Join this 10 week session of recorded magic created from the groups so you never need worry about missing a week.
Upcoming Topics
Values: Preparing your Children for the World and Problem Solving with Them
When solving family problems you have to know when you are in hard times. The solution has two parts: Working together and solving the problem. When you work together ask for help, talk it over, and get clear on the result. To solve the problem make a plan and carry out the plan. Reviewed love and logic and beyond consequences parenting models and when to use each. Reviewed family meetings: Schedule, agenda, solutions, choosing a solution, forming an action plan, and evaluating. Discussed how to pass on your values regarding sexuality and drug use to your children. Lifework: make rules that support your values.
Theories of attachment
Reviewed the importance of a reducing the stress in the body and the theory behind the physiology of providing a placement that helps create secure attachment. It is only when the brain and central nervous system are in this calm state that we can experience the neurobiological physiology that allows us to feel safe from the inside out. On a structural level, allowing us quicker access to more options then flight, fight or freeze when faced with a stressful situation.
When your brain and central nervous system are able to ignore turbulence and relax into the still point of each moment, your physical body unwinds, your emotional body relaxes, your cognitive body is able to effortlessly release ineffective thoughts, and you can deeply experience the play and joy. From this expansive space loving what is unfolds with ease within the rhythmic movement of life.
Child Development
Reviewed how the scientific study of love and how the capacity to love develops has great implications on the child’s development. This study believes the most crucial development component of these earliest interactions is the mother. The relationship between the mother and infant begins the imprint process on the central nervous system. This interaction of love is an interdependent relationship that regulates the limbic system and ideally remains intact throughout the child development. Unfortunately, society does not support interpersonal relationships, and the mother/child bond is not as valued as it should.
Discussed how this theory of love, also called the limbic regulation, is a mutual exchange of interactions and feelings that serve to regulate vital hormonal and physiological rhythms. An infant’s hormone levels, cardiovascular functions, sleep rhythms, immune function etc. are all affected by the presence and proximity of the parents.
Survival Strategies to Categorize Traumatic Stress
There are eight suggested survival strategies: Rescuing, Attaching, Asserting, Adapting, Fighting, Fleeing, Competing and Cooperating. These strategies span more than the fight and flight responses and help to provide a framework for characterization and categorization of traumatic stress as well as a need fulfillment. The survival strategies may be adaptive or maladaptive according to circumstances. Adaptive contribute to fulfillment, while maladaptive contribute to strain, trauma, symptoms and illness. These strategies can be seen as an individual function or as a complementary pair, such as competing and cooperating. The dynamic system displays how the “appraisal of means of survival” evokes strategies, i.e. must be rescued by others evokes attachment. The response is then measured in biological, psychological and social constructs determining it adaptive or maladaptive. This complex method of classifying traumatic stress provides a deeper look at coping techniques, giving further insight into the complex survival skills of foster children.
Feelings, Behaviors and Relationships
Parenting from a love-based paradigm means going beyond our children’s behavior and beyond consequences to first see that negative behavior is a form of communication and that negative behavior is a response to stress. If we see the kicking and screaming child as one who is having difficulty regulating due to an overflow of feelings, we can learn to stay present with the child in order to help him modulate these feeling and thus, help him to build his emotional regulatory system. If feelings are not released and acknowledged, they are stored and become part of our physical make-up. Research has convincingly shown that being able to express felling like anger and grief can improve survival rates of cancer patients. It is important for parents to understand the necessity of emotional expression. We need to begin to understand that their behaviors are simply a communication of an emotional state that is driving these behaviors. Work to be in a place not to react to the behavior, but respond to your child. Respond to your child in an open way—open to meeting him in his heart and helping him understand the overload of feelings that are driving the behaviors. Child doesn’t need a consequence just needs you present with him.
Reactive Attachment Disorder: A New Understanding
The child cannot socially connect or attach to others in interpersonal relationships. Some of the behavioral symptoms are oppositional; frequent and intense anger outbursts, manipulative or controlling; little or no conscience; destructive to self, others, and property; cruelty to animals or killing animals; gorging or hoarding food; and preoccupation with fire, blood, or violence. Life events interrupt a child’s ability to learn to self –regulate through the relationship with the parent. It is truly through this parent-child relationship that we as humans learn how to self-regulate in order to stay balanced and easily shift from a state of stress back to a state of calm. When a child does not receive loving, nurturing care, the child’s ability to develop a sufficient regulatory system is severely compromised. These children perceive the world as threatening from a neurological, physical, emotional, cognitive, and social perspective. Children operate from a paradigm of fear to ensure their safety and security. In times of stress, this child is challenged to connect. Stress causes confused and distorted thinking, and it constricts us emotionally, leaving little room for relationships. Thus, a child with a traumatic history who is living in a stressful, fear-based state, simply is not capable of nor equipped to be in a relationship. Treatment for the attachment-challenged child needs to address this internal fear. When the child’s stress state can be soothed, and the deep wounds driving the fearful behaviors can be acknowledged, the child has an opportunity for healing.
Preventing and Healing Sexual Molestation
Steps caregivers can take to decrease a children’s susceptibility: Model healthy boundaries, help children develop good sensory awareness, teach children what sexual violation is, who might approach them, and how to avoid being lured, offer opportunities for children to practice their right to say “no”, and teach children what to say and do. Trauma is a breach of energetic and personal boundaries. Sexual trauma is a sacred wound – an intrusion into our deepest, most delicate and private parts. Children therefore, need to be protected by honoring their rights to personal space, privacy, and control of their own bodies. As different situations develop at various ages and stages, children need to know that they do not have to subject themselves to “sloppy kisses,” lap sitting, and other forms of unwanted attention to please the adults in their lives.
Treatment for Emotional Shock
Emotional shock and trauma is a new approach to understanding and treating emotional wounds that are rooted in painful experiences of childhood, infancy, birth, or prenatal development. Much of this work is influenced by the innovative developments and discoveries of William Emerson, Ph.D., and Graham Farrant, M.D. Research continues to point to earlier and earlier experiences as the foundation for most of our conscious and unconscious issues, patterns and struggles. We have discovered protocols for recognizing and treating the emotional wounds that result from these very early experiences. Shock obscures access to full consciousness – including the deepest and most instinctual aspects of the self – resulting in difficulties with intimacy, spirituality and self-esteem. Shock is held in the body and reactivated by events in daily life until it is resolved. Shock requires completely different treatment from trauma.
Healing Trauma in Adoptive Children
Whether adopted from birth or later in life, all adopted children have experienced some degree of trauma. Trauma is any stressful event which is prolonged, however until recently, the full impact of trauma on the adoptive child has not been understood. Scientific research now reveals that as early as the second trimester, the human fetus is capable of processing rejection. This process is far beyond cognitive awareness and stored deep within the cells of the body, leading to states of anxiety and depression for the child later in life. Stress is recognized to be the one primary key to unlocking traumatic memories and unfortunately often expressed in the context of human relationships, leading the child to feel threatened, fearful, and overwhelmed. Healing begins by awareness of the rejection experienced in utero. Recognizing and being sensitive to fear responses, while providing consistent gentle reassurance of their safety. Reducing external stimuli and bringing the child closer can often regulate their stress allowing them to think more clearly. Provide quality time and attention at the beginning, middle and end of the day strengthens a safe nurturing relationship. Parenting a child with trauma history can take its toll, so having a strong support system is a must.
Models of Change
In this article we explore the different levels of thinking that affect our ability to gracefully flow with change in our lives. Level 0 is a pre-thinking stage, “reacting.” There is no model of change, nor can we say that there is any real thinking, because people in this state of mind are just responding to stimuli.
The shift to Level 1 means seizing more effective control over the environment. It can begin when we start to notice patterns in what is happening, and develop routines or norms around them. Sometimes an expert will teach us the ropes, or we learn from past experiences. Level 1 thinking is “decision-making”—evaluating options and selecting them according to a particular description of goodness.
The transition to Level 2 thinking, “problem-solving,” begins by acknowledging these unintended consequences and letting go of the idea that black and white answers will always work.
The next “letting go” is to abandon the idea that our conscious minds can do it all and invite our unconscious minds to help. Level 3 is “creative thinking.” All of us open ourselves to Level 3 thinking when we dream, stand in the shower, play music, or sit quietly. In the words of Albert Einstein, “…the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
The final level of self-organizing change can work for society as well as for people. Where all of us face and solve the big issues together, using both creativity and reason.
Dealing with Change
Learn how to incorporate the current global and local shifts into a pattern that works for you family. Specific processing about how the group members will deal with the ending of these support and training groups and get their ongoing needs met.
