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When Husband and I awoke one January morning in 2015, we sprang from our bed full of hope. Middle and Oldest were back in school after the winter break, I was heading out to attend a workshop on Reactive Attachment Disorder, and Husband was taking Little to The Nurturing Center, a behavioral health center for families recovering from the effects of trauma that offers a therapeutic daycare, play therapy, art therapy for parents, parenting classes, and even Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). I was sad I was missing the first day of our treatment program, but Husband and I were both excited and couldn't wait to interact with other trauma parents for the very first time.
Today is the day it starts to get better, we thought.
The weeks leading up to this warm winter's day had been rough. Little and Middle had gone on a two-week supervised visit with BioMom over Christmas break, and they missed her terribly. They were also having a hard time readjusting to the way Husband and I run our household, and then we had to further disrupt the kids when we were forced to pull Little from the Head Start Program he'd just started.
Don't get me wrong, the Head Start Program isn't a bad program... but the teachers at our assigned location were not trauma-informed (they yelled... excessively... and put kids in time-out frequently... they were over-worked and over-crowded and didn't notice things like Little having an accident in his pants), and they had no interest in changing their tactics in spite of a huge spike in the frequency, intensity and duration of Little's rages. They kept trying to tell me everything was fine... even when he started deliberately engaging in behavior that could have killed me and on our drive home each day. Let me tell you, an infuriated five-year-old boy screaming, "I hope you die! You're a loser!" while throwing his shoes and then his full backpack at your head as you drive 60 mph down the highway is a terrifying thing to experience, made even worse because the meltdown occurred over the simple fact that I refused to roll his window down - because he always tried to crawl out of it! WTF child?! Is my desire to keep you safe really that freaking awful?!
Anyway. I think that gives you an idea as to how angry the kids were, and I think you can guess who received the brunt of their frustration with these events and changes that laid beyond their realm of control...
Yep. Middle and Little declared us enemy combatants when they returned from their visit. They held steady with their RAD torture tactics for months.[/caption]
So, when we woke that day, with visions of family harmony and unicorns and rainbows prancing around our heads, we were understandably excited as we went our separate ways for the day.
I arrived at the training early, anxious to learn and mingle with other trauma parents. I tried to talk to the other parents in the room and discovered they were all foster parents. I also found out that the other parents in the room didn't actually have children diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder, but enrolled in the class for certification credits. When the lady teaching the class began, she asked me to describe RAD since I was the only person who had children with the diagnosis.
"It's... It's pretty crazy. I've never seen kids act this way before."
"Elaborate, please."
"Well... Okay, when my kids had been with us about a month, I almost left because I thought they were sociopaths -"
"Are you a medical professional?" she asked.
"No... But -"
"Let's be careful throwing words like 'sociopath' around, then."
Pause... "Okay, well, that's the best way I can describe how I felt when I didn't know what was - "
"Anyone else have any experience with RAD?"
........
Things only got worse from there. The lady teaching the class actually told me I was telling her a "really weird story" when I described how my stepdaughter did well at school but came home and blew up. "Kids with RAD can't do well in any environment," she said, cutting me off.
I stayed for the entire class, but as a stepmom in a room full of foster parents, I didn't find the community I was looking for.
I was heartbroken.
I called Husband around 12:30 in tears, only to discover that he, too, was in tears.
The Nurturing Center was not quite what we thought it would be. We'd anticipated attending parent classes that would teach us how to better practice therapeutic parenting... Instead we discovered that the program was geared more toward basic parenting skills and self-improvement. Most of the parents in the program were struggling in different ways than we were, and Husband had almost left at the conclusion of the morning session because he was so frustrated by our misunderstanding.
That's not to say the program isn't amazing - it is. The staff and medical personnel at The Nurturing Center helped us out a lot... In fact, I don't know if I would have been able to continue caring for Little if they hadn't helped us, especially through the therapeutic daycare and PCIT. I also met some wonderful parents there and remain friends with them to this day. However, we'd been working under the assumption that we would learn things like the SPACE method and the damaging effects of trauma on the brains of children... to say our disappointment was staggering is a bit of an understatement.
So when a friend of mine from the internet (who also step-parented her kiddo with RAD) asked me to come to the BeTA retreat, I hesitated. "I don't know. I don't know if I will fit in. Husband and I never find people in our situation in groups like that, and it really sucks," I said. "I don't know if I can take a whole weekend of not fitting in."
"Trust me," my friend said. "You'll find people. It's an amazing experience. You don't want to miss it."
And oh, how right she was.
You see, parenting kids "from hard places" gives us all common ground and our shared parenting experience transcends our differences in lifestyle.
We are united by trauma.
At the retreat, I met bio moms, step-moms, foster moms, adoptive moms, and women raising their grandchildren, cousins, siblings, or nieces and nephews. People from all sorts of different religious affiliations and backgrounds (this was a big one for me as an agnostic... so many groups for trauma parents base their strategy in religion and as I've said that approach just doesn't work for me). I met moms who had happy childhoods with their birth parents, happy childhoods with adoptive or foster parents, and those who experienced adversity and trauma in their youngest years. I met others who have a happy relationship with their husband, those struggling to keep their marriage intact while they battle their kids' trauma issues, and those whose marriages have ended. I met single moms, moms with same-sex partners, and moms who exist in completely "traditional" family units. Moms younger than me, older than me, and the same age as me. Moms who like gospel music, moms who like gangster rap, moms who rock out to heavy metal. People who curse like sailors (as I tend to do in real life!) and people who probably thought we should wash our mouths out with soap. Drinkers. Abstainers. Liberals. Conservatives. Democrats. Republicans. Libertarians.
Some of the people I got closest to during the retreat are so very different than me, but we had the commonality of raising kids with trauma, and further we felt the same way about the whole experience - we shared our simultaneous hope and hopelessness and we understood each other in a way I haven't experienced since I was a child.
And none of our differences mattered. If you're a trauma parent and haven't found your community yet, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to find a group of people you can meet with in "real life." Even if those meetings happen only once a year, they play a vitally important role in keeping your sanity amid the chaos of raising our children. If you attend one event and don't find what you're looking for, don't give up! Keep looking. You'll find something.
And when you do...
You'll wonder how you ever survived without your "people" standing beside you, united by trauma.
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There's an amazing event coming up in April just for us trauma parents... Parenting in SPACE! Billy Kaplan, Christine Moers, Lindsay Woodward Crapo and many others will lead classes in the art of therapeutic parenting. Registration time is coming to a close, so if you are interested in attending be sure to check out the website soon!
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