Time to heal…
There are some advantages to being an older(er) professional. One of them is that I’ve been around long enough to see one trend after another come and go.
As as an adoption specialized therapist, the one trend I have’t seen is the one in which the well being and the mental health of the adoptive parents takes center stage. Well friends, that is about to change.
For years I’ve been told that “you chose this life”, or that if I just got my child to one exciting new therapy method (or if I got licensed to practice it myself), or if we attended the new star of the day’s workshop, then all would be well.
Okay – we all know now that for some of us things are not going to change fast enough, if at all. Truly, there are some children for whom any therapy will work, and there are some children for whom no therapy will work. Either way, there are parents who are living a day to day life of stress and chaos and it’s time the attention shifted to them. Maybe your child will get better, maybe she won’t, but in the meantime, what about you? I don’t think it’s enough to simply survive – if we only get one life – then it should be a life worth living, not a life that we have to stumble through, never knowing what kind of pain each day will bring.
I know our kids eventually grow up – but really, does anyone actually think the pain and stress ends then? Get real!
I will get a lot of criticism from my position on this. I know that other professionals, other parents, and the kids as well, don’t want to talk about what happens to the parents who raise severely traumatized children. Oh well, I’m going to do it anyway – popularity was never my goal.
So, one such parent (check out her April 19th post), an enterprising type who refuses to be a victim of a child’s trauma, has contacted EFT expert Brad Yates 
who in turn, has agreed to do a teleseminar for traumatized parents. The date is May 3rd and the details are in this link. I have great respect for Mr. Yates (I use the same method – EFT tapping, but that’s not the only reason I respect him) and I would encourage anyone to participate in this event.
I”m also doing the same type of thing now- workshops for traumatized parents, not just adoptive parents, but any parents who have raised children with serious mental illness or extremely challenging behaviors. I feel called to do these, and I won’t do any other kind of training anymore – it’s take care of parents time for me now.
My first is in Victoria BC on June 1st. You can email hazardousparenting2012@gmail.com to register or wait till I get the event brite thingy up on my blog. The fee is $100 plus tax and it will be at the Harbour Towers hotel, only a block for the city’s beautiful inner harbor. We’ll be bringing the workshop to the US in the fall. If you think there would be sufficient interest in your community, let me know, and we’ll see about planning one there. For sure places are Seattle and Atlanta, the rest have yet to be scheduled.
I feel so strongly about this. We’ve all been trying so hard to care for our kids and do our part to make this a better world, but many of us end up bruised and battered and almost destroyed emotionally, and it’s time we started healing ourselves. 
If you would like to attend the June 1st healing workshop – hit the eventbrite button on the sidebar and you can register there.
Hey, have your best day possible.
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Well, you sure won’t get any criticism from me on this topic. I think it’s high time someone addresses this issue. Also beneficial would be a mini-seminar for people just starting this journey (even though no one would ever believe you if they haven’t already lived this life) with lots of hand outs, tips and resources they can run back to when it all hits the fan down the road – and it always does.
You’re absolutely right. Some kids are probably never going to benefit for any kind of therapy. I think it’s a combination of factors, but I’ve seen it first hand. So, when you’re completely burned out from running from dr. to dr. and emotionally spent from all of the hard work YOU are doing and the kids’ behaviors just keep getting worse -where do you turn? what do you try next? Do you ever regain the trust you so freely gave to begin with? I’m feeling very edgy right now as my ds is planning to leave this week (18 on Sat.) and his next in line sibling is letting lots of little things slip in her behavior. It’s almost like she thinks it’s “her turn”. He’s been monopolizing our time and energy for so…. long and now she may think she gets to be the center of attention (since we all know that negative is better than nothing). I just can’t bear it. It’s like you think things will settle down and be manageable now that the squeaky wheel is rolling on out and someone else just takes over his role.
Kudos to you for seeing a need and doing something about it!