This is what trauma looks like at times. An 8 year old boy, hiding under the dining room table with his face planted in his arms. While we may originally observe this as defiance, an attitude, a revolt, this is what anxiety, stress, fear, and loss can actually look like for a child that does not have the words to express how he truly feels.
Last week I received a call from my 8 year old foster son’s
elementary school teacher. He was having
a rough day at school. My heart sunk as
his teacher told me how his day was going because I knew it meant a possible rough night at home.
This has happened a few times where he goes to school and just shuts
down. His teacher who is amazing gives
everything she has to motivate him, but some days he just sits there with his
head down, non-responsive and unable to do the work. Tristan and I have created a rule in our
house that if our boys don’t do the work in school, or are simply unable to
listen that day to their teacher, school now comes home with them and our
kitchen table is now their classroom.
As I drove home that night, I was rehearsing in my head what I might
say to him. I knew my husband
had him sitting quietly in his room, and the rest of the night would be
homework, dinner and bed time. Nothing
fun happens at home when they waste time at school so I knew we were in for
some tears and a revolt.
One of the hardest
challenges as a parent of two boys that we basically just met is trying to find
something, anything at all that they may connect with and understand that will
hopefully go with them into the world and help them whether that’s at school,
daycare, on the soccer field, in their interactions with others, in a job one
day. What words can we speak to them
that will implant into their brains and spark a light bulb when needed? How do we ensure they don't repeat the same cycle that they came from? Saying to a 6 year old, “you must respect
your teacher” means nothing to him. For
the majority of his life adults never respected him or his body, his feelings,
his heart. He has no idea what respect
is or what it looks like. We’ve realized
in those moments that we have to take about 10 steps back before the word “
respect” can even be partly understood.
We have to model it in our marriage and in our own interactions with the
boys and we are not perfect at it. We give them controlled choices,
we ask permission to play with them and their legos, we ask them what books
they would like to read, we try and help them feel valued and show them that we
care about their thoughts and feelings.
We go to therapy with them. What
we would expect a 6 and 8 year old to understand, a lot of times our boys simply
don’t and its not their fault. We are
constantly asking ourselves if our words and actions are helping them or
triggering trauma. I raised my voice the
other night with my 6 year old who was having a melt down. My voice and body temperature escalated with
his cries and "I hate yous" and my immediate reaction was to snap him out of the cry fit he was
heading towards with my words. He
grabbed his newborn blanket and started suckling it with fearful eyes. My parents raised their
voice with me and I got in line immediately, we raise our voices with our boys
sometimes and I think they wonder if we’re going to hurt them. It breaks me.
It breaks Tristan. I constantly question myself and
what in the world I am doing everyday.
The night of my 8 year old’s bad day, I walked into his room
and sat on the floor. He climbed up on
his bed and put his head down. He
couldn’t tell me why he had a bad day.
He knows how to do the work, he just chose not to that day. Any question I threw his way, “Help me
understand? Are you nervous about
writing? Do you not feel well? Are you sad?”
He had no answer which is frustrating as a parent. Even when he is acting at his worst, when I
sit there with him, I can see his brokenness and many times I have no idea how
to help him. I stopped asking questions and took a different approach. I looked at him and told
him to look at me. He looked up and locked
eyes with me and what I said next made me want to turn away and crawl out of the room. I told
him that my first husband was killed and I had to visit his body in a
morgue. I told him that he was lifeless
and cold and all I had when I left was a trash bag of wet gear. I told him that it was the saddest thing I’ve
ever seen and experienced in my life and I walk with that memory attached to me like a crippled leg every single day. I told him that when I was 8
years old my family was almost ripped apart by drugs and I got to visit my dad in a rehab facility and that kids made fun of me. I told him that Tristan and I lost two babies
and went through emergency surgeries that could have killed me. I told him that with all of those moments in
my life, the world gave me no hand-outs, free passes, get out of jail cards,
nothing. The world kept going, things
were not put on hold for my short comings.
I told him that he’s a foster kid and his mother failed him and she gave him away, and the pain
he must feel from that rejection and complete abandonment I cannot
imagine. I told him that even with that
card he’s been dealt, if he goes throughout his life expecting the world to
give him special favors or treatment, he is going to be set-up for a life time of
disappointment and emptiness. I told him the world
doesn’t care and this is not the only time in
his life that he will feel pain or loss.
We are in a constant state of being broken and rebuilt. I told him that my hope for him is that one
day he will help other kids because of what happened to him, that he will be an
incredible husband and dad because of what happened to him, that he will become
stronger, smarter, tougher, more resilient, he’ll see his creator because of
what happened to him. Being a foster kid
does not mean you get a free pass at school, the school work still has to get
done and like my husband always tells him, “you have to try.” I told him that I had to keep trying and so does he.
I believe that when you take on the responsibility of
another human being, you have to accept the breakage that is about to occur on
your heart, mind and body. My husband
with his own brokenness came to me the other night and said, “the boys are not
a reflection of me, yet I am becoming a reflection of them and their trauma,
and I don’t like how I feel.” I have
felt the same way through parenting. You
can’t help but internalize their behavior which is really trauma coming out in
all kinds of forms. When you witness
those moments, you start to become one with it and I know for both me and Tristan,
we don’t always like who we’ve become. We feel angry, frustrated, drained. I start to really think about what they went
through and envision the way they were treated and it makes me physically
ill. There are times we have no idea how
to help them and feel useless. Sometimes we feel like terrible parents. There are times we feel like we’re winning
and have it all figured out. Each
positive day comes with 3 set back days.
It is exhausting. I say this as
I’m flying back on a plane from a work trip while my husband has had the boys
for 4 days all alone. He is a
champion.
I’m starting to
really believe that God is drawing out things in both Tristan and I that are
ugly, that were there the entire time, that need to be removed. I believe we’re being asked to face our own
demons, our own angers, regrets, sadness, our own trauma that we have probably
repressed for years. I believe when we
as humans move through these moments with our creator, that we start to elevate
to something higher, we draw closer to the light that put us here and things start
to feel peaceful again even through the chaos of life. I’m realizing
that the only way to elevate is to break.
Breaking can feel scary because when we break we don’t always feel in
control. I am watching my boys be broken
as we break with them. I’m starting to
feel that we needed them just as much as they needed us and that one day we may
all elevate together. When we’re in the
trenches and trying to reason with the unreasonable it’s hard to see that but
we have to see it, we have to start envisioning it and speaking truth to
it. I believe as parents we have to tell
our children the truth, that life doesn’t always feel great. Loss, hurt, regret, rage, sadness are all
things they will feel over and over again, for to be a human is to feel
pain. That in those moments of pain if
we can learn to sit with ourselves and to really feel it in all of its rawness, we start to elevate.
About a month into
foster care I wanted to give up on our boys and find them a different
placement. I could not deal with the pain it was causing me. Becoming an immediate parent had an effect on
me that was frightening. I lost 15
pounds, I was depressed, I couldn’t even look at our boys some mornings, and
they knew it. Tristan is the reason I
didn’t give up, he coached me through the anxiety and pain and helped me sit with
it and start to elevate. Through him elevating me he started to break himself. I am so glad I
didn’t quit when the pain become unbearable. I have to keep breaking.
So I kept eye
contact with my 8-year old son as painful as it was to tell him that there will
be more moments of pain, more shifts throughout his life that will hurt like
hell, yet there will be beautiful moments in his life if he allows it, if he
takes all that hurt and uses it to elevate and connect to the loving source
that put him here. So as a family while
we are in a season of breaking, I know that joy is coming, I can feel it coming
and for that I know that we have to keep going. We have to keep breaking.
