma.

Trauma is not an event (physical assault, sexual abuse, neglect) but the impact the event has on us. If the event overwhelms our usual ability to cope, then it can feel life threatening and leads to trauma, which impacts the whole person. Growing up in environments that expose a child to trauma or neglect rewires their brain and body and has deep effects, physically, mentally and emotionally.

SIMPLE trauma occurs from a one off-discrete event such as a car accident or natural disaster.

COMPLEX trauma occurs within a significant relationship, like that between a child and a caregiver. Childhood trauma occurs after one or many significant experiences that cause a child to feel that their life is threatened due to the actions or inactions of their caregiver(s).

Trauma has a significant impact on a child’s brain and may be the source of challenging behaviours. To help understand this, we need to understand a little bit about how the brain works.

CER

EB

T COR L A R

PREFRONTAL CORTEX

EX

PREFRONTAL CORTEX

BRAIN STEM (Base of skull)

Complex processes.

Logical reasoning.

Decision-making.

Control over emotions.

“Survival Brain” Basic functions (breathing, heart beating) Reacts to threats to keep us safe.

Fight, flight, freezeor fawn.

UPSTAIRS BRAIN “Thinking Brain”

DOWNSTAIRS BRAIN

Helps us calm down, tunein to each other, and make good choices.

LIMBIC REGIONS Hippocampus & Amygdala

SPINAL CORD

“Feeling Brain” “Primal/Survival Brain”

We are calm, mindful, engaged.

Emotional, impulsive.

“Big Feelings: Safety radar ”smoke alarm”

Your brain working in harmony.

All parts are connected and your upper brain can be accessed for logic and reasoning.

Based upon the work from The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel & Tina Bryson Siegel, D. J. & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child's developing mind, survive everyday parenting struggles, and help your family thrive, Scribe Publications, Carlton North, Australia.

We’ve “flipped our lid”.

Too much information to process.

‘Upstairs brain’ and ‘Downstairs brain’ are disconnected and you can’t access upper brain functions.

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When danger, fear, loss of control, unknown situations, or “BIG feelings” arise, this overwhelms your Amygdala and your Pre-frontal Cortex goes offline and you ‘flip your lid’. The ‘upstairs brain’ is no longer able to monitor the ‘downstairs brain’ and help calm strong emotions and reactions; the stairs are blocked. Your Amygdala does all the talking and the focus is on fight, flight, or freeze for safety and no higher-level thinking or logical decision-making can happen.

When this happens, your brain needs a break to reconnect.

The FIGHT (aggression), FLIGHT (run away), FREEZE (shut down), or FAWN/APPEASE (complying) response is designed to protect us. It is helpful because it allows us to react quickly when in danger. For example, if someone is running after you in a dark alley with a knife, you don’t want to use your critical thinking skills; you need adrenaline to help you move faster and quicker. However, if you are doing math problems, adrenalin is not helpful.

Children who have been impacted by trauma and experienced things that have caused them to feel unsafe or caused a high level of stress, are using their ‘downstairs brain’ more often. It is harder for them to stay internally regulated. ‘Fear mode’ easily takes over when ‘big feelings’ arise and no higher-level thinking can take place. Their brains are on high alert, their resting heart rate is faster, and they take more breaths per minute in their sleep. They live in the ‘hot system’ of survival mode most of the time. Our brain and body were not designed to stay in this fear mode for long. The brains of children who have experienced trauma look different to those of children who were raised in safe and secure environments.

Developmental behaviours that would be considered normal in younger children may be seen at a later age, and at a different intensity, quantity and duration. We don’t label a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, screaming, running away, telling lies and hiding things as harshly as ‘violence’, ‘lying’ and ‘stealing’. We don’t minimise these behaviours in older children and imply they are easy to handle but it can help in our understanding of them.

Children adopt behaviours in order to survive. Lacking coping strategies, they are reacting to their internal and external experience of their environment, seeking safety in a world that they have experienced as frightening. A child may have difficulty controlling aggression because they were exposed to violence early in life and this became their adaptive automatic/involuntary response for dealing with conflict or anxiety. Examples of a child looking to their own inner resources to have their needs met could be a seven-year-old who dresses, acts like, and has the preoccupations of an adolescent, or a baby who gets hurt but doesn’t seek comfort from a caregiver, instead comforting or soothing themselves.

It is good to remember that while a child becoming dysregulated might be challenging for you as the caregiver, it is even more frightening to them. We can help children activate their ‘cool system’ and teach their bodies and minds that they are safe and loved. What they need from you is ‘scaffolding’ and support to enable them to develop strategies to cope.

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Healing Relationships

ATTACHMENT

‘Attachment’ refers to the emotional and physical bond and sense of felt safety established between a child and one primary caregiver in the child’s first years of life. Children with a secure attachment, who learned to rely on a caregiver to consistently meet their needs and protect them, will feel safe to explore the world knowing there is a safe base to return to. In contrast, insecure attachment can lead to mistrust of others, a lack of social skills and challenges forming relationships.

Disorganised attachment occurs when a child is anxious of the caregiver who they seek security from. When a child doesn’t experience felt safety and have their needs met, but rather experiences pain or hurt, it confuses a child’s ideas about love and safety. An expectation of frightening caregiving that isn’t resolved, leads to a child feeling negatively towards themselves and others. They may avoid social situations and develop feelings of unworthiness and negative self-image.

Our ways of relating, which are learned early in life, are transferred to other relationships. It explains why, coming into a new relationship with you, a child may not view you as a source of safety. A behaviour typically seen is the ‘push-pull’ relationship, where the child needs to be close to you but they pull back, essentially expressing, “I’m scared to get close because you might hurt me but I am also scared to not be close because I need you.”

You have a special opportunity to help the child or young person build positive attachment and influence the child’s future relationships! You can provide a healing parental relationship, helping the child trust in your ability to meet their needS and keep them safe. You can help to meet their hidden needs by maintaining a loving, predictable and stimulating environment, helping them to trust their own thinking and feeling and to regulate their emotions. With every interaction a child’s worldview is reinforced and optimism can be developed, which can help them form good relationships throughout their life.

It is good to be aware of the difference between attachment and relationship or attunement.

For example, a person can be attached but not necessarily attuned to the needs of the child.

Or a Case Manager may say that an access visit went well because there is an attachment, however sometimes it is just the relationship in play not an actual attachment being formed.

REFLECTION

HOW MIGHT THIS INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT TRAUMA, THE BRAIN, AND ATTACHMENT BE HELPFUL AND RESULT IN WISDOM WHEN CARING FOR CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE?

Ask the Lord for wisdom about caring for children who have experienced trauma.

God, we ask for understanding to prepare us for the journey ahead. Lead us to the right people, conversations and resources that will provide knowledge to equip us on the journey.

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Healing Relationships

A PARENT’S TOOLBOX

S E L F - E X A M I N AT I O N M o ti v e s , E x p e c t a ti o n s a n d y o u r o w n Tr a u m a s .

Many are aware of Jesus’ metaphor about the speck and the plank.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:3-5, NIV

We are to pay attention to any planks in our own eye before looking at the speck in someone else’s. In welcoming children into our homes, if we find ourselves frustrated, annoyed, and with our buttons pressed, we can take that as an opportunity to step back and ask the Lord to examine our own heart.

Whatever your idea of ‘normal’ might be in your family life or routines, it will need to be set aside as you enter Foster Care. Your journey will be much more challenging if you don’t first examine your motives carefully.

AS YOU MOVE FORWARD IN PURSUING FOSTER CARE, USE THE TIME TO EXAMINE YOUR MOTIVES.

REFLECTION

WHY ARE YOU PURSUING FOSTER CARE? WHAT BENEFIT DOES IT BRING TO YOU? WHERE IS PRIDE OR FEAR MIXED INTO THIS PROCESS? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT LAYING ASIDE YOUR IDEA OF ‘NORMAL’ IN YOUR FAMILY OR ROUTINE?

It is also important to consider your expectations. Many parents receive children into their home and instantly want them to behave a certain way or act a certain way. Are you open to the possibility that when caring for children who have experienced trauma and loss, there is less room for dogged conviction and single-mindedness?

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Whatever your expectations are, it is important to remember that your role is to faithfully love this child with Christ’s love. It isn’t to make them calm, less hyperactive, more obedient, more friendly, less socially awkward, or any number of things; it is to faithfully, consistently love them and meet them exactly where they are at. Of course, through love all those things will slowly and eventually happen, but it will be a slow process.

You also need to consider – what are your own “hot buttons”? Sometimes a child’s behaviour is not really a problem in and of itself but because it presses our own buttons we react in a way that exacerbates the situation.

A journey of providing Foster Care has the potential to expose hidden pain from loss you may have experienced, whether from a broken family background or pain from your childhood. If unresolved, this can appear in various ways, often in vulnerable moments when a raw nerve is hit. It may result from things said, or unsaid. Directing anger at God towards your children, feeling underappreciated, or overcompensating, can all come from past experience rather than the current situation.

Carers bring their own ‘attachment’ history to Foster Care. Attachment is like a ‘dance’ that we enter into with another person. It can feel out of sync, or can be attuned, and it can be hard to find that sync, but so much of a child’s future is influenced by their attachment relationships.

The experience of caring for a child with disorganised attachment can feel very confusing and can get personal and ‘under your skin’, potentially bringing up your own emotional trauma or insecurities. Being kind and compassionate towards yourself and finding support to work through what’s going on for you is really important. Parenting from the Inside Out, by Dan Siegel in the Reading List looks at this.

If you have areas in your life that still need healing from your own past hurt, neglect, or abuse, take this season of preparation to seek the help and healing you need in those areas. God is able.

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The good news is that God is a redeemer and healer. He wants to bring light and love to the painful areas in your life.

And here's the best part: when God heals and redeems your pain, it becomes the strength you need to help your child heal. The pain you've experienced may help you to enter into your child's pain. Understanding your own dark place will help you guide him to the light. – Pam Parish5

REFLECTION

ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE GOD ALL OF YOUR HEART AND ASK HIM TO EXAMINE THE DEEP PLACES WITHIN YOU? ASK HIM TO SHOW YOU ANY AREA YOU’VE HIDDEN OUT OF ANGER, HURT, OR FEAR AND TO BRING IT TO LIGHT SO YOU CAN BE A LIGHT OF LOVE TO CHILDREN IN YOUR CARE.

Yo u r r o l e i s t o c r e a t e a n enviroment for HEALING. True healing happens in predictable, safe relationships and through intentional, positive connections, not simply by removing a child from a situation of abuse or neglect.

We often see a child’s behaviour as something that we need to fix as soon as possible. It’s not your job to “save and fix” but to offer an environment that’s conducive to healing and repair. If the child doesn’t respond in the way you would have hoped, as long as you have done your bit, you don’t need to feel pressured to make the child respond in a particular way.

Your job will be to create a home that is full of love and grace, is calm, consistent, and peaceful, and has structure that makes sense and with understandable expectations; an environment where children feel safe, accepted and valued and can begin to heal and flourish. God will need to work in your heart to increase your patience, gentleness, and kindness.

Daniel Hughes’ PACE Model6 provides a simple and effective way to connect with children who have experienced trauma.

P L AY F U L N E S S . A C C E P TA N C E . C U R I O S I T Y. E M P AT H Y. This approach encourages thinking, feeling, communicating and behaving in ways that help children feel safe and comfortable in themselves and their environment.

Your Foster Care agency or association will provide an initial level of training and connect you with additional avenues for education and training. Resources to equip you with knowledge and strategies to care for children who have experienced trauma are readily available. Some of the well-respected work of Daniel Hughes, Bruce Perry, Karyn Purvis, and Daniel Siegel is included in our recommended reading list.

5 Parish, P. (2014). Ready or Not: 30 Days of Discovery for Foster & Adoptive Parents. (Kindle ed). Ready or Not Resources, “Day Twenty: Inner Healing”.

6 Daniel Hughes Ph.D. See: http://www.danielhughes.org/p.a.c.e..html

Expect it to take a LONG TIME for children to feel safe.

It is important to have a long-range view. Often, parents can have a child in their home and start parenting right to where they want that child to be. This is often very overwhelming to a child. For example, a 7-year-old moves into your home but she is acting like 3-year-old emotionally. Many parents from day one set the “bar” at what they believe a 7-year-old should act like and implement parenting strategies to have that child functioning at her age level emotionally.

Instead, a parent needs a long-range view. The goal is not to get your 7-year-old to act like a 7-year-old, but to figure out where they are emotionally, meet them there, and parent the 3-year-old to move to an emotional level of 3-and-a-half years old.

REFLECTION

DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE IN THIS APPROACH? HOW SO?

The kids coming into your home may have been physically and emotionally unsafe.

Think about the most stressful season in your life, or if you have had the experience of someone you care about passing away...

Where did you physically feel the stress of that in your body? (shoulders, headache, in your bones, tight chest)?

Now imagine trying to process all of that stress through the lens of a little child who has not had a consistent, safe place to process that information.

For so many of us, the difficulties in fostering have less to do with the children’s behaviours and more to do with our expectations. If you set out to run a marathon but expected it to feel like running a kilometre, the marathon is going to feel miserable. If you have prepared well for a marathon, then you start the race expecting to be weary at times and know you will need a steady pace to make it to the end.

Keep in mind, your family is like a machine with a clear way of working. Putting a new part into the machine will likely disrupt this for a time until you work out how this new machine operates.

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Empathy and understanding a b o u t H I S TO RY a n d E N V I R O N M E N T. Kids with big behaviours are not bad kids. All behaviour is communication and in the moment we may not understand it but there is a reason behind every behaviour.

Trauma and attachment have significant effects on children’s brains and behaviours.

Behaviour can also be an expression of shame. Often we can assume misbehaviour is a child’s attempt to be hurtful, manipulate, or control the situation but is most often a child’s attempt to manage shame. Anger, lying, blame or minimising, represent a shame shield behind which is sadness, fear, or sense of worthlessness.

Are we willing to listen beyond the behaviour to find the unspoken feelings and need behind it?

We need to see the child behind the behaviour and offer unconditional love and acceptance.

Often, the parents of children and young people who are in the foster care system have experienced their own trauma and are experiencing significant challenges. It does not mean they aren’t responsible for their actions but it means it is complicated, as all of our lives and relationships are. We are to look at others with the same eyes in which Jesus looked at people and looks at us.

“Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”

Mark 9:35-36, NASB

Notice how it says, ‘seeing the people’. Jesus had the eyes to really look, see, and know the experience of people who were distressed and dispirited. For us to faithfully love the biological parents of the kids we are caring for, we must ‘see them’, suspend judgement, have compassion and show grace.

SPEND A FEW MINUTES REFLECTING ON ALL THAT YOU HAVE EXPLORED SO FAR. HOW DOES UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED HELP YOU AS YOU EVALUATE THE MINISTRY OF FOSTER CARE?

REFLECTION

BEFORE CONTINUING, IT’S IMPORTANT TO TAKE A MOMENT TO PAUSE AND CONSIDER WHERE YOU’RE AT. SEEK GOD. PERHAPS SPEAK TO TRUSTED FAMILY, FRIENDS OR OTHER CARERS. THE NEXT SECTION WILL BE HELPFUL IF YOU DECIDE TO PURSUE FOSTER CARE, HIGHLIGHTING THE NEED FOR COMMUNITY AND HOW TO NOT DO THE JOURNEY ALONE.