Helping Your Fostered and Adopted Kids Avoid Severe Behavior
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by: SandraNardoni
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My children need time with me frequently. As I parent my three kids, my adopted children are obviously more needy in this area in particular. If I am not intentional about looking in on them regularly while they play, they start to argue, bully, and throw tantrums because they feel disregulated. My oldest son needs time from me too, but his response when he doesn't get what he needs is usually to tell me he wants more time with me. My adopted children can't always verbalize things like that.
More isn't necessarily better but many people think that it is. The trouble with this view is that more toys, more activities, more TV, can never replace the most valuable thing you have to offer your children--yourself. When the schedule piles on and I can't escape the busyness, I make it a point to spend a bit of one on one time with each of my children. When I don't, the result is misbehaving kids who are extremely disregulated. Keeping our schedule clear is a priority in our family unless an activity is of long term importance or we have a child who is highly interested in a particular activity or is gifted in an area that could be beneficial to him. For instance, one of our sons loves sports and we make sure he gets to pick a sport to play once a year. Things like piano lessons and home school co-op are regular parts of our schedule as well.
Because I teach my children at home, they get one on one time with me by default because of school work. In spite of this, there are days that we get so caught up in keeping up with everything that I have to stop to pay special attention to a little one who has gotten lost in the shuffle. For a child who has been neglected, this lost feeling makes them go into survival mode.
How do you feel when you are in survival mode? I know for me, when I get stressed out guess what, I'm irritable, mouthy, and I feel like being aggressive. Sound familiar? If we feel out of sorts as adults, imagine how our formerly neglected and abused children feel when they are tired or hungry, or just haven't gotten enough of mommy.
My adopted son, Gabriel kicked into survival mode this week after a morning that was off-routine and included a beloved pet's death. I knew the death of our goat (we live on a farm) had upset him but he wasn't acknowedging it and hadn't cried or otherwise expressed his sorrow. Loss is a double whammy for children so accustomed to losing. In some ways, they get used to it, but in other ways, the pain cuts deeper.
Right after the goat died, our friends showed up to play. This was a planned event but Gabriel was already on the verge of a tantrum and our friends arriving pushed him over the edge. Immediately, my son was bullying, calling names, and generally causing an uproar. When I asked him to come in the house he refused at first but eventually I got him to come in. When I set the timer for 20 minutes and told him he needed to stay close to me during that time, he went ballistic and started throwing things that he could reach nearby. He doesn't throw things hard, just tosses them like he's toying with really hurting something. He also started talking like a baby.
We learned early in this journey that stress causes regression. Baby talk and acting as if he is two or three years old is very common when Gabriel gets overwhelmed. He was three years old when he was removed from his biological mother's home and placed in a foster home and that is the age he returns to in his mind when he is stressed out.
So, I knew what I had to do and when he had quieted down, I asked him to choose a game and we would play together. As we played he slowly returned to his physical age (eight years old) and began to speak and act normally again.
It challenges most people to watch how I responded and not believe that I rewarded Gabriel for poor behavior. Before I adopted, I would have said the same thing. Now, however, I understand that when my child becomes unmanagable and out of control, it is my job to meet him where he is and devote some extra time with him.
If we, as adoptive and foster parents, do not intentionally reach out to our children with understanding, sacrificing our own comfort at times to meet them where they are, we have great potential of losing them. Children who have suffered loss as great as they have need us to pursue them in every way that we can.
About the Author
Sandra Nardoni is the mother of three children, two of whom are adopted from the foster care system. If you are interested in adopting a child, click on one of the links in this resource box to receive a free mini-course on navigating the foster care system. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service
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