When Trauma Invades Your Home

How many of you have in a moment of deep pain cried out to God and said, "I wanted to adopt. I knew that it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't know it would be this hard!!!!" 

You wanted to fill a need, not become part of the deep vacuum  trauma so often creates in a family! Especially when a family is unprepared for the depth of trauma. 

We, like so many other's, thought our children with trauma would cross the bridge to us and welcome our love and the sense of safety and protection we could provide. What happened instead was, we crossed over to the trauma side and became victims along with our child(ren).

Your home, once a place of safety and stability, becomes a war zone. Your trauma child learned to be hyper vigilant to protect himself in his previous home, and now you and your family have somehow taken up this same skill. This means that there is always a feeling of tension in the air. Everyone knows how fragile the sense of peace can be. In fact, you almost dread that feeling of calmness because when it is present, you know things are going to fall apart spectacularly.

Children with a trauma history learn to manipulate other's at a very young age. When they come into your home and are treated with love and respect, they don't soak up that affection, then pour it out on others like an emotionally healthy person would. No, they rely on the life lesson's the stood them in good stead up until this time. Lesson's that have been so painful that they have learned them well the first time.

These lesson's include: 

-Hurt other's before they can hurt you

-No one care's about me

-I am no good

-No one will ever love me

A child with this kind of mind set is a challenge to reach. They will push you away at every turn. They will do their best to hurt you because they just know you are going to hurt them. If you aren't careful your relationship with your child quickly becomes one of toxic pain and stress, nowhere near what you desire for him.

When your child has brain challenges in addition to trauma, progress can quickly begin to feel nonexistent. He cannot understand why he feels the things he does. He doesn't trust you and his brain damage prevents him from implementing the therapeutic technique's that would possibly help another child. 

There are day's when I fear our child will become a teen with a preschoolers understanding of socially appropriate behavior and moral standards. You may already be walking this road, instead of only glimpsing it in the future, and you know how very hard it is.

Sometimes when I am at the end of myself, and know my child needs me to intervene to prevent further damage to his fragile psych, I find myself uttering the wordless plea of trauma parents everywhere, "God, I can't. You must somehow step in and help us because I don't know what to do." He doesn't always provide an immediate answer, but he does always provide the grace to make it through one more day. 

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