Between the breaks in routine, extra sweets, and high anticipation, the holiday season is full of triggers for kids with a history of adverse experiences. I noticed after our first Christmas with our older kids, that tree trimming was a huge trigger because it emphasized all the years they’d missed with us as our younger...
Are you sick of giving choices and compromises and feeling like your life revolves around your challenging child? Are you wondering when healing will ever come and feeling weary? Me too. Sometimes I think, “We’ve been over this 1,000,000 times. When will it sink in?” I feel like “connected parenting” promised me healing, but there...
There are few things more frustrating than when you’re battling your child for control. Kids with a history of adverse experiences have a strange sixth sense that allows them to know exactly how to push your buttons through manipulative and controlling behaviors. Whether it’s losing a primary caregiver either through death or abandonment, having to...
If you’re dealing with multiple challenging behaviors that happen over and over and over again, you’re not alone. When parents reach out to me, this is a common theme. It’s not so much just the lying or stealing or whatever, it’s the fact that no matter what you try as a parent, it keeps happening....
We had adopted before. We had therapeutic parent training. We love teenagers. Surely, we would rock at older child adoption. Maybe you weren’t nearly as optimistic and naive as us, but chances are that there is a disconnect between your expectations and what you are experiencing. Maybe you are prepping for an older child adoption,...
Have you ever grown a boatload of tomatoes and then wondered what to do with them? You don’t want them to go to waste, but you’re also really, really busy. Canning sounds fun…until you think about blanching and peeling all those tomatoes. This year we made spaghetti sauce for the first time. I use the...
Maybe it’s the transition to a new season (ex: back-to-school), and your child is throwing lots of tantrums. Maybe it’s punishments creating more angry behaviors. You take away a privilege for lying, and your child retaliates by throwing something at you. Sometimes we get in these bad behavior cycles with our kids where it seems...
Kids with challenging behaviors try our patience. And that’s probably the understatement of the century. It’s easy to think of them as a problem child. While they just need better tools to manage their big emotions, it doesn’t change how easily their behaviors push our buttons. Enter angry mom. Anger seems to be my go-to...