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This week we learnt from Chrissie Davies, an adoptive and permanent carer, who has worked as a teacher and consultant (Calm the Chaos) to families impacted by extreme behaviours and trauma.
Chrissie explains the importance of kids from trauma in finding identity and self worth which comes from intrinsic motivation, nature, creativity, connecting and therapeutic parenting without punishment or rewards (PACE). It also comes from removing complacency and being flexible.
Chrissie highlights how our nervous systems get replicated in our children, which means role modelling appropriate responses and consciously labelling emotions and actions are important, to raise children's consciousness. Choosing optimal learning times is important too.
Chrissie explains the 3 components to emotional literacy, including naming the emotion (do some mirror work), the physical response (such as red cheeks) and knowing what to do with the emotion (such as getting something to eat).
Be the family that talks about emotions and where it triggers your own trauma just sit with your child and breathe.
Bobbi Cook is a behaviour therapist with 30+ years experience and a very devoted kinship carer to her 13yo grandson.
Bobbi teaches us a few things that she learnt the hard way as a kinship carer! They include:
Anna Beeson and Elise Saunders are Therapeutic Life Story Work (TLSW) practitioners who have worked with permanent and kinship carers and adoptive parents in completing life story work.
They highlight the value of the work which comes from being curious and wondering together, a shared journey between caregivers and the child, uncovering more than one person's perspective and capturing the child's voice, their narrative once they make meaning of their history.
In TLSW children are offered support to dig deeper into their past with safety and support.
Chrissie Davies, an adoptive and permanent carer, teacher and consultant (Calm the Chaos) to families impacted by extreme behaviours and trauma wants you to understand children's brains so that you can be confident in the decisions that you're making.
Chrissie suggests that when you truly focus on relationships, trust and connection for your children, rather than control and punishment, they will respond more positively and you can save your time and energy for the big things, like sleeping, eating or speaking kindly and the lifelong skills that our children need.
Chrissie suggests you say yes more and start each day anew!
Dr Eliana Gil has been on a quest to integrate trauma informed practices with neuroscience and has studied attachment based therapies like the Circle of Security and Theraplay. Working with Dr Bruce Perry, with a background in expressive therapies, Dr Gil is an advocate for various expressive therapies including Theraplay (along with many of her peers from Dan Hughes and Besel Van Der Kolk to Daniel Siegal and Stephen Porges).
She reminds us that those who love us hurt us, and this is why children need time and safety to move on from past trauma.
Dr Gil kindly shares with us real life examples of how traumatic experiences come up in the play, including examples of physical and sexual abuse, divorce, natural disasters, grief and domestic violence.
She reminds us that unwanted behaviours are not rejection, but questions that need to be depersonalised, and that children take a long time to heal but that it doesnt have to be permanent.
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing has moved on from being "that tapping therapy" and is now one of the Medicare funded therapies that works so well with children from trauma backgrounds. Find out more about it from Maria Marshall - psychologist, naturopath and EMDR therapist and parent to 3 children, including one through permanent care. Some great tips on how to approach therapy and EMDR when the body "keeps the score".
Chris has experience working in many fields, from specialist teaching in schools to homelessness, family violence and the justice system. Believing that she could be more useful, she set out to truly understand the brain and body, studying numerous therapies.
After all of her learning, it is the safe and sound protocol, a listening or auditory system that helps with calming and felt safety, that is Chris's favourite thing, with the potential to achieve felt safety following a 5 hour core component combined with therapy support.
Chris has seen mute children start to talk, disregulated children reengage and children who are adopted or had a traumatic birth and start to life, start to repair their birth process. And she does all this with a sense of fun involving play, art and clay therapy too.
Enjoy the video and please comment to let us know what you thought.
There is often an element of a child's unknown history and underlying trauma.This can impact on relationships and development. Carers/parents may be doing all they can but nothing works because the children's brains haven't yet been primed for development. This may be because the brain is stuck in fight flight freeze or because milestones have been missed. Yvette Knights offers neuro development therapy, a physical therapy, that helps with rewiring the brain and meeting missed milestones. The science behind it is based on polyvagal theory.
This therapy can help with emotional regulation (manage and understand emotions), speech and language, motor development, organisational skills and problem solving skills, learning and balance. So for those with ADHD, Autism and similar this therapy helps too.Yvette discusses many specific examples of where she has made a difference in a child's life including food intolerances, anger and tantrums, coordination and bike riding, reading speech and language, self harm and more.
Anna is a Filippino adoptee who traced her biological mother and was able to reunite with her and other relatives. In the process, Anna navigates adoption loss on many levels:
Eating disorders and self harm were tools Anna used to help suppress the curiosity and internal conflict. Anna has great insight as she has done the work of deep reflection, is a qualified counsellor and psychosocial recovery coach and is fully immersed in the adoption community.
PCA Families spoke with Gregory Nicolau, psychologist and founder of the Australian Childhood Trauma Group about therapeutic parenting.
Gregory showed us how therapeutic parenting and change in the brain takes time, consistent and ongoing connection, and a village to support carers and parents.
He suggests we look to the Dadirri model used in the Aboriginal community, not control and consequences.
He highlights the importance of understanding developmental needs in the therapeutic parenting model, so that you can help your child with their stressors and access the right supports (therapists, psychologists or psychiatrists)
Practical strategies to use with quarrelling siblings are given that can be implemented with ease.
Definitely worth a listen!
Tory is an African refugee who came to Australia at 5 years old. At 7years old she found herself in long term care, with one of her sisters, where she stayed for 11 years. Tory had to adjust. She went from youngest sibling to oldest sibling in the carers home. She went from an African culture to a blended Australian / Germanic refugee cutlure in the carers home. Therapy and cultural immersion were not Torys "thing". Nor was having 10 animals around! Having a strong open relationship with her carer and accepting that she was in a safe place with people who loved and cared for her was her "thing". Eventually Tory moves out of care two days before her 18th birthday, with a gentle push from her carers, into independent living with Youth Foyers. Tory reflects on the supports offered to her, that she sometimes rejected and wishes she didn't, and the importance of having a strong open relationship with her carer.
David and Michael are a same sex couple who formed their family after a long term respite foster care relationship developed into a permanent care placement. Their two children, two brothers, were 2 and 3.5 years old when they would come for respite care from Friday night to Sunday night every second weekend. Those two children are now young adults. We have a wealth of information to learn from David and Michael about gratitude, how a strong emotional connection can lead to great things and how to navigate care in the LBGQTI and broader community with keeping expectations high.
NDIS & Mental Health Engagement officer with Merri Health and Carer Gateway, Nicholas Colicchia, fills us in on what happens when carers seek respite care support from Merri Health, one of the 7 Carer Gateway partners.
Nic clarifies that support is available, regardless of other income entitlements like Centrelink or carer allowances. He tells us what to expect, and how to get registered and how to work in with NDIS if they are also involved in your young persons life.
There are great supports available. Everything from support for household tasks like meals, laundry or cleaning, to recreational and capacity building programs or even holidays and cultural events.
Maggie came to Australia as a refugee from Africa in 2005 at 8 years of age, and found herself in long term care as a teenager from 10 to 16 years of age (excluding her 11th year where she spent a year in residential care so that she could live with her two siblings). At 16 she struggles with understanding why she is in this situation and her emotions and anger are hard to manage. She ends up back in residential care and soon after she joins Lighthouse Foundation where she lives until she rejoins her biological family. All these moves, changes and experiences, not to mention cultural differences to manage, are just layers of trauma, yet Maggie manages to rise above it all, maintaining connections at school, with family, with her foster family, maintaining her studies and is now completing further study to become a nurse. Listen to what advice she has to offer about being in care. If you are a young person in care, her advice about communicating and trusting those around you are important. If you are a carer, whether foster care, permanent care, kinship care or adoption, Maggie offers insights about how it feels and how you might help the young people in your life.
Adoptive parent Linda Cooke was looking to parent with nurture and positivity and discovered therapeutic parenting was the answer.
Therapeutic parenting allows you to stay connected and present with your child, creating loving attachments and relational parenting that works.
There are some rules though! Safety, nurture and structure must be present and you need to be present with your child while they work through their emotions and challenges.
Its parenting that builds the brain and is perfect for parenting children from complex backgrounds.
Liz Powell, PCA Families Advisor, joins Sonia Wagner, Project Manager at PCA Families, to discuss developmental trauma.
Understanding what developmental trauma is, where it comes from, why it is so challenging to preempt and what we need to do to help our children experiencing developmental trauma can be challenging but is so important.
Children who come from complex backgrounds like permanent or kinship care or adoption are likely to have experienced some form of developmental trauma.
Early trauma can arise from things known and sometimes unknown, like development in the womb while a parent is emotionally unavailable.
Children experiencing developmental trauma can often be labelled as over controlling, naughty, a problem child or even autistic or diagnosed with ADHD. Yet these responses can hold the child back from progressing.
Understanding their behaviour from a trauma informed perspective can help.
Early trauma impacts the child by leaving them stuck operating in survival mode, leaving little room for higher executive functioning, even when they make it to a safe environment.
The good news is that developmental trauma can repair within relationships with the right interventions at the right time over a long period of time.
Liz shares some tips and ideas on how you can repair developmental trauma for your children.
For many young people living in care, aspiring to Uni or TAFE can seem overwhelming, perhaps due to disrupted schooling, or perhaps because other matters are a priority.
There are ways to get to TAFE and Uni, with or without VCE, and with financial support and other support too eg coaching and mentoring at the Uni or TAFE, help with resume writing and work experience or other support.
It is important to know what the options are before leaving school or finishing Year 12.
Find out how Raising Expectations can assist young people and carers / parents on this journey.
One of the challenges of gaining cooperation from young people can be due to them operating in a more stressed state. The reaction we see is not necessarily the real driver of the reaction. For young people from a traumatic life experience, the idea of not being in control is incredibly triggering and their reactions can reflect those triggers. So how do you move on from negative feelings? One way is to use reframing. Have a curious mind and find out what is getting in their way and how you can help. Reframing can move young people on from shame. They need relateable families and teachers to help them get there.
Preparation for many situations and events is a big part of our lives, however, often seeing a lawyer and preparing a will is an expensive, time consuming and thought provoking process. Wills are often something that we leave to another day, and often that day never comes. That day did come for one carer, Naomi Colville.
Naomi started by attending a webinar and soon found herself considering many aspects that she hadn't considered. Who would be the guardian for the children? What should be done to make arrangements for a child that would never be capable of being responsible for their own finances? And what type of structures accommodated both their children and allowed for protection from various other parties involved in her children's lives? What did Naomi learn about a disability trust? The answers are out there and require time, thought and strategies to be determined, and they will need to be reviewed too over time.
Listen to her story or see the website for contacts and resources to start your own journey in ensuring your wishes are clearly set out to safeguard the young people in your life.
Sensory activities can assist young people in finding a calm state. Where trauma is involved, self-regulation and knowing how to soothe may need to be taught or learnt. Whether you like blankets, music, oil burners or water, trial and error helps one to discover what works best. Sensory play helps children who have experienced trauma find their safe place which assists with self-regulation and development.
Young people who are in permanent care, kinship care or who are adopted can often benefit from sensory play. But how do you offer sensory play to your young people? Find out how by learning from like-minded families (with children in permanent care, adopted or in kinship care) about how they offered and succeeded with offering sensory play to their young people.
A transcript with information and photos to illustrate sensory play, plus resources (books, websites, programs) you can access and a shopping list for what you need can also be found on the PCA Families website.
