parenting discipline

and i’m not gonna talk about all the technicalterminology—the amygdala, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortices, and all the fancyterminology here—i really just need you to pay attention to certain regions and theirfunctions within the brain itself. and so you’ll see the three areas that i’vehighlighted in the slide: we have the primitive brain, and we have a mid-brain section, wealso have the frontal lobes, or the frontal cortices, which essentially are the reasoning,rational, problem solving, intellectual functioning part of the brain, and i know it’s muchmore complicated than that, but for now that at least allows us a simple understandingof some of the areas of the brain that i want to address.

so first of all, let me talk a little bitabout the primitive brain. the primitive brain—often called the reptilianbrain, in some circumstances—is essentially part of the brain that is shared by all animals,and most of us recognize that what it’s responsible for is survival, and it’s veryreactionary to the environment, so based on that understanding, we see that any time i’mfaced with a threat, real or perceived, i activate that primitive brain response inorder to figure out a quick and very efficient way to survive. so most of you have likely gone through acircumstance where somebody’s jumped out from behind the door or a closet and scaredyou to death, and that’s likely an experience

shared by most people. now, of course, the question i would ask—andi understand you can’t respond—but the question i would ask is how did you reactwhen somebody jumped out from behind a door and scared you? now most of you have heard of the fight orflight response—the 2 f’s, if you will—we’re actually gonna have a couple more today—2more f’s, if you will—we have fight, flight, freeze, or faint, so we have a number of potentialresponses that we engage in in order to protect ourselves, in a sense, so when somebody jumpsout from behind a door, your automatic response you don’t take the time to think about it,it just happens, that is you jump, you jump

back, you scream, some of you actually startrunning, some of you may start flailing or striking back at the person in a physicalsort of way; all of those responses are very adaptive to the threat, that is i don’thave time to think about the threat, i just need to respond to that threat in such a waythat it will protect me, and so what happens is your body is designed by nature to protectitself. now all of you are smart enough to figureout that when i have gone through traumatic experience you’re likely—well, i shouldn’tuse the word likely—you’re activating discriminative response every time, and theassumption is often that a child has to go through a very active physical event in orderto activate that process; however, what research

tells us now is that even the withholdingof important nurturing loving care will activate the same response, the same primitive responsefor survival and be just as equally impairing, if you will, as an event—a physical, assaultiveattack or event—on the person. so why, when somebody that you are familiarwith, why after they jumped out from behind the closet, if you had a startled response,you screamed, you started flailing, you started running, why didn’t you keep doing that? well the answer should be because very quickly—andthis is within nanoseconds, and this is the magnificent nature of the brain—one of thethings that happens is your primitive brain will try to integrate up some of the othercircuits of the brain, will communicate with

the other part, particularly the midbrainwhere a lot of our past experiences, our templates are stored from the things that we’ve beenthrough, our life experiences, our memories, and it will very quickly go through, i wouldsay like a rolodex system of all of those experiences and memories and so forth, andyou’ll have some recognition, “oh that’s just my husband or my wife or my partner ora friend, so it’s not a real threat,” and so that part of the brain then goes backto the primitive part of the brain and says “not a real threat,” and your body thengoes through a period of regulation, and you can generally restore quite rapidly back toa state of regulation, even though your heart will pound for a while, and you’ll havesome shallow breathing for a few minutes,

but typically your response is one of regulation. now i guess the extension of that is later,when at a full state regulation, you will be able to access now your frontal lobes andyour problem solving, rationing, reasoning part of the brain, and then you begin to plotyour revenge on that person, so what that means is once you’re restored to a stateof regulation, you can think about “oh, how am i going to get that person back?”in a way, and that’s kind of a secondary component to what we’re talking about. so i think the critical component of whati’m describing here is when trauma occurs—and this is, i think, perhaps what is often amissis— and we’re activating, repeatedly activating,

this brain because studies tell us that singleevents versus prolonged and repeated events have different impact on the structure ofthe brain and the development of the neural connections within the brain itself, so ifyou look at repeated, prolonged, traumatic experience and events, you’re essentiallyactivating repeatedly the primitive brain so that it starts to become a more dominantpart of the brain, it becomes hypersensitive to threat, if you will, and essentially beginsto respond to the world as though everything around the child or in a person is a threat. now as i prepared for this presentation, oneof the most useful handouts that i’ve ever seen, or i guess articles that i’ve everseen, is coming from the american academy

of pediatrics, and so those of you out therewho would like to access that can go to their website, american academy of pediatrics, andaccess this information, it’s called “helping foster and adoptive families cope with trauma,”an amazing article because what’s happening now is we’ve gone beyond just conjecturingor theorizing about what’s going on when a child has been traumatized. what we now know, and there’s been enoughresearch, and the science backs it up to help us recognize that the brain is being activelymodified during periods of trauma so that what has often been turned as a psychopathologicalresponse in children—in other words, we often label the behaviors in a psychopathologicalway—so how many of you, for example, recognize

and are working with kids with conduct disorder,with oppositional defiance disorder, adhd, with bipolar, and the list goes on and on,so in other words, the tendency has been to psychopathologize the behaviors, and whatthe research is now saying is we have somewhat of a pathophysiological response now. in other words, the disease isn’t of themental state, if you will, it is of the physiological state, and that means something entirely differentthan what we’ve known in the past, that is i have a faulty, if you will, physiologicalsystem, and part of that is, of course, the function of the brain, and so that, i think,has ramifications beyond just trying to provide therapy and treatment, your average, typical,therapeutic response, and i’m not suggesting

under any circumstances that those are notuseful because they are; what i’m suggesting is that we have to help children—and i thinkcaregivers—recognize that, in order to help them, we have to calm them down, in a sense. we have to help their internal system regulatebecause no amount of therapy, necessarily, will do that. they have to feel a part of a loving, nurturing,caring relationship that helps them feel safe so that they can learn to regulate that internalresponse; that’s important, particularly when we only get stuck on behaviors, and welabel them in all the sorts of ways i described earlier, we get stuck on the behavior andignore what’s happening internally, and

as we become aggressive in terms to help themunderstand or manage those behaviors, then in many ways what we end up doing is threateningthe child even more, and that’s where we have to have a paradigm shift because in ourbrains—as adults, guess what? we have brains, too, and part of that responseis—some of us more active than others—but the truth is that our brains are functioningand have responses to their environment as well. and so one of the things that can happen iswhen we say, “i have a ten year old boy placed in my home,” one of the things thatour brain will naturally do with part of that midbrain experience is to go through a seriousof templates because we’ve all likely encountered

dozens or hundreds of ten year old boys inour lifetime and therefore have created in our brain a template of what a ten year oldboy looks like, how they should behave, what their characteristics are, and so we automaticallyhave that template built into our brain. so a child who has been traumatized comesinto our home, and automatically we want to match that child to the template in our ownbrain, and our reaction to that is “oh, ten year old boy, therefore why don’t youact your age?” and that’s not necessarily a conscious process; that’s what happensautomatically in our brain, that as we match our experiences with the things around us,and so we make assumptions that because this boy is ten, he should therefore appear inevery way, with all the characteristics of

any other ten year old boy, and when theydon’t, then our brain goes into a state of incongruence. so having said that part, now we need to movea little bit into, you know, some of the other discussions that we need to have about thebrain because here’s something that we often overlook: when the primitive brain is activated,we generally limit and, in some cases, even cut off access to the rest of the brain ina way; that is, i can’t recall from past memory or experience, and i can’t reasonor rationalize very well under periods of stress. now all of you know that when we’re stressedout, we don’t think right, in a sense, we

don’t think clearly. for example, how many of you—again, i can’thear a response, but for those of you at home, you can raise your hand—but the truth is,how many of you have said or done something really stupid under stress? so a couple of the people here are raisingtheir hands, and the other two are ready to do so. so in other words, even rational people understress don’t think very clearly, and that’s a common thing; i mean, it’s commonly understood. so for the child now who has a hyperactive—or,i should say, exaggerated—fear response

to almost everything in their environment,their ability to recall from memory or even to problem solve during periods of stressis significantly diminished. so think about that. how many of us as parents have looked at achild who’s highly dysregulated and say “why did you hit your sister?” and thechild will look at you and say “i don’t know.” the truth is, based on this model, they don’tknow because they cannot access that part of the brain that’s somewhat related toconscience and being able to recall from past experience the outcomes of those behaviors,so we have to recognize that there’s a deficit

in the way their brain functions that is criticalto the production of behaviors. i’m going to read a small excerpt from thearticle i referenced earlier, and i think it’s important because this will help, ithink, better than anything i should say understand what i’m talking about: “children oftenreenact or recreate old relationships with new people. they do this to get the same reactions incaretakers that they have experienced with other adults because these lead to familiarreactions. these patterns helped the child survive inthe past, prove negative beliefs, help the child vent frustration, and give the childsome sense of mastery.”

now i want you to think about what i justsaid, of what is implicated in that statement. the very behaviors that we find troublesomeand very difficult to manage—and i’m not gonna argue, that’s a given—the realityis, those give them power over their world because they’re familiar, they elicit verycommon or familiar responses from the caregivers around them and other people, and thereforehelps me feel safe. think about that. and yet what we do, sometimes, is get stuckonly on the behavior and label the behavior as a negative response to the world; the truthis these are very adaptive responses that help children survive, help them feel in controlof what’s going on around them, and i think

that, again, i can’t state enough how importantthat is to remember. alright, so…oh boy, i just want so say thatif there’s a slight delay its because i’m struggling here to move the slides accordingly,so we’re gonna figure this out and hopefully get better at it as time goes on. so one of the nice things about providingthis as a side note, one of the nice things to suggest about the webinars is as we beginto do these on a more regular basis, not only are we gonna get better at it, but we’regonna also rely on u.s. participants, particularly through our question facilitators, the opportunityto give us suggestions on some of the topics that you would like to hear.

i think that’s the exciting part is we’regonna actually solicit more involvement from our families that have direct access now throughsome of the learning opportunities that we want to be able to present, so that’s someof the exciting stuff, i think, is ahead of us in relationship to our webinar series. and so it looks like—and, again, i knowthis is a little bit off topic—but it looks like we’re gonna be doing these every month,and you’d be, number one, allowing for more opportunities and for topics to be specializedto your needs, but also recognize that you’re also gonna become more interactive and hopefullyallow for more time; instead of just one hour blocks, we may be able to work up to two andthree hour blocks, i don’t know, we’ll

see. so anyway. alright, so back to the information. so most of you are likely seeing the slide,it’s a quote from dr. bruce perry. i hate to say this out loud, but i think i’ma dr. perry groupie; i know there’s others among us who are, and i only reference dr.perry as part of a larger coalition of individuals who work very clearly with kids who’ve beenthrough trauma and have done such significant research around the brain to help us learnhow to integrate more trauma informed practice, and i think that’s where we’re at in termsof a child’s welfare is we are now, i think,

just barely figuring out—probably over eventhe last five years—that what we need to do is be more trauma informed in our interventionswith kids, and what that means is get a better understanding of how the brain is structuredand the response the child has based on that structure and the brain itself. so all of you have likely read that statement,but again, i’m going to read it out loud just to reiterate the significance of whati’m describing here. “to facilitate recovery, the loss of controland powerlessness felt by a child during a traumatic experience must be counteracted.” i think this is the important part: “recoveryrequires that the patient,” in this case

the child, “be in charge of key aspectsof the therapeutic interaction.” so in order for a child to recover, we cannotcontrol the child and the behavior, and that’s somewhat counterintuitive in many ways. i think what we wanna do is apply a consequenceto behavior; that’s built in. we all want to do that. why? because we believe that when a behavior happensthere must be a consequence in order to teach them something about that behavior that’simportant. what i’m suggesting now is we have to lookat the behavior differently, and i’ll use

a quote from heather forbes—and many ofyou may be familiar with her work and beyond consequence institute—where she suggests,and we’ll give her some validity, that we ignore the behavior but not the child, andthat is very consistent with some of the things that dr. perry and other, dan siegel, havesaid, that we have to help the child feel like they have some control over what’shappening to them; if we exert to much control essentially we reinforce the fear and can’tactually exacerbate, if you, will their response to the stressors around them. alright, so having said that, here’s someof the suggestions. now i will point out that most of you canlikely go to websites—that’s a stupid

statement—but i know all of you are familiarwith having to go to a various website. i received this information from a websiteknown as child trauma academy or childtrauma.org, for those of you who want to write that downor are interested, it’s dr. perry’s—well, it’s part of a website where dr. perry postssome of his work in relationship to some of the things i’m talking about. now the first one on this list—and again,if you look down at the bottom it says this is adapted from bonding and attachment inmaltreated children and how we can help by dr. perry—and so i’ve just come up witha bulleted list, but i’ll hopefully try to do it justice and expand on some of thethings that i’m hoping will help for children.

so the first thing talks about to be ableto nurture these children, and that seems almost too obvious. of course we wanna nurture our children; it’sinstinctual in all of us. we’re all caregivers, we wanna nurture ourchildren, we’re driven to nurture our children. so i want you to think about the last timeyou were at a grocery store, you’re standing in line, and there in front of you is a cartwith a toddler or infant in it. i know because i—at least i’m speakingfrom my own experience—but it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to avoid engaging thatinfant in front of you, that is, how many of you can recall—and i know that most ofyou will agree—that you reach out to that

child and some of you make faces, you tryto get them to laugh, you play peek-a-boo. don’t you? that’s generally what most of us do, andthat is we feel compelled in many ways to nurture the child, and that’s an automaticresponse because we are instinctually built to be caregivers. so having said that, how does dr. perry andothers talk about how to nurture kids who’ve been traumatized? i’m going to use two words that he’s used,and he uses a lot more, but i’m gonna use two that are very simple and easy to understandand that’s called present and parallel.

essentially, to be able to nurture the traumatizedchild, i have to first of all consider that they probably do not feel safe with me intheir world, and even the presence of an adult in their world—or anyone for that matter—isa significant enough threat to cause them to have an adverse response to their environment,and so as a result, we end up, again, engaging the child in more of a power for control—ora struggle for control—than in any kind of a nurturing response, and this is where,again, the attunement portion of parenting comes in play meaning i have to be attunedenough to recognize the difference between what would be considered a normal responseto a stimuli around them versus weather or not this is a traumatic response or a responsebased on their traumatic experience.

so when i use the word parallel and present,essentially what this means is you can remain near the child in their world without engagingthe child, so just helping them, first of all, feel comfortable with an adult in theirworld; that by itself will begin the process of recognizing that they can feel safe withan adult in their world. sometimes if we overly engage the child, thatis threating enough where they began to push away and resist the relationship. however, i don’t want you to overlook thatif the child is open to interaction that you engage the child frequently and as often aspossible in those interactions. when the child is insecure or feels threatenedby the relationship, then you have to go back

to being parallel, being in their world withoutnecessarily engaging the child verbally or physically in an interaction. do not walk away from the child; remain close—orat least within proximity to the child—in order to help them continue to feel safe. when the child then reaches out, i want youto welcome them back into the relationship; that gives them a sense—or it can give thema sense—that they are in control of the relationship and that you are not forcingthem in any way to take part. so the more present and parallel you are withthe child and are attuned to the child’s response, the more likely you can help themfeel part of a nurturing, loving, caring,

relationship, but be attuned; you have torecognize when the child needs you and when they need to essentially leave them be. and welcome them into that relationship, openarms when they engage; be present and willing to have them be part of your world, and sothat’s some of the suggestions that would be included. but also, there are other things that canbe done to help a child feel comfortable with you in their world. first of all, you can engage in some verynon-threatening incidental activities with the child, so for younger children in particular,things like patty cake or other children’s

songs that require you to engage the childin some form of play. so you can do here’s the church, here’sthe steeple, and you have to help the child figure out how mold their hands as you singthe song; the tea cup song, the itsy bitsy spider, and the list goes on and on and on. interestingly enough, i have probably seventeenpages of mostly familiar nursery songs that you can use to help children engage in thesevery smilingly non-threating interactions. and so again, it requires proximity to thechild, it requires some incidental physical contact, and that, again, helps the childfeel safe within the relationship itself or can help them; it doesn’t mean they will,but it certainly has the potential to do that.

for older kids—and i get this question alot when i make the suggestion, “well it’s tough to do that with older kids, with teenagers,with adolescents because how are you going to play patty cake with a teenage child?”—andthe truth is that if you’re very observant and pay attention to some of the things thatour kids are doing when they’re teenagers, you’ll notice that they have fist bumps,elbow bumps, they have rhythmic hand gestures and games, even, that they engage in withone another, and so you can actually have the child teach you some of those activitieswith the same outcome, potentially, for some of the younger kids, that is it’s a verynon-threating physical contact that requires proximity, and it’s helping the child feelcomfortable and safe in the relationship.

so those are some of the things that can fallinto that category. so the second one is trying to understandthe behavior before punishment or consequences. now as i said earlier, our inclination, it’salmost built in to us as responsible parents to say “here’s the behavior; i need toapply a consequence. that’s the only way i can teach you a lesson.” now i have to step back and say i don’twant the word punishment to be a part of your vocabulary anymore. punishment is essentially designed only forone thing, and that is to stop undesirable behavior, and it doesn’t work.

so what i want you to get used to saying is“i need to discipline a child.” now, again, you may say “well we’re talkingsemantics here,” but i think discipline is an entirely different thing than punishmentall together because the root of discipline is to teach; in other words, my goal is notto simply stop an undesirable behavior, my goal in every case should be how to teachthe child to do it differently, and if you can do that in a way that says “you’renot in trouble for something. my job as a parent is to help you learn howyou can do that differently,” then the outcomes typically are much better, so don’t confusepunishment and discipline. it’s okay to come up with consequences forvarious behaviors, it’s okay to communicate

your expectations with children whether ornot they’ve been traumatized or not; that’s not what i’m talking about. what i’m talking about is being able torecognize and be attuned enough with the child, particularly those who’ve been traumatized,to say “you know, i don’t need to necessarily jump right in to apply some kind of consequencefor this behavior. maybe my role should be to help the childfeel safe, to be able to understand and help them recognize their emotional response inthe moment because they have never been given opportunities,” usually never, and i shouldn’tsay the words absolute and never. so one of the things that i want to help usunderstand is they rarely have been given

those opportunities to engage in emotionalidentification and communication: i’m feeling happy, i’m frustrated, i’m sad, i’mangry, i’m upset; all of those things have generally been met with harsh responses, sotheir emotion response to the world around them has been maladapted and again can becomesomewhat problematic. so i need to move. okay, so i wanted to go back to the previousslide so… alright, so having said that, i want you to,again, go back to something i said earlier about—i wanted to go back to something isaid that heather forbes said to ignore the behavior, but be present with the child, helpthem feel safe, help them know that you’re

not going anywhere, that you’re going tobe there with them and recognize as they rage, as they tantrum, as they do other things,then you are present with them and available for them. also, again, based on what i suggested earlierabout what’s happening in the brain—in our brains—is i’m matching my templateto the child’s age, and i want and anticipate them to respond accordingly, and when i talkto parents in other settings about how to recognize that children that have been traumatizedare not going to be always capable of all the things that a child their age are capableof, i want you to get used to training your thought process to say “this child is ten,but what age are they really?”

so in other words, you can ask that question:how old is this child? they’re ten chronologically, but reallyhow old are they? and if they’re six, then i should adaptmy interactions and interventions based on the younger characteristics of the child,and that’s not always easy to do because again we want so badly—it’s built intous—for them to do all the things that children their age are doing. alright, be consistent; i think one of thethigs that all of us can do better at is be consistent. with children who’ve been traumatized, theyneed to know what to expect, so build in routines—bedtime,

bath time, meal time, study time, and so on—sothat they have a clear understanding that their world is not going to be chaotic, theyknow what to expect, they can anticipate that a pattern of familiarity will begin to emergeso that they don’t feel fearful and, i guess, less secure than what we would want them tobe. as a matter of fact, i think the cornerstoneof that, the emergence really of those feelings of security come from knowing what to expect:the more i know what to expect, then the more i can respond myself in a more consistentway, and i think even for children who even help these children that if they don’t knowwhat to expect, they’re very scared. children can be very frightened by that, soa child who’s already operating from a fear

based response will find that if i don’tknow what to expect, then it’s simply reinforcing the fear that has been established in my neuroconnectionto begin with. so be consistent. part of that can again, as i said earlier,the patterns of expectation, but also—and this is something that dr. perry, if any ofyou went to see his, couple of years ago, went to the symposium were able to hear himtalk about the importance of rhythmic movement and dance, for example, and that is helpingthem learn ways to cause their neurons to fire in a very pattern succinct way becausethat’s what’s building neural pathways that lead healthier neural pathways.

so it not it’s not always easy to run allyour kids in fifteen million directions, but guess what? you can get them in dance, you can get themin karate, you can get them in things that require that repetitive movement; those bythemselves can be useful, but i would argue that if you are going to engage the childin those activities that you do it in a family setting, as well, and perhaps more often thanyou would find time sending them to a dance class or a karate class, so find opportunitiesas a family to engage in and dance or move together to create not only the movement buthopefully enhance the relationship that you have with the child, as well.

so those are some important things to consideras you think about helping a child who’s had those experiences. now the other part of that is just going forwalks occasionally, and not only is that good just in general, it keeps us healthy, butagain it has some significant benefits for the child, as well. one of the things that’s most often overlookedis what my behaviors look like for the child; that is, the child generally will mirror whatthey see me do, and as a result, we’ll respond to their world around them accordingly. so if i react with anger, with raised voices,and so forth, why am i anticipating that the

child could then do it differently? and that’s probably one of the most significant,i guess, parenting awareness components that i can think of, is that i think more thananything we do they have to not only see you do the behaviors or engage in behaviors youwant them to perform, and it’s related not just to the tone of voice, but your body language,your voice inflection, all the small subtle things that we do as parents, so you haveto pay attention to you. as a matter of fact, if this were a classon learning how to be good parents, one of the first things i tell participants is “you’renot here to learn how to manage children’s behavior,” and most of them say to me “wellthat’s what i need to know; i need strategies

to help my kids behave.” i talk about it in the context that parentingis about managing your behaviors, and by doing so you help children learn to manage theirs. if you respond with aggression, don’t besurprised if your children respond with aggression. when you’re driving down the road and usehand gestures to display your displeasure at a motorist who cut you off in traffic,don’t be surprised that your children will respond the same way. if you become aggressive and violent towardsothers, don’t be surprised when the school teacher calls you and says that your childat school is responding with aggression and

violence in their social interactions at school. so we have to pay attention to our responses. i also have to caution all of us to recognizethere’s no such thing as a perfect parent; in other words, we’re gonna mess this uponce in a while, and i’m gonna tell you, that’s okay. now, of course, i’m not the one who givesyou permission how to behave, but i wanna tell you that’s okay; that is, we all makemistakes, and when you do—which we all will—it’s okay to say “you know what? i’m gonna try to do that differently.”

so it’s okay to talk to your children, toapproach them and say “you know what? i didn’t handle that the way i normallywould have, and therefore i wanna make sure that i do it correctly the next time.” so again, going back to modeling, you’rehelping children understand that even though we don’t always do things right, there’sa way to manage it in ways that are more productive. so model and teach, particularly as it relatesto relationships. children need to grow up in a home where theycan see what a nurturing, loving, appropriate relationship looks like; for husbands andwives that means appropriate public displays of affection where you can hold hands or givehugs, and help them understand that healthy

relationships are designed to look this way. so again, that’s important for all of us,i think, just in general to understand. one of the activities that i have used tohelp married couples, for example, is an activity that i call—that i’ve used; i don’tcall it anything—i just call it a listening activity where i assign each of the partnersan opportunity to listen and talk to each other for a ten-minute period versed at time. so one participant—one partner—is askedto only ask very general questions to the other person, and then stop and only listento the response without asking follow up questions or anything else.

so the partner then asks a question like “welltell me, what was your favorite vacation that you took as a family member?” the partner then would look and listen tothe response—no follow up questions, but just listen—and then after ten minutes ofdoing that, they shift, and the other partner has the opportunity. they found that for those couples who actuallydo that and take it seriously, that they have reported some very significant and importantimprovements in their ability to make connections. listening is a skill. listening is the ability to stop letting yourstuff get in the way of communication.

what that means is you stop, you truly engagethe person, and you hear what they have to say, and you can reflect that back to themin a way that’s meaningful. so when a child engages you, you should removefrom your importance anything else that’s going on around you; i would suggest thateven if you’re on the phone or watching your favorite tv program that you can stepaside the importance or significance of those moments, those events, and give your fullattention to the child, and simply listen to what they’re telling you. don’t interrupt, don’t glance over atthe tv program or look at the clock; again, your body language must communicate that i’mattending to you, and those moments are very

few and far between. as a matter of fact, we often don’t haveas many opportunities we would like to engage our children in just listening to what theyhave to say, so seek out and use to your advantage those opportunities. listen to kids; you’ll find that that dramaticallywill improve your relationship. don’t interrupt the child; listen to whatthey have to say. that’s very nurturing; emotional intimacyis occurring in those moments. again the realistic expectations with thechild, something i already mentioned; base things on their developmental age and nottheir chronological age, and that’ll just

help you because in the end our frustrationsbegin to show when we have expectations that don’t match where the child’s at. so pay attention to that, but be patient;we certainly would like every child to make progress and catch up as quickly as possible. the truth is that every child’s different. the truth is that every child will progressat different rates. we may have had a child in our home who didfantastic, that responded very quickly to some of the things that you’ve done to helpthem; don’t anticipate that the second one or third one or forth one that comes alongis going to do the same thing.

each child will need different things at differenttimes, so recognize and be flexible enough to adapt accordingly. and i’ll tell you something in going backto the article that i referenced earlier from the american pediatric association entitled“helping foster and adoptive families go through trauma,” one of the things that’srepeated throughout the article—and i thought this was interesting because i know that thetrainers at the utah foster care foundation have said this repeatedly over the years—andthat is you cannot personalize the behaviors of the child, and so it’s interesting thathere we have with the most current research in front of the suggestions that they madein terms of helping us cope with the trauma

these kids are going through that it’s agood reminder to recognize it’s not about you, it’s about the child’s own traumaticexperience, so it’s a good thing to remind yourself of that all the time, and be realistic,patience. but i think what is often overlooked is thatwe don’t do enough to take care of ourselves under periods of stress; that is, we workso hard to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the child that we’re not doing enoughto take care of ourselves, and i know we don’t have a lot of time, and i know that we couldprobably go on forever about all these various attached characteristics and considerationsthat go along with what i’m describing today, but the truth is that we often begin to getworn out and stressed out ourselves to the

point where we will begin to take on the characteristicsof the trauma of the child. and many of you are familiar with the terminologysecondary trauma—and again we don’t have time to explore that—but it’s certainlyattached to what i’m talking about, and that is if we’re not taking care of ourselves,it becomes very easy for us to begin to exhibit the same traumatic characteristics of thechild that’s in our home, so pay attention to that, and you know how to take care ofyourself. so we all have strategies and ideas on howto do that. my strategy is to maybe go mountain bikingor running or snowboarding; i work hard, but i also play hard for that reason, and i’mnot doing that by a way of arrogance or boasting,

i’m saying i have to do that otherwise i’mnot healthy, and i know of too many people—foster and adoptive parents included—we’re turningto too many times artificial mechanisms to cope with some of the stressors of parenting,so pay attention to that. don’t underestimate how critical it is foreach of you to take care of yourselves, and find ways to figure that out for yourselves. okay so i’m gonna start wrapping this upwith a final statement by dr. perry that i would like to leave you with is the one thatyou see on your screen. “the most important property of humankindis the capacity to form and maintain relationships. these relationships are absolutely necessaryfor any of us to survive, learn, work, love

and procreate.” and i know that in the end some of us haveoften said “well, it’s the amount of nourishment that really makes me healthier; what i eator my social interactions,” but in the end i think that all of us thrive and survivebased on the quality and significance of our relationships. the more you learn to engage the child ina healthy, nurturing relationship that i attempted to describe, the more likely they surviveas well. okay now… okay so i wanted to mention the name of thearticle—which was the one i referenced earlier—again

is “helping foster and adoptive familiescope with trauma,” and again the website; you can go directly to the american academyof pediatrics website, and that’s where i attained it, and many of you can do thesame as well. so make sure you go there; it’s a very fascinatingarticle, has a number of good strategies, and essentially what you’ll find is someof the things that you read there really mirror what dr. perry, daniel siegel, others havetalked about in relationship to how to help repair the traumas to the brain, so that’sgonna be very important as a reference in follow up to this discussion, as well. so i wanna thank you for your time.

it’s been an opportunity, i guess, to atleast get you introduced to some of the concepts that are important when we try to help childrenwho’ve gone through a traumatic experience, and we will be available staff to hopefullycontinue this process so that you may continue to get some of the information that will helpyou help the kids, and that’s what this is all about. in the end we wanna make sure that those ofyou out there who are working with the most difficult children have the tools necessaryto help them because in the end our hope—and

i know the hope is shared by a number of otherprofessionals, including dr. siegel and dr. perry and others—that our hope is that thesechildren recover because we know they do,

but it’s not miraculous, it’s becauseyou’re working hard to make it happen. so thank you, and hopefully we can respondto some of your questions at a later date.