Bedtime in a Resi Home: Make it Cosy!

Some time ago I was asked to assist a residential care home for children in because one of the children refused to go to bed at night. This was treated as ‘inappropriate behaviour’ and the child was offered rewards if he went to bed on time. I found this odd, firstly because this is common in children who have experienced a traumatic early childhood, and secondly because it was clear to me that the child wanted to be able to ‘go to bed’ like other children.

I decided to spend a night in the house with the residential workers so I could find out more and maybe help. That evening, I sat in the living room, watching the worker trying to coax the child to go to his room, and noticed a chattering sound… it was my teeth.

I was freezing!

I called out to the worker, and said “ I think the heating is broken, should we have a look at it?” to which the worker replied “Oh not at all, we always switch off the heating, it makes the kids cold so they want to go under their doona!”…hmm.  I paused then said “How’s that working out for you?”

Fact is, that child abuse has profound effects on a survivor’s sleep regulation. There are varied reasons for this: the Fight/Flight response dysregulates the brain stem, that is responsible for sleep; Nighttime itself is a trigger for many who have suffered child abuse and neglect; The aloneness and silence of the night can cause us to face a very painful internal world; and the list goes on.

So what will turning off the heat achieve? It will achieve coldness, increased vulnerability to hypervigilance, warmth tells us we are safe and others are close, so being col will tell our brains we are alone and unsafe. In other words, the last thing we will want is to go to bed!

So we reversed it.

We made the house Toasty Warm. Also cosy, with rugs and nice things on the wall, we started making hot milos at night and reading bedtime stories. It didn’t make the child instantly got to bed and to sleep, but it did assure him of safety, warmth and closeness, and it meant that he was able to sleep easier, and if he couldn’t, that someone would be nearby, not castigating him for inappropriate behaviour, but letting him know he was safe, with a blame-free voice and a hot milo.

Healing is a long, long process.

Let’s be there for children the whole day, not just until bedtime.

The debate is over. Smacking is NEVER OK

I was once on an outing with a young person (lets call her Sally) in my care. We arrived at our destination and got out of the car, to see a mother and her child walking by. For some reason unbeknownst to us, the mother held the child by the arm and hit him on the bottom. Instantly Sally reacted, yelled out abuse at the mother, accusing her of abuse. I had to physically stop Sally from going after the woman (now obviously fearing for her life). 

Was Sally's own abuse triggered? Was she protecting the child? Was she just saying what I wish I'd had the courage to say? In reflection, probably all of the above...

The other night I was having a conversation with a fellow social issues writer, Max Remy. Max writes on her experience of a lifetime of State care, and is a regular contributor to Fighters Against Child Abuse Facebook site. We were discussing how child abuse is often only seen in terms of its evil pinnacle: pedophilia, severe neglect and torture. But after reading her brilliant and unique pieces about these issues and her experience, what appear to be more subtle and socially 'acceptable' forms of neglect and abuse can go unchecked, but ultimately impact upon a child's development, and opens the door of vulnerability to less debatable forms. naturally this led to a discussion the intriguingly controversial subject of smacking. 

The following day I had a discussion/debate with a group of human services professionals about corporal discipline, and it occurred to me that there is a serious lag in our social evolution.

Thankfully, the Feminist movement brought the enlightening idea that the ‘private is public’, and that wives were not the property of husbands. The ‘wife as property’ notion meant that a man who hit or raped his wife was exercising his right to do what he wished with what belonged to him, it was ‘none of your business’. These ideas are thankfully now, gradually, becoming a dark part of human history.

Unfortunately the next step, that is the emancipation of children as property of their parents, has not been taken. I see too many debates in social groups, on Facebook, and on fickle talk shows in which one will hear the inevitable words, “The discipline of my child is my business” usually to justify pain/fear compliance. The same parent will be enraged and seek retribution if anybody else ‘hits’ his or her child.

Recently there was a debate on ‘The Morning Show’ about whether or not a shopkeeper was right to smack another person’s child.  To use Max’s wise expression… "WTF"?

Why is this a debate? No she did not have the right, neither did the parent.

‘Smacking’ itself is a word that we use as a euphemism that means ‘hitting’, and people are usually a little taken aback when you replace ‘smacking’ with ‘hurting’ or ‘assaulting’.

So lets cut straight to the point. Being a parent of a child does not give us the right to physically assault the child. Children are not our property. We are their guardians, not their owners. We are responsible for nurturing, guiding and protecting the child.

So the conclusion?

It’s Never OK.

Seeking Bad: Why Children Return to an Abuser

 By Stephan Friedrich

One of the biggest mistakes made by the legal system is to question whether or not a child is being abused when they are ‘willingly’ running back to an abuser, or when they are ‘willingly’ engaging in relationships where people are dominating, bullying and abusing them.

 Aside from he obvious causes of this, such as being under threat or enticement by the abuser, children (and adults) who have experienced abuse are prone to two phenomena.

The first is a kind of trauma bond, otherwise known as ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, whereby the victim identifies with, and empathises with the abuser after a period of repeated grooming and abuse. This means that the abuser has enmeshed themselves in the psyche of the victim, the child victim will then have blurred ideas of who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’, and may confusingly, run away from home to seek out the abuser, or defend the abuser in court or some other way.

The painful healing process begins with the child recognising they are worthy of ’good’ people, and beginning to recognise who is good and bad. This can only happen with the consistence presence of a strong figure, daily contact with someone who is truly good. They become the light switch to the darkness that hides the real persona of the abuser.

The second is what Sandra Bloom terms ‘traumatic reenactment’, whereby the traumatising environment becomes normal, and itself perpetuates repeated experiences of abuse. It is why we often see people repeating patterns of abusive relationships, even after one has ended with the promise of ‘never again will I…’

Traumatic reenactment can be reduced through the development of insight, and worthiness. The way to insight is through the coaching of a safe friend, a person who does not judge the victims reenactment behaviour, but gently assists the victim to understand what is happening to them.

As I have often said, children who have experienced abuse need safe people to stick by them, to stay with them, and to show them what safe and honoring care really is.

‘Cougar Mum’? ...How about ‘Pedophile Predator’?

By Stephan Friedrich 

‘A Current Affair’ is a tabloid nightly current affair program in Australia. Whilst it capitalizes on shallow neighbour disputes and pyramid scheme cons, for our mindless entertainment, it is a good barometer of suburban values.  However it also has an ethical responsibility for the perpetuation and setting of social values. 

I was appalled to see the headline for its main story last night ‘Cougar Mum’ (see the episode here) The story centered on a 37 yr old woman who was habitually ‘dating’ teenage boys as young as 15, and allegedly taking advantage of them under the influence of alcohol.  Let’s be very frank and very clear, The words ‘cougar’ and ‘dating’ are unethical interpretations of what is clearly an immoral, predatory and illegal act of abuse against a minor. The story targets the woman, and questions her victims, asking if they believe she is a predator. You don’t need to ask, naïve reporter, she is a predator.

Why is it that we still find it so challenging to accept that women are capable of child sexual abuse? Is it that the initial fight against child abuse was grounded in feminist theory, that while powerful and essential now finds it difficult to deal with this truth, that between 25% and 37% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by women? (see Finkelhor, 1986)

Perhaps it is a psychoanalytic cause to our denial, rendering us incapable of seeing the mother as sexual abuser?

An article by Renee Koonin, ‘Breaking the Last Taboo: Sexual Abuse by Female Perpetrators’ examines a range of possible contributors to the taboo.

Regardless of social causes of taboos, we have an urgent responsibility to children and young people who are victims of sexual abuse, to get rid of this taboo so that those who are the victims of women are able to come forward. As long as society normalizes the behaviour as a ‘cougar’ ‘dating’, these boys and young men will not be able to come to terms with their hurt, and are more likely to turn this pain inwards, into a self-blaming worthlessness.

Children need to be protected from all predators of any gender. Its not funny or quirky to glamorize a female abuser by referring to her as a ‘Cougar’.

“I BEEN SUSPENDED”: Why Time-Out Re-Abuses Abused Children

By Stephan Friedrich

Suspension, expulsion and ‘timeout’ for school children who have suffered abuse can exacerbate harm, and compounds the abuse. In many ways it is re-abusing a child.

How is it re-abusing?

 Some may say, “but isn’t it disciplining, showing them the boundaries, teaching them what is acceptable and what is not?”

 No it is not, it is teaching them that they are not supported when they feel out of control, that adults cannot be trusted to contain and keep them safe, and that they will be rejected for being what the abuser has convinced them of, that they are not good.

Emile Durkheim, who founded sociology, talked about suicide as a social phenomenon, as a function of ‘anomie’, or feeling socially isolated.  The theories are over 100 years old, and we now so much more about depression, and its external and internal factors, but most still point to the importance of social inclusion and connectedness.

Children who have experienced abuse or neglect and are ‘acting out’ inappropriately in a classroom are usually already feeling disconnected, or triggered, and emotionally isolated, even from themselves. They do not need the isolating rejection of a punitive ‘time out’, or of suspension from school altogether.

By ‘time-out’ I refer to a punitive process where a child is punished, made to sit away from the class, sometimes in a time-out room, either alone or in the presence of a teacher who no longer has any idea why they got into teaching. The bitter grump refuses to engage, makes the child sit quietly, in an undercurrent of worthlessness.

They may need time away from the group, (groups can be very overwhelming), but it needs to be compassionate rather than punitive, they need to be with someone who is safe and who engaging actively with them. Playing a game, or going on a nice walk with a teacher does not ‘award bad behaviour’. Actually it settles the emotional upheaval, helps the child feel supported and part of the community, and that they are worthwhile.

During this time they can have a safe non-punitive chat about the behaviour as something that is happening to them, through which they can be supported. Rather than saying,

 ‘you need to take responsibility for your behaviour’ ,

we can say

 ‘How about we work out what’s happening during those times, then together we can make it better’.

Contrary to traditional thinking, positive time away does not encourage bad behaviour or truancy. It actually increases a child’s sense of belonging, of confidence and worthiness, so that that as they heal, they will feel more and more like they want to, and can be, part of the group social and learning environment.

As for suspensions and expulsions for children who have suffered abuse…needless to say, lets not do it, shall we? What chance do the children stand if we are so quick to give up?

Rather than expel or suspend a child, State education departments need to recognise the importance of skilled additional staff (versed in complex trauma) to assist to reconnect these children. They need a relationship with a safe and skilled person at the school, not a case manager funded by one of many re-engagement initiatives.

In 2010 I spoke to an inter-departmental committee of ministers and directors on this subject. I gave a presentation full of evidence and water-tight research.

So what was the Chairperson’s response to my presentation?

“Yeh.. Ummm…Too expensive to do that”.

With all due respect, important-government-people, ‘too expensive’ is a dumb answer. Even if you really need to be heartless bureaucrats and think only in economic terms, plenty of longitudinal cost effectiveness studies show how expensive it really is to NOT spend the money on support for children suffering the aftermath of abuse.

Of course, and I don’t mean to be cynical, but unfortunately longitudinal studies cover a longer period than an electoral term.

Yes, Monsters Exist: Validation Heals Invalidation

By Stephan Friedrich

Children who have been betrayed by the adult world by an abuser become instantly invalidated. It is a deeply crippling experience that is often exponentially intensified if they finally find the courage to disclose the abuse but they are not believed. Either people assume they are telling stories (how a child would come up with this subject matter without the experience is doubtful), or they cannot come to terms that they have failed to protect the child, or that their brother, or friend, or the teacher could be capable of such evil.

The result is that the child grows lonely in their pain and experience; they feel deep shame and they begin to question themselves, that perhaps they have imagined their victimisation after all. The ongoing harm of this invalidation has links to depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation and actions, and adult diagnoses such as chronic anxiety and borderline personality disorder, which can bring with them a host of lifelong personal and relational challenges.

How can a person heal from such shaming, and harmful invalidation? The answer contains multiple approaches and needs, but the most obvious is that invalidation is healed by validation.

A child that has experienced this kind of abuse requires clear day-to-day validation of their worth and their goodness. We need to express vocally to the child if he or she is doing something well, has a nice jumper on; tell them they are a good person, if they are kind, tell them, and give them examples. Most importantly, their disclosures must be treated seriously. And following that, all their statements need to be treated with respect.

Validate their statements. If they tell you they just saw a purple people eater, don’t discount it by saying, “don’t tell fibs” or “no you didn’t”.

Instead one can respond, “Well I’m confused, is it a people eater with purple clothes, or does it only eat purple people?”

It is important that the child knows you are on their side. By being respected, they learn self-respect.

But validation does not stop at validating the child. The child needs to experience a validating environment. This means that he or she needs to see others validating each other, giving each other compliments and validating their statements. Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy the wit of sarcasm, it has no place in this kind of environment. Remember validation needs to be genuine, it needs to be honest, and it is not always done with words. Ultimately, it is responding with genuine respect toward another human being. 

Pets and Skipping Ropes: Substance Misuse as Maladaptive Self-Soothing

By Stephan Friedrich

Child abuse is particularly awful because childhood is the most crucial and accelerated period of development for all human beings. When a person is violated during these stages of growth, the harm also affects how a person develops, they way they think, and how they cope with everyday stresses.

As an example, when we are babies and little children, we learn to self-soothe. Contrary to the 1980’s notions of ‘toddler taming’, and letting the child ‘cry it out’, we actually learn to self-soothe by being soothed, picked up and sung to. We learn to emotionally regulate by co-regulation with a parent, and other safe adults. We pick up a crying toddler, rock them or reassure them gently. They see our safe warm smile, know they are safe and are soothed back to a state of calm.

But when a child is harmed or neglected by an adult, their ability to feel safe with adults is compromised, and therefore, their opportunities to be ‘soothed’ are minimized.

The impact of this is profound, and a child can grow up without a full capacity to self-soothe appropriately and naturally, so they may instinctively seek means of soothing that appear to generate similar feelings, and stimulate similar ‘pleasure centres’ of the brain. However, more often than not, these artificial means of self-soothing are ‘maladaptive’. In other words, they are harmful in the long (or sometimes short) term. Maladaptive self-soothing strategies can include substance misuse (like alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, or inhalants), Risky promiscuity, and high-risk behaviours (adrenaline seeking).

Whilst there are many reasons why people engage in substance misuse and other unhealthy addictions, it is a mistake to conceptualise the behaviour, or addiction, as the cause of the problem for someone living with early childhood abuse and severe emotional neglect. These are expressions of the harm; they are means by which the person is seeking to soothe.

When we have this understanding of the ‘problem’ we can approach addiction and high-risk behaviour with a compassionate and empathic approach. Instead of dealing directly with the behaviour (using punishments and sanctions), we become a co-regulator to the child, be available to them, to soothe with our genuine affirmations of safety, with our reliability and by validating their need to be soothed.

Pets, especially dogs, can be expert soothers, as can music with a strong beat, park swings and other rhythmic activity such as skipping, jogging or a boxing speed ball (yes boxing is therapeutic!). If you are engaging a child in activities like this for therapeutic purposes, keep in mind also, that there needs to be an additional ingredient: A good person, someone connected both to the child and the activity who is safe and reliable.

In this way a person can learn to self soothe later in their childhood (or as adults) and may gradually no longer feel a need for maladaptive self-soothing. 

TORTILLA THERAPY: Overcoming Bad Triggers With Good Triggers

Ok, before you read on I need to warn you on two counts. Firstly, as much as I have tried to skip and summarise bits, this article is going to be long. Secondly, it’s a tad personal and self-absorbed, but something I’d like to share with you.

If you take a moment to read my blog article ‘Reach For Your Life Jacket'’ you will notice my already publicly disclosed fear of flying. I manage its crippling nature to an extent, so I am able to fly regularly, however, the effects of being in a plane as it takes off has been consistent: A deep sense of terror, of loss of control of my fate, unable to concentrate on conversation with whoever is next to me, or on the book I am holding and pretending to read. I bear it, and when it is over, it takes me a couple of hours to regain my sense of balance, and full awareness.

As I did in that article and have in many presentations, I freely talk about my fear of flying and use it as an analogy to the work we do with traumatised and terrified children.

But now, with some sense of exhilaration, I’d like to share with you how, with a homemade tortilla, I think I may have conquered this ‘fear’.

The first thing I had to realise was that the fear of flying was not a fear at all.

The revelation was seeded some weeks ago. I had just finished a workshop in Sydney, and had boarded the plane home to Melbourne with my colleague Merryn miller. Merryn was well aware of my rather conspicuous fear, as she had witnessed it on the way to Sydney the day before. As we sat we were reminded to turn off our phones, and dutifully we both took our phones out of our pockets. Merryn turned off her phone, and as usual, I simply turned mine onto ‘silent’ mode.

“What are you doing?” said Merryn, “We have to turn them off”

“Nah, that’s rubbish”, I replied, and then went on in my most smarty-pants tone, “If it was really dangerous they’d scan us for phones, or make us relinquish them, not only that, there’s a squillion radio and microwaves going through this plane from all around, and besides, it’s a myth, and they busted it on Mythbusters”

“Fair enough”, said Merryn, “But it’s confusing, you are petrified of crashing in a plane and yet won’t follow their safety requirement, if you were really phobic, you’d do it, you’d turn it off, logical or not”

“Shit”, she’s right, I thought…so what’s this awful feeling of trepidation, like my chest is going to cave in?

I decided to explore it, do a little self-investigation, in conversation with Merryn. We were used to having these therapeutic conversations with children we worked with so it came rather naturally.

If it was not a mortal fear of flying, then perhaps the feeling of terrified panic was something else. Was there ever a time when I was not afraid in a plane? I thought back through my whole life. I had always flown. Following my birth in Nicaragua, we moved to Venezuela, Colombia, Italy and Australia, always at the whim of my father’s itchy feet. I have always loved travelling, but hated flying, since...Italy. It was like a rush of realization. I loved flying as a kid. I realised that the first time I felt the terror, was on the flight between Milan and Melbourne.

“I wonder what happened at that time?” prodded Merryn, in her unashamedly Dan Hughes-style curious prose.

After some thought, I remembered my first clue. Sitting next to my nanny, Hortencia, as we departed Bogota. She was crying, praying, horrified of the flight. At that moment I thought that maybe this was the beginning of my fear. Had I had learned it from my nanny? Maybe, although I knew I felt ok, even though she was not.

Momentarily satisfied with that conclusion, I stopped talking to Merryn, losing cognitive capacity as the plane began to move, and my amygdala kicked in …

Hang on, you say, nanny? What’s this about a nanny? You mean like Mary Poppins, or the nun on Sound of Music, or like Alice from the Brady Bunch?

Ok, if you’re willing, let me take a step back to fill you in on the ‘nanny’ context…

My father was recruited by Anastasio Somoza, then notorious dynastic dictator of Nicaragua, to manage a sugar cane plant. This was in the days of the great divide in Nicaragua between the upper class minority, and the impoverished minority, in the days before the famous Sandinista revolution.

It was common for the snobby class and gringos to employ local helpers for the home. Hortencia had approached my mother for employment as a home nanny and my parents agreed.

Barely out of adolescence, she helped my mother to cook and care for the kids. Hortencia was single and pregnant, and my parents soon embraced her as part of the family, providing her with a place in the home.

Hortencia’s son Ronald, my brother, was born a couple of months after my sister, when I was 2. From then, we were inseparable, my sisters, my mother, my brother Ronald and my Nanny, Hortencia. As far as I had always known this was our family. When my father decided we should move, it was natural that Hortencia and Ronald should move with us.

And so that’s how it happened, that Ronald, my sisters, and me, ended up with two wonderful mothers.

I have such sweet fond memories of days spent at my nanny’s feet. Her laughter and humour was music with a chirpy melody. She was the one to tell me not to touch the hot iron (the resultant curiosity brought some tears). She made the best arroz con leche (rice pudding), platano baked in banana leaves, gallopinto (rice with beans), and the most delicious tortillas.

It so happened that when we lived in Colombia, my father’s feet started itching once again, toes pointed to a job in Australia with ‘Laminex’ industries (”Its laminexciting!”).

We were all laminexcited.

We were going to Australia! We were going to learn English, live in tree houses and ride saddled kangaroos to school (that’s what my very knowledgable friends told me). Ronald and I began to agree on the rules of the pending kangaroo race.

We left for Melbourne but first my siblings and I, and our mothers, were to stop in Italy, to spend a few months with my mother’s kin in the Alps while my father prepared our home, schooling, and, I assumed, our kangaroo stables.

After 3 months in ValleD’Aosta, with more mountain-trekking and cheese-eating than any boy could want, we were told ‘the bad news’. Australian immigration authorities would not recognise Hortencia and Ronald as members of our family. They would not be allowed to enter the country. We would have to go without them.

As a child, it didn’t really sink in at all at this stage. I was confused. I knew they couldn’t go back to Latin America alone, they couldn’t come with us to Australia. And they couldn’t stay in Italy. A friend of the family, Sylvio, agreed to marry Hortencia, so that they could at least legally remain in Italy. That’s another story, which ends happily, as Hortencia and Sylvio are still married, still living in the same place, have a daughter Corina, and two grandchildren. My brother Ronald is as Italian as I am Australian.

But the apex of the story is a day embedded in every detail into my memory. It was the day I said goodbye to my brother and my nanny at Milan Airport.

I remember standing at the gate being held by Hortencia as she cried, and I thought she’d never let me go, and then hugging Ronald in an awkward boyish way. I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry. So when the trembling came to my bottom lip, I turned away, and followed the others through the gates…into the plane… where I sat and wept, silently, and experienced a new feeling, the terror of separation, the realization that my nanny had been taken away and my brother wouldn’t ever kangaroo-race me.

Needless to say, as I recalled these events, I realised that my ‘plane panic’ was not a fear of flying at all, or a learned behaviour, it was a triggered, traumatic separation with a primary carer, it was grief, loss and aloneness.

I realised at the same time, what terror, what daily panic, must be experienced by so many children in ‘state care’, who justifiable or otherwise have been separated from their parents and primary carers. What I feel in the cabin of a plane, they must feel almost anywhere, at any time.

With this new self-discovery, the therapist in me decided to try an experiment, to see if I can actually heal the airplane terror. Now that I knew this was a trauma related response, I was certain I could work with it.

I don’t ever lose hope with children, so why should I despair at the terrified little boy in that plane?

I thought back to the theory, what harm has ensued? The harm was disconnection, so how do I reconnect to my nanny, how do I go back in time and repair the forced rupture?

It is important to avoid the cognitive processes, as these largely shut down with the activation of the ‘flight-fight-freeze’ response. It is the main reason why cognitive behavioural approaches do not work with severely traumatised children and adults. When I work with children I try to use connections to a person that don’t involve complex thought, or language. This can include sounds (music), touch, taste, and smell. Just as an obscure smell can trigger a traumatic response, so too it can trigger a safe connection.

I imagined being back in Venezuela, in the yard, and in the kitchen with Hortencia. I could actually remember the smells, especially of platano (plantain) and Tortilla, with its lovely maize flour aroma.

Just like that I knew the answer…

I had to travel to Melbourne’s Latin Quarter, In Fitzroy, to find the maize flour. ‘Masa Lista Para Tortillas’. I had recently made contact with Ronald, and Corina, my nanny’s daughter (we referred to each other as brother and sister), on Facebook (it can be useful!). We communicate in a clumsy hybrid of Spanish and Italian. So I asked her to tell me her mother’s tortilla recipe. She is her mother’s daughter, and posted some tips immediately.

The first batch I made was not quite right, they were breaking apart, and burning, but they took me back to a time of childhood paradise and safety. I gorged on enough imperfect tortillas to establish a Latino restaurant.

The therapeutic plan was to make tortillas for my next plane ride. In two weeks I’ve become a tortilla grand-poobah, and last night I made a batch to make my nanny proud. I carefully wrapped them and packed them in my hand luggage.

So here I am on the three and a half hour flight to Cairns, typing as I chew. I could swear when I opened them before take off, that the rich maize smell filled the cabin. The effect was instant. A time of safety, sitting on the floor of a Venezuelan kitchen. No panic, no heart flutter or gripping of the seat. The most enjoyable flight I’ve had since…Italy, 33years ago. I’m so excited I want to tell everyone else in the cabin, but instead I’ll take a tortilla self-portrait with my phone (yes I kept it on!)...

Of course there was no rigour to this experiment, and there could be a number of other explanations: placebo effect, a yet undiscovered sedative property of Maize, who knows? What I do know is I feel rather free. Placebo or not, it is intoxicatingly empowering to have a sense of control over panic, and the fear of it. My flying-related anxiety (preferable to ‘fear of flying’) won’t go away overnight, but this is definitely a welcome start.

Traumatic triggers can be managed through insight, understanding and reflection, with the help of ‘good’ triggers, things that connect us to someone safe, to a time before the harm, so we remember, what was there, before the terror?

When we work with children who have no answer to this question, we can create new stories, and reframe old ones, and then the gentle triggers will appear, to safe, loving connections. And they will hold that child into adulthood, during aloneness, fear and turbulence.

Written by Stephan Friedrich Copyright 2013

Punishing the Punished: Being Wary of Rewards and Consequences for Managing Challenging Behaviour of Abused Children.

This is the next post on effects of abuse  I wrote on behalf Fighter's Against Child Abuse Australia (FACAA) for their Facebook site.

Children who have experienced abuse may sometimes be difficult to ‘manage’. Their behaviour can be often ‘naughty’ or ‘oppositional’. Conversely, the behaviour can be withdrawn, dissociative and reluctant to engage in activity. Either way, we often look to what used to be called ‘behaviour modification’ for techniques such as using rewards and consequences. The problem is, that often children who have experienced severe or ongoing abuse do not sustain positive behaviour change over a long period using these techniques.

The reason is likely to lie in some of the factors we discussed in the last post, about ‘negative relational templates’. In other words, they have already been punished enough to last a lifetime. Abused children feel inherently shamed, deserving of punishment, of being perpetually bad and punishable, and often take this self-view into adulthood. These children (and adults) are subconsciously seeking evidence that affirms their ‘punishability’ (yes, I made that word up), this self-view perpetuates more ‘bad’ behaviour. It becomes a vicious circle.

 I’m a parent of grown up kids, but when they were little I was always guessing what to do, wishing I had been handed an instruction manual. Sometimes I think I got it right, and sometimes it seemed clear I got it wrong. So please understand that what I say stems from some useful theory I learnt a little late as a parent, and this is no criticism on parents out there.

So let me first say something that may be a little uncomfortable when talking about ‘Rewards and Consequences’. That is, that many people feel uncomfortable using the word ‘punishments’, as I do, but we continue to use the word ‘consequences’ as a PC euphemism that means nothing more than ‘punishment’.

Denying a child dessert because he dropped the F bomb is not really a consequence, it is only a consequence because I make it so. Actually the consequence is I got offended, or felt hurt. Another example is a child that throws the peanut butter jar and breaks it. The consequence is a broken jar, a mess on the wall and no more peanut butter. A punishment would be sending the child to her room.

A good way to define the difference is, that if the consequence is something you need to impose or enforce, it is a punishment (“you’re grounded, no TV for a week!”) If it is something you can demonstrate, it is a consequence (“look, you threw the jar, now its broken, and we have no peanut butter”.

I am not saying that these imposed consequences, or non-corporal punishments are always wrong. Rather, that if we are dealing with a person with childhood abuse, that we have an obligation, to be doubly mindful before metering them out.

Rewards are positive and work well. But we must be mindful, again, of two factors: Firstly, that if rewards are only given when a child is ‘good’, we still reinforce the idea that they are mostly ‘bad’, and this is harmful. Secondly, there is evidence that points to the long-term ineffectiveness of ‘material’ rewards (lollies, a new bike, money, maccas) compared with the effectiveness of social rewards (one-one time with you).

In order to change the negative template to a positive self-view, provide social rewards not only when a child is ‘good’, but also when they are simply settled, neither ‘good’ not ‘naughty’.

Furthermore, remembering that the behaviour you are managing is likely to be a function of relational harm, we need to rethink the concept of ‘time out’, which perpetuates a self-view of rejectability (I made that one up too). Instead, bring the child in close at this time. With a traumatised child, this is not ‘rewarding bad behaviour’ as we might think, instead it is saying ‘you are worthy of love, and one day you won’t need to prove otherwise’.

Rather than seeing what the child has ‘done’, address the issue by first wondering, “What has happened to this child, that his or her behaviour should be like this?"

Blaming Doesn't Help: How Abuse Impacts the Relational Template

This is a copy of a short piece I wrote on behalf of an amazing and active organisation in Australia called Fighters Against Child Abuse (FACAA). In a following post I will write a little more about the work they do in Australia, with possible ramifications around the world. 

Today I’d like to talk about relational templates and how they can be affected by early traumatic experiences.

So what is a relational template?

It’s a fancy sounding concept used by attachment theorists which is really quite simple…

Most of us experience a positive early childhood. We are helpless when we are born, and therefore dependent on our carer and other adults for everything: Nurture, warmth, protection, and so on.

In a way, when we are born, and as little children, we must assume that our primary carer, and other adults in our lives are ‘good’, and as they provide these things for us we learn that we are deserving of love, we are worthy and good, and that the world will always provide for us. When we grow up, we feel confident to be independent and attract people to us that reinforce this view of ourselves. This can be called a positive relational template. The template is almost fully developed by the time we are 6 or so, and becomes the basis on which we view ourselves, and the world for the rest of our lives.

But if, as little children, this assumption of a good and protective world is disrupted by an abuser, it will conflict with this world-view.  It is the ultimate betrayal. We continue to assume that the world is good, that adults in our lives are good.. So there is only one explanation that our subconscious has for this betrayal…’I am bad, I am not worthy or deserving of love, I am punishable’.  This is called a negative relational template.

The younger and more repetitive or traumatic the abuse, the more established the negative relational template becomes.

People with this negative template do not see themselves as worthy of secure relationships, even into adulthood. It is the reason why so many good mentoring, caring relationships with a young person who has a negative relational template seem to become ‘ruptured’ or ‘sabotaged’. People often think that this is intentional, but this is far from the truth. The abuser has damaged the idea that the young person is deserving and worthy, so they will unconsciously behave in a way that allows them to ‘prove’ they are not worthy of your attention or love.

The good news is that research on neuroplasticity shows this can heal. A Negative template can become a positive one.

The way to do this is not to blame the child or young person for the rupture. To understand why ‘it is happening’ rather than why ‘they are doing this’. 

Next we gently persistently care (“Guess what? I’m still here, I still care”). By not rejecting the young person (or child or adult) we slowly demonstrate that they are indeed worthy.

This in itself may mean the person will attract partners that are not abusive in adulthood, that genuinely love them, and that they wont continue proving that they are not deserving of a good life.

Oppositional Defiance Disorder, ADHD, and Diesel Maintenance

I was driving my relatively worn diesel dual-cab, when the oil light on the dash flashed on and would not turn off. It’s a particularly bright red LED, and annoying, especially at night. Definitely inappropriate behaviour!

The next day, that annoying red light turned back on. It was persistent.

My mechanical expertise is limited, to say the least, and I decided to take my car, known affectionately as ‘The Mother Trucker’, to a professional. I drove to the well-known ‘Mechanical Counseling Service’ (MCS) and spoke to the lead consultant, Bob.

 Bob said, “leave your car here for the day, we’ll make an assessment, and when you return at 4pm, we should have some answers”. So I left The Mother Trucker behind for assessment..

I ran some menial errands and returned at 4pm. Bob emerged, looking pleased with himself, 

“Well we’ve had some fun today, observing and making an assessment of the issues... Your car has what is known as “Dashboard Red Light Disorder, or DRLD”.

I was a little distraught. This was rather overwhelming.

I said, “oh? Is there a treatment for DRLD? What do I do?”

“Easy”, Bob said, as he handed me a box of cohesive band-aid strips. “Just cover the light with one of these, it may begin to lose cohesion by the following day, so you will need to put a new one on every day”. 

Feeling very relieved and grateful for Bob’s expertise, I paid him and happily applied the band-aid.  Before I drove off, he reminded me to replace it every morning, and to order more from him when the box gets low.

Bob was amazing! I never had a problem with the red light again.

…Then the engine stopped working.

Children carry labels like ADHD, ODD, and Conduct disorder for many years, and into adulthood. Unless we have the wisdom to see persistently inappropriate behaviour as an indication of unseen causes, possibly harm, in need of attention, we only hide the problem until the harm takes its toll.

Stinging Nettle Soup: Get kids hooked on the ultimate weed!

My mother, being an Italian-Alps-bred all-natural earth-mama, swears by the miracle nutrition superpower of the stinging nettle. If you ever came across it, you’d know it, the tiny little hairs on the leaves cause a burning sting to bring tears to the eyes (I first discovered the weed as a child on a camping trip, when I chose to use the nearby weed as toilet paper…needless to say a small shock ensued).  Most people regard this as a noxious weed, but for as long as I can remember, mum has picked the stinging nettle (with kitchen gloves) and made a delicious soup.

One day I was walking in the yard area in a detention centre with Johnny, a 15 year old boy who was sentenced to 6 months for aggravated burglary. I saw a crop of wild stinging nettle growing by the fence. I pointed it out and told Johnny what it was, and suggested he didn’t touch it. Of course his propensity for oppositional defiance dictated that he touch it, and some colourful language followed.

When I told him how my mother would make soup from it, he was fascinated and demanded that we make the soup immediately. We went back inside and got some kitchen gloves and plastic bags, and filled them with the danger weed. We walked inside and under the curious gaze of both workers and other boys, prepared what initially looked suspiciously like the by-product of a federal police drug raid and turned it into a gingery soup to make mama proud.

Johnny loved it, as did many of the other boys. He often requested that we collect ‘stinging needle’ (as he called it) and make the soup, and we often did. When it came to Johnny’s birthday, he was asked if he’d like anything special. “stinging needle soup” he said.

We often assume that kids in care won’t like food that is natural and ‘healthy’, and we get caught up of preparing food we believe they are accustomed to. It is true that neglected kids are often not accustomed to good food. Just as they are often not accustomed to good nurture. Food is part of nurture. It doesn’t need to be as exotic and weird as Stinging Nettle soup, but it needs to involve the child, it needs to be a connective, shared experience, and whilst they may not like one nicely prepared healthy meal, it does not mean they wont like the next one.

Food preparation and eating are human social events; they connect us to our families and to caring people in our lives. So create new experiences of care through good food, and don’t assume that the only way to care for a child’s stomach is through McDonald’s.