Back to School with Traumatized Students: What Do We Tell New Teachers?
By: Jen Alexander, MA, NCC, RPT It’s back to school time for all of us. It can be overwhelming to think about what to tell this year’s teachers about our children. What’s too much? What’s too little? The answers, of course, are different for everyone, but here are some ideas to think about sharing. Educators […]
Perseverance & Endurance – Qualities of a Champion Runner … and His Adoptive Dad
by: Julie Beem If you read one story about adoption today – this is the one. Your social media feed may be full of news about attachment & trauma, Fetal Alcohol, and PTSD, but don’t miss this article. I can tell you now this article’s not going to be what you expect. But then again, […]
Lessons Learned: New Trauma on Top of Old
by: Craig Peterson “Stop saying you understand. You don’t. You have no idea how I feel.” My daughter’s words stopped me in my tracks. Had I assumed too much? Had I overreached and appeared insensitive? Did I re-traumatize her in the process? Probably shades of all three. You see, my daughter is black. I’m white. […]
Silly Ignorant Me: What I Thought My Child Heard
by: Craig Peterson When my mother and father spoke, I responded. So did my five siblings. That’s all we knew. I never gave the dynamic much thought until raising children of my own. You see, all six are adopted. Unfortunately, none responded to me like I did with my parents. Not even close. Didn’t my […]
Changing Rehoming Laws Isn’t the Answer
by: Julie Beem What do the stories of Arkansas Rep. Harris and his wife, Torry Hansen (who returned her son to Russia in 2010), and the families in last year’s Reuters report on rehoming have in common? All were adoptive parents who found they could no longer safely parent their children in their homes. While […]
Tuesday Toolbox: “Touching” the Heart of Trauma
by: Jennie Murdock
Mother and DaughterI opened my email andwas reminded of the title for the ATN blog: “Touching the Heart of Trauma”. It struck me that quite literally what we need to do IS “touch” the heart of trauma by touching the body.
The Cowardly Lion vs. The Courageous Lion….
By: Deborah A. Novo
“Doesn’t he know how good he has it? He has no clue how lucky he is to have all that he does. Why does he still sabotage everything he does? Why does he always have to learn the hard way? Why does he still lie, you can’t believe a word he says. It is time for him to grow up. Where is his loyalty? He doesn’t care about a damn thing. Why isn’t that Attachment Therapy working?
Tuesday Toolbox: Bedtime and Sleep Issues: Part I
By: Jennie Murdock
I believe in serendipity…..”an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident”. As I was preparing to write this, my first post on sleep issues, I opened a recent “MindHealth” report by Dr. Gary Small. In it he was addressing the issue of “masked depression” and all of its tell-tale signs. The report reminded me that for sure, most of the children we parent and treat in therapy with serious attachment issues have that masked depression which most assuredly affects their sleep.
Because It Is Hard
By: Gari Lister
“We choose to go to the moon . . . not because it is easy, but because it is hard . . . because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.. . . ” John F. Kennedy, Jr. (Sept. 12, 1962 at Rice University)
What’s in a Name? Part 4 – Is Keeping a Wrong Label OK?
By: Julie Beem
Many of the parents who contact ATN have children with multiple diagnoses and we’re frequently puzzled about which ones are the “right” ones. I’m included in that group. My child has an alphabet soup of diagnoses, including autism spectrum and ADHD/OCD/Tourettes (aggravated by her trauma.) Fortunately for us, we had professionals who also recognized the RAD, PTSD, DTD components and pointed us in the right directions for treatment of those. Yet, her developmental and processing struggles continue.