Parenting the Hurt Child

I don't really have time for a post but have so much on my mind, I thought I may try to simplify or condense this.  First off, I am processing so much from what I am reading in this book and I truly feel hope and understanding from a whole different angle for the first time in a very long time!!  

Then, today I went to A Bushel and a Peck blog, and it was so much on the same topic of my thoughts.  Her post title was called "I Used To Be A Good Mom."  So much understanding!

Every person who makes a choice to parent the hurt child has a dream (or adopt children who have experienced any trauma, who is every single adopted child by the way).  These vary, but many include the anticipated fulfillment of helping someone else out of a tough situation, the feelings of satisfaction when a grateful child returns our love, the joy of seeing a person flower from a child into an adult reaches his or her full potential!  These are the things that all parents hope for, based on their own backgrounds and their own childhoods.  And therein lies a problem, for most who choose to parent hurt children are functional people without early abuse and neglect of their own.  They often have a record of successfully used without prior birth children may not be effective with their hurt  children.  And tragedy results.

This is where we are, people!  Yes, we had read a lot of books, we felt prepared as best as we could be, but the truth it, parenting our hurt children (specifically, Eden) is really hard and we cannot use the same parenting techniques that we used with our biological children and, yes, often I feel like I really bad parent  and very inadequate but now I am seeing that is normal.  

Nothing, but nothing, can turn a normal household into a nonfunctional- even dangerous and threatening - environment as fast as bringing into the home a rebellious hurt child who doesn't understand love.  The child's attitude and behavior turns everything topsy-turvy.  The other children often feel neglected, picked on, angry, or resentful.  Loving couples who previously agreed on parenting approaches find themselves disagreeing and doubtful not only about each other's behavior but about the motive's itself!  Family, neighbors, and friends who considered a couple saintly for taking in the troubled children, upon seeing the children's continuing misbehavior, begin to question the couple's parenting competence and even their character.  

If one is nice to someone, one expects the other to be nice back.  If one is mean, it is understandable that others are mean in return (although that is not what the bible teaches).  If one smiles, he or she expects a smile in return.  If one is giving, it is expected that others will probably give in return.  All this makes sense in our usual world.  In the topsy-turvy world of hurt and disturbed childre, all these normal responses may not occur; they have to be taught.  Hurt children learned early in their lives that smiles are not to be trusted.  They know that adult actions end in pain.  They are "hard-wired" by early experiences to know that the only safety is in total and complete control of their emotional and physical environment.  The chaotic past living inside their heads becomes the chaos they project onto others in their home.  

While I don't want to scare anyone and make our situation sound worse than it is, these are excerpts from the book at the beginning and it may give a little light to those wondering what we are really dealing with.  This may shed light and help others even to understand in a small measure to those who care and wish to know.  I know it is shedding light in some areas and in others is is a reminder, all of which is beneficial and helpful at this point.  Not only that, but it gives solutions and helps explain why oftentimes things work and do not work!