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Adoption

Helping a Child Through Trauma

adult hand holding child's hand. Text reads "Helping a Child Through Trauma"

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Nothing could have prepared me for what it’s been like to parent children with attachment and trauma disorders. Nothing. I took courses, attended seminars, read books, and listened to others who had walked this road before me and yet, I had no idea how hard it would be. No one could have convinced me the extent of the pain it would be to love a child who, through no fault of their own, rejects me daily, even hourly some days.

No one could have prepared my heart for what it would be like to watch my child suffer from debilitating anxiety, flashbacks, regression, nightmares, dissociation, and behavioural issues.

Helping a Child Through TraumaImage Copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo

Where can childhood trauma come from?

There are many factors that go into answering this question because each child is unique and has a different level of resiliency. (If you want to read something that will make your brain hurt, try reading up on the research about resiliency!) This means that for one child, a parent’s divorce can lead to long-lasting trauma symptoms while other children, even ones in the same family emerge from the same situation without any signs of lasting issues.

Common causes for childhood trauma include:

  • long hospitalizations or painful medical procedures
  • prenatal stress
  • prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol
  • separation from a parent due to adoption, death or divorce
  • abandonment
  • abuse
  • witnessing abuse
  • witnessing a trauma or a death
  • being involved in an event such as a major car accident or natural disaster

For hope and practical help, sign up for our special series, Little Heart, Big Worries.

As a mom raising several traumatized children, here are some discoveries that have been essential in helping them and the rest of our family to navigate this journey:

It’s not about you.

It can be so hard not to take things personally, particularly when you are the target of the child’s anger. They may tell you multiple times a day how much they hate you and hurl insults directed at you almost from morning until night, but it is not you that they hate.

It is their situation, their feelings, their shame, their anger, their past, their trauma. I know how hard it is not to take it personally. Some days, my humanness gets the better of me and I take it to heart. When that happens, I either fall apart emotionally or I respond to the comments thrown at me (even though I know that it just escalates things). Neither of these responses helps the situation and I do know that, but it is impossible not to be affected by it.

My advice on this is to have people around you in your support system who can remind you that this is not about you and who can give you breaks.

Take care of you.

You need time to recharge. Parenting a child with trauma issues is an exhausting 24/7 job. I recently read something that said that parenting a child with trauma was the equivalent of parenting 3 children. I don’t even want to do the math on what that means for me!

I’m sure you know about the analogy of the oxygen mask on an airplane and how that applies to parenting, but with parenting children with any type of special needs, that analogy holds even more true. You simply cannot care for your child’s needs if you are not meeting your own.

I’ve written a whole (short) book about the importance of self-care and what that actually looks like, but I am really bad at taking my own advice. I seem to go in spurts of getting better and then slipping back into old patterns again. I’m working on it!

How old are they right now?

One of the programs we did with both our son and our daughter taught us this trick and it has served us so well. When kids have an early childhood trauma, they can become stuck at that age or revert to that age when under stress or when they encounter a trigger.

With a neuro-typical child, if they were acting like a two year old when they were actually seven, you would likely expect them to act their age. That kind of thinking can be harmful when parenting traumatized children because they truly are two years old in that moment and if you respond to them as if they are seven, you will not be meeting their needs.

I have trained myself to ask myself often during the day, “how old is he/she right now?”. Once I determine the answer, it is much easier to react because I think about how I would react to an infant or toddler or four-year-old in that circumstance and act accordingly.

Just as an added note: it is not helpful to say things like, “you are acting like a two year old”, so resist the urge!

Where are they right now?

This is another technique that I learned from that same trauma/attachment program. You train yourself that when your child is acting out to ask yourself “where are they in their story right now?”

Your child may be in your kitchen having a tantrum about what seems to be their big sister not including them, but they may actually be back re-living the day they were brought to the orphanage and that feeling of rejection that this has brought back up for them. Or your child may be unresponsive when you are talking to them because a noise they just heard put them right back into a room where years ago they were abused.

This is another skill that actually gets easier the more you practice it. It isn’t intuitive at first but it starts to make sense after awhile. You will become better at reading your child’s responses and responding to them with compassion. They will start to feel understood.

This journey of parenting a child who has had childhood trauma is most certainly a journey of a thousand (or perhaps a million) baby steps. Understanding where they are in their story in the moment and how old they are in that same moment are two keys that help you start taking those steps.

Get to know their triggers.

For a child who has experienced some kind of trauma or abuse, triggers are everywhere. It may be a sound, a smell, something they see or touch, or even a taste. This trigger can send them right back into their trauma. I suggest that you keep a journal where you jot down anything you notice before your child dissociates or tantrums. This will help you discover with them what set them off and help both of you better prepare in the future.

It is impossible to avoid all triggers as there can always be something unexpected waiting around the next corner, but being aware of what those triggers are is half the battle.

If you know that a particular trigger is coming up, you can talk about it with your child and help them to prepare. Talk about strategies that they can use to get themselves through and stay calm and in the present. Often, just talking about it and preparing ahead of time is enough to get them through.

Create an Anti-Anxiety Kit for Your Child including free printable relaxation promptsAnother type of trigger is what people often refer to as traumaversaries. There are times of the year that can be a trigger for your child depending on what time of the year it was when their trauma occurred. This can be something dependent on the season, month or holiday.

Lots of parents remark how incredible it is that every year when a certain month comes around, their child is triggered but they were too young at the time of their trauma to even know what month it is. The body is an incredible thing and it stores that information even though the child may not be consciously aware of it. Sometimes, just bringing it to your child’s attention can be enough to lessen the effects.

Saying something like, “did you know that it was around this time of the year that you were hospitalized with that infection and almost died? That must have been such a scary time for you. Would you like to talk about that?” can really de-escalate the behaviours the child is demonstrating at that time of the year.

Teaching emotions.

It’s important for all kids to learn the vocabulary they need to express their emotions, but it is even more important for kids with trauma backgrounds. I do a lot of teaching with my kids around this topic and try to keep it light and fun so that their brains are more able to absorb the information. I use a variety of different resources to accomplish this.

Cognitive function.

Trauma affects the brain’s ability to learn. It changes brain function and actually forges tracks in the brain based on trauma responses. Traumatized children are often forced to function in the lower part of their brain for survival.

Higher level brain function is necessary for much of what we expect children to do at home and at school and someday at work, so helping them access that top level of their brains is important. When they are triggered and experiencing a trauma response, it is all but impossible for them to access that part of their brains which is why it is so important to teach them skills for calming themselves.

This is a huge topic that deserves an article of its own, so this is just a very quick run-down but here are a few things you can do to help your child with this:

  • apply strategies to reduce cognitive load
  • exercise
  • water (hydration is more important for trauma kids)
  • calm-down techniques
  • meet their sensory needs
  • crossing midline exercises to get both sides of the brain communicating with each other
  • adequate sleep

Get Professional Help.

You cannot do this alone. You will likely need to enlist the help of a team of professionals. This team may include an occupational therapist, teachers and aids in school, community aid worker, counsellor, and psychologist and/or psychiatrist.

Admitting that you need help is not admitting failure. It is being willing to do what is best for your child. You cannot be an expert in everything but as a loving parent, you can seek out those who are experts in the areas your child most needs help.

Sometimes, you may even need to consider medication. Making the choice to medicate your child is not an easy one but this may be an important piece in their road towards healing for some families.

Research and implement TBRI.

We went down a lot of different roads in trying to find help for our kids affected by early trauma. Some roads led to glimmers of hope or a bit of success, but none had lasting effects until we found TBRI (Trust Based Relational Intervention). TBRI is based on the theory that what is harmed in relationships can only be healed in relationships. It is heavily researched both in terms of brain science and in practical implementation.

My husband and I flew to Minnesota to attend a weekend conference called Empowered to Connect where we heard speakers including Dr. Karyn Purvis. We bought the TBRI DVDs and spent many hours in our living room doing what we called “going to University” together. We read the book The Connected Child written by Karyn Purvis and attended another conference in Alberta, Canada where there were speakers versed in TBRI who spoke as well as Deborah Gray, author of Attaching in Adoption.

We began to implement the TBRI principles in our home and saw immediate results with some of our kids. We were so encouraged by what we saw that we decided to plan our own week-long therapy camp at home for five of our kids based on TBRI. The difference in our home and in our kids (and in our parenting) after just five days was remarkable. It has given us new hope that there really is a chance for lasting healing for our kids.

To learn more about TBRI, visit TCU and Empowered to Connect and watch these very short videos that answer common questions adoptive parents ask. (Note: TBRI was largely designed for foster or adoptive families but is effective with any child who has experienced trauma.)

Measure success in small increments.

The war is won in tiny, almost imperceptible battles that happen many times a day. It is exhausting. It can feel like you are not getting anywhere. It can be hard to see progress.

Be sure to look far back once in awhile to see how far you have really come. Sometimes, it can be a case of one step forward, two steps back, but celebrate the small victories when they come. You will be more encouraged and have the stamina to continue this long journey if you are sure to focus on the successes rather than the setbacks.

Community.

It is so important when you are parenting kids who have been through early childhood trauma to find support with other parents who have been there are truly “get it”. Find other families who can truly understand and offer support and connection in the way no one else can.

Remember this:

“They’re not giving you a hard time. They’re having a hard time.”

Recommended reading:

Books by Bruce Perry

Books by Daniel A. Hughes

The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis

Parenting the Hurt Child by Gregory Keck

Books by Dr. Dan Siegel

Hold Onto Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld

Healing Parents: Helping Wounded Children Learn to Trust and Love by Michael Orlans (I haven’t personally read this one so can’t vouch for it, but came across it and thought it might be good)

Join me for a free 5 part email series, Little Hearts, Big Worries offering resources and hope for parents.

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Filed Under: Adoption, Special Needs Parenting

Support for Homeschooling Adopted Children

By Sharla Kostelyk

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I started homeschooling before adoption became a focus in our lives. When our oldest bio. son was ready for school, the school that I had been planning to send him had a three year waiting list. I reasoned that since Kindergarten was not mandatory in our province, I would homeschool him for the year while I researched other schooling options for him. Somewhere in the course of that year, schooling options were forgotten in all the fun of homeschooling! When our next son began his schooling journey a few years later, homeschooling was an easy choice.

I had been homeschooling for seven years before our adopted children were old enough to start their school adventures. By then, I saw a lot of benefits to homeschooling them, (more so even than homeschooling my bio. kids) because of their special needs and in order to further work on attachment. It wasn’t really a sit-down, muddle-through kind of decision, but one that I fell into naturally. Over the years, I have discovered many additional challenges that have come along with homeschooling my younger five kids. There have been times where I have gotten through just by the tips of my fingernails, barely able to hold on.

Homeschooling Adopted Children Support Group

Homeschooling adopted children comes with its own unique blessings and challenges. One example of something that can present a challenge to homeschooling is that there are several special needs that are more prevalent among adopted children. Another is the quandary of perhaps needing to send a particular child to public or private school for a season to give the homeschooling parent (usually the mom) a much needed break or to access special services that are available within the school system.

Trying to navigate the waters of indecision or guilt alone is not a journey that anyone should have to sail alone. It is for that reason that I started the Facebook group Homeschooling Adopted Children. I began the group as an online support system, a place for people to go where they feel safe to share their frustrations, ask questions and celebrate with each other the small victories along the way.

I also started the group because I have been writing a book on Homeschooling Adopted Children for over two years now which I was hoping would be a help to people but it is taking me longer to finish it than I was hoping for so I wanted to find a way to help people in the meantime. And to be perfectly honest, I am as much in need of this type of support group as anyone else!

There is something about connection, about finding out that you aren’t alone that brings a sense of belonging and that awesome feeling of “me too!”. If you have adopted, are adopting and are homeschooling or considering homeschooling or even have homeschooled, please come and join us. You will be welcomed with open arms!

Homeschooling Adopted Children

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Filed Under: Adoption, Homeschooling

Orphans No More

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Four years ago today, we brought home our son and daughter from Ethiopia. This marks the day they were welcomed by a new family and began a new chapter of their lives.

Orphans No More - Reflections on our 4 year anniversary as a forever family

Orphaned no more, but that day was only the beginning…

This video shows the turn of events that led to that day that we brought our kids home more than five months sooner than we expected to and were greeted at the airport by the sight of many familiar faces of the friends and family who had helped pray our kids home (and by the unfamiliar glare of news cameras)…

For those who are not familiar with our story, our adoption agency had gone bankrupt, stranding two of our kids in Ethiopia in an orphanage that was running out of food. We thought that getting them home to Canada would be the hardest part of the story, but the four years since their homecoming have brought new challenges and been far more difficult than we could have predicted. Those years have also brought tremendous growth and blessing.

Sometimes I am still in awe of adoption and how these children who were in an orphanage without a family are now in my home, surrounded by love. I have the privilege of tucking them in at night, of hearing them giggle and sing, of watching them grow. It is an incredible thing. There are moments when I am still blown away by it all.

But adoption is also complex and not always just about love and beauty. Yes, my children are no longer orphans, but they carry a loss with them that is greater than most of us can ever imagine. Before they came to have a family, they first had to lose a family, a country, a home. It is unfathomable.

My heart rejoices that they are home but breaks that they are also not home. That type of contradiction in emotions has become commonplace as we all navigate a situation that is complex and yet, at its core, as simple as children needing a home now having a family.

The love of two families and the love of God surrounds our precious children and we hope that someday, it will all be enough. Today, we continue to pray for healing in our children’s hearts, we grieve all that they have lost and for all that they have suffered, and we rejoice that we are forever a family.

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Filed Under: Adoption

RAD is like an Arranged Marriage

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Our youngest daughter has severe PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and RAD (reactive attachment disorder). RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) is like an arranged marriage #adoption #RAD #attachmentThe 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 nor 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 feeling less attached to her.

Although I of course still love her, that love has been tested and is not easy. At times, it has been stretched so thin that I could barely hold onto the thread of it.

That is hard to say. It’s 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 it 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 mama. 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.

Update: I wrote this years ago when things were still quite raw. We were in the muck of daily behaviours due to RAD and it was hard at that time to see the light. It was interesting today to read back through this. I could recognize the despair I felt at the time, but at the same time, I can see so much hope interspersed between the words I shared. A lot has changed since then. To read an update on how our RAD journey with our daughter is progressing, read this.

If you’re looking for information about Reactive Attachment Disorder:

What I Wish You Knew About Parenting a Child with RAD What I Wish You Knew About being a parent to a child who has RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder)Recognizing the Signs of Reactive Attachment Disorder Recognizing the Signs of Reactive Attachment Disorder

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Filed Under: Adoption

My ETAAM 2013 Experience

By Sharla Kostelyk

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ETAAM (usually just referred to by its location in Orlando) is a retreat for moms parenting children with early trauma or attachment issues. I first heard about it on a blog and decided to apply to go to try to recharge my batteries and learn skills that I could apply in our family.

For almost a year, I looked forward to going and in the very, very darkest days that were defined by parenting a child with RAD and PTSD, I clung to the thought that Orlando was coming up and would give me what I needed to be able to cope.

The thing I was most nervous about prior to Orlando wasn’t the fact that I didn’t know anyone there or even that I was traveling alone. It was having to come back home afterwards to a life that is admittedly challenging at present without “Orlando” to look forward to.

And then something unexpected happened. Back in January, I decided to go on the spur of the moment to BEECH Retreat, a blogging conference ironically also in Florida. The people I met at BEECH did not share the commonality of raising trauma kids and the conference had nothing official to do with parenting and yet, I left there feeling confident, refreshed and excited about implementing information I had gleaned not only about blogging but about parenting and about appreciating my family.

BEECH was actually such an incredible experience for me that I became nervous that ETAAM would be knocked off the pedestal I had placed it on and shatter into thousands of pieces.

Truthfully, in some ways, it was knocked off that pedestal and really that was a good thing. Once my expectations were shattered and broken that first day, it gave me the opportunity to build them into something better.

ETAAM is one of those things that is hard to describe. One of the girls in our house put it well when she said, “This is not just an experience, this is a movement!”

“Orlando” can be whatever each person needs it to be whether that means sleeping and relaxing or attending classes and learning from others.

For this time, I needed it to be about building relationships and knowing that I am not alone in this isolating world of childhood PTSD and RAD. And that is exactly what I got!

My housemates were incredible and I go away feeling richly blessed by that. There were others too who gifted me this weekend in sharing openly and I treasure those individual conversations.

There were some fun bits too! I got a henna tattoo (some of the ladies got real ones), ran a 5 K thanks entirely to my friend Audrey who stayed with me and encouraged me the whole way, tried and failed to successfully hula hoop, participated in a fun gift exchange, went to a lovely fancy dinner, drank girly drinks by the pool, and laughed until I cried!

The Husband didn’t fall for me telling him that I was going to get a real tattoo:

Of course I’m biased but I really believe our house was the best house and the simple truth is, it was…for me. It was the perfect fit for me. I left Orlando feeling a connection to each of the women in my house. I found a very powerful thing in Orlando. I am no longer alone.

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Filed Under: Adoption

Answering the Rude Questions

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Following yesterday’s post about when your family is a walking ad for a certain type of non-traditional role, I received a lot of comments both on the blog, on Facebook and via e-mail. The main issue people raised was not knowing how to handle when strangers ask rude questions. I can only speak for myself and how I have chosen to handle that situation. I can also speak to what I have found to be the most effective method over the years of trial and error in this regard.

I want to first clarify that I am not speaking about the usual curious questions that families that stand out get when in public. These techniques are for using only when the questions or comments are rude and spoken in a tone that conveys that rudeness.

There are three main ways that I think these scenarios can be handled…by being blunt, by being honest or by being cheesy. I will give several examples of each of these in real world scenarios to give you a good foundation on how they work and then I will tell you which one I have found to be by far the most effective.

“How much did she cost?”

Blunt – “I’m sorry about the look on my face but I am honestly shocked that you would speak about my daughter as though she were a piece of furniture!”

Honest – “There is no price tag on human beings. If you are asking how much her adoption cost because adoption is something you are considering, I would be happy to give you the phone number of our adoption agency.”

Cheesy – “Like all of my children, she is priceless!”

“Where is her real mom?”

Blunt – “Her real mom is standing right in front of you.”

Honest – “It is generally accepted to use words such as ‘biological’ or ‘first parent’ when referring to what I assume you are referring to, however I am about as real as it gets!”

Cheesy – “I am so proud to be her real mom. Aren’t I blessed?!”

“How do you handle being with them all day? If I had to homeschool, I think I’d kill myself.” (yes, all of these are honestly questions I have fielded over the years!)

Blunt – “If I had to homeschool your kids, I’d feel the same way!” (ok, I’m kidding! I would NEVER actually say that!)

Honest – “There are certainly days when it is a challenge but I rely on God for my patience when I get to the end of myself and He hasn’t let me down yet.”

Cheesy – “Their childhoods goes by so quickly and I don’t want to miss a moment!”

“My kids knew better at that age.” (in reference to my then-9 year old tantrumming)

Blunt – “Congratulations on raising your neurotypical kids well!” (I probably couldn’t say that with a straight face.)

Honest – “Some special needs are invisible and compassion goes a long way.”

Cheesy – “It has been both a challenge and a privilege to raise a child with special needs but I wouldn’t trade him for the world!”

I previously wrote more on some of the real world questions we have encountered that are so strange they just boggle my mind and on how I chose to respond to them.

Another way that works to some degree is to speak in generalities like in the case where someone asks:

“Were they orphaned?”

Generalities – “Children come to adoption for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include poverty, their first family being unable to care for them due to illness, the death of one or both parents, war or famine, or a first parent making an adoption plan for their child.”

“Why don’t you just have your own children?”

Generalities – “People choose adoption for a variety of reasons. These reasons may include infertility, secondary infertility, feeling called to adopt, or wanting to provide a home for one of the more than 147 million orphans in the world.”

The benefit of generalities is that it allows you to answer the question without divulging any of your child’s personal story. The negative of generalities is that when using this technique, the answer is usually followed by many more questions.

The most important thing to keep in mind when answering any question:

The stranger standing in front of you will be in your life for a few minutes. Your kids who are within earshot of the conversation will be in your life forever. I tailor every answer so  that it builds my kids up and lets them know that I love them, am proud of them and would do it again (adopt them, birth them, homeschool them) in a heartbeat!

The most effective way to end the conversation but keep your kids’ hearts intact:

By far the single most effective way to shut down conversations that are making you uncomfortable is to use either the cheesy technique or to bring God into it because who can argue with God? An example would be:

“Why would anyone choose to have this many children?”

God – “God called me to this and I’m so glad He did. It has been a challenge but such an incredible blessing!”

(Do you see how I combined giving God the glory and the cheesy technique?!)

By using the cheesy technique, you are able to stop the conversation before it starts while at the same time reinforcing to your kids that they are a blessing.

Keep the conversation going in the car.

After a rude encounter with a stranger, I feel that it is important to acknowledge it with your kids afterwards to see if it brought up any feelings in them that they need to discuss. You may choose to say something such as, “you know when that woman in the store asked me why you were brown, how did that make you feel?” It’s also appropriate after they have shared your feelings to share your own feelings about the situation too in an age-appropriate way that keeps the child’s dignity intact. You can also turn it into a learning experience by discussing what sorts of questions are and are not appropriate to ask of strangers.

Join me for a free 5 part email series, Little Hearts, Big Worries offering resources and hope for parents.

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Filed Under: Adoption, Homeschooling, Special Needs Parenting

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