Traumatized kids know pain. Pain is familiar to them. Pain is comfortable. Pain is recognizable.

I believe this to be one of the reasons that parents of traumatized children will often say that their kids are particularly good at pushing their buttons.

Traumatized kids are hyper-vigilant, observant. When you combine this with their ease at recognizing pain for what it is, it is easy to see how our own traumatized kids can sometimes trigger painful memories for us.

While on guard, observing everything because being aware is a survival skill they learned, these children see that something has hurt you because pain is something they know so well. They crave this familiarity and thus when they find something that succeeds at bringing about that familiar comfort, they will return to it again and again.

Parents of kids with PTSD and/or RAD will tell you that their kids will often trigger their own biggest hurts. The key to being able to react in a calm, therapeutic manner is being able to recognize your own trauma and separate it from that of your child’s.

I have had to face that one of the biggest hurts in my life, a recurring theme if you will, is rejection. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that having a child with RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) has taken that deep wound and pulled it wide open while continually pouring salt in it. When my child used to say things to me like “I hate you.”, “I wish you weren’t my mom.”, “I don’t want to ever see you again.”, it poked at my childhood and young adult wounds of rejection. It was another rejection and it hurt.

It was hard to see beyond my own raw feelings and distance myself from them. It was next to impossible sometimes to not take it personally. It helped me so much to recognize it for what it was…a trigger for what was already a sensitive issue for me.

Once I realized that her words and actions were bringing up my own sensitive feelings, I was able to see her pain and separate it from my own.

In the trauma and attachment program we attend with our daughter, we are often asked whose story is at play at that moment. Is it her past story, her present story, my past story, or my present story? It’s hard to admit that one of the problems might be our own current stress or our own past history, but there is power in recognizing something for what it is and dealing with it in that way. Since being conscious of asking myself which of the four stories is at play (especially on the hard days), I have been more able to be rational and to be the parent that she needs.

Our youngest daughter has severe PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and RAD (reactive attachment disorder). The first time that we met with her new psychiatrist about a month ago, he talked about thinking of RAD as being like an arranged marriage in the sense that neither you or the child chose this circumstance and now you need to learn to love each other. At first, the words landed but didn’t quite hit home for me. I understood that obviously my daughter had not asked to be orphaned or to then be adopted, but I had signed up to adopt and had then later even signed papers indicating that I would adopt HER. I specifically agreed to adopt her after the referral for she and her brother had come to us. I agreed to adopt them. I had seen their pictures. I knew their information (though almost none of what we read, including their ages was accurate) and I agreed to this adoption. Therefore, I did not initially see how this was an arranged marriage on my end.

I also felt a bit defensive at his implication that I would need to learn to love her because of course I already love her. I have to. She is my daughter.

For days after the appointment, his words circulated in my head as I tried to decide how I felt about them and what they meant for me. There was some truth there. I love my daughter and feel bonded to her, but due to the attachment difficulties on her end and what that has looked like in terms of her reaction to that, I have struggled in my attachment to her as well. Initially, I attached to her easily. When her RAD behaviours came to the forefront and she began actively pushing me away, over time, I did begin to find myself less attached to her.

Although I of course still love her, that love has been tested and is not easy and at times, it has been stretched so thin that I could barely hold onto the thread of it. That is hard to say. It is hard to admit and even harder to know that it is the truth.

In regards to the psychiatrist’s statement about RAD being like an arranged marriage, I have come to some conclusions about how that applies to me personally. When I signed up to adopt this child, my daughter, I did not know her history. I did not know of her trauma and the impact that had had on her developing brain. I did not know how my own limits and sanity and patience and marriage and beliefs and parenting would be challenged and rocked to the core because of that. I did not know what lay beneath the surface.

In terms of an arranged marriage, it was as if someone had shown me a picture of a very nice looking young man from a neighbouring village and I had agreed to marry him and then on the day of my wedding, I arrived and was presented with the same man but with his face grotesquely disfigured from an accident. The accident was obviously not his fault and somewhere beneath the scarring, he was still the same man, but it would take time and a lot of work to discover that. That is what living with RAD is like.

The daughter I thought I would have exists underneath another one, one who has been grotesquely disfigured and scarred by trauma and I have to learn to love her and hope that someday I am able to see the girl she really was meant to be. It will be a long process, a hard process. It will be made harder by the fact that this is like an arranged marriage for her too. She never asked for another momma. She didn’t want to be taken from her culture and everything she knew and brought to this new country, this new family. She has a lot of adjusting to do too. She is scared to trust again, to get hurt again.

It will take time. It will take work. But hopefully in the end, this will be a “marriage” that will grow rich and deep and be filled with a love that is based on each of us choosing the other. She will need to decide to choose to love me and I will need to learn to love her all over again…this time through her scars.

We are working on attachment with one of our daughters and I am trying to fit in the suggestions from her therapist but I am also aware that I don’t want to make it seem like work or make her feel even more different from the other kids than she already does. A few weeks ago, the kids were playing with dolls and asked me to show me how to swaddle their dolls. A friend of ours had visited with her newborn the day before and they were curious. I set out to do a swaddling demonstration with ten eyes looking at me intently. Then one of the kids asked if I had swaddled them as a baby and soon more of the kids were asking. Of course, some of my kids weren’t in our family as babies so talks like this can bring out sensitive issues.

I decided to ask one of the kids if they would like me to swaddle them. They eagerly agreed and before long, my living room floor was covered in snugged-up kiddos and swaddled baby dolls and I was sitting in among the “rolls” singing them lullabies!

This “game” lasted for hours and let to me turning out the lights, taking turns rocking them and humming or singing to them. They soaked up the attention and love and for our daughter needing attachment work, it made it a fun and easy exercise that did not single her out.

She is always on high alert, hyper vigilant…watching, waiting, protecting her heart from further hurt. She doesn’t fall asleep at night for hours and hours without the help of medication.

She holds herself stiff, never conforming to my shape, never allowing herself to sink into me when being held. She cannot yet trust. It’s been three years.

We were at the beach. My husband decided to go exploring along the coastline and all of the kids went with him but she held back, looking at them, the happy adventurers and back at me and decided to stay. She hung near me but not too near. I assessed her mood and then invited her to come and lay next to me on the lounge chair. She looked towards the ocean, contemplating. Without a word, she settled next to me, her head resting in the crook of my arms.

I began to stroke her forehead and gently touch her arm and she settled into me more, the full weight of her, holding nothing back. I whispered to her over and over… “You’re safe.” “Mommy has you.” “Mommy’s here.” “Mommy will protect you now.” “It’s okay.” “You can close your eyes if you want.”

AND SHE SLEPT!

The sun beat down on us in the mid-afternoon and she slept. The noise of construction just behind us made me hold my breath in fear that she would wake and she slept. Families laughed and children shouted all around us and she slept. I reached out to grab a white towel to cover her from the sun, careful not to rouse her and she slept. An hour slipped by and she slept. The other kids came back shouting excitedly about the seal they had seen and she slept.

And when she woke, she looked up at me and hugged me tighter and said softly, “I love you mommy”.