Speak truth to yourself

Parenting children of trauma is very hard!  My child came home from school yesterday and threw an absolute fit about homework and bashed a hole in their wall.  A spew of negativity started to come out of their mouth directed at me.  It was a hard day pain wise for me and my knee was swollen and I had just had a meltdown that I had to deal with from my kindergartener over after-school snack before I got to this fit over homework from another child and so when the negativity started towards me, it cut me to the core.  I wanted to cry.  I began to pray and I told myself that for every negative thing said to me, I was going to speak the truth outloud.

"You don't even care about me."
...I care about you very much or we wouldn't have adopted you.

"You just want to be mean to me."
...We all have things that we have to do that we don't necessarily like, but homework isn't an option.  It's not me being mean by having you do your homework.

"You're mean and I hate you."
...I love you and God loves me.

"I broke my wall and I don't even care."
...It's going to be ok.

Several things tumbled out that really hurt and the more I tried to talk to my child, the more they screamed over me and refused to listen.  However, I needed to hear the trruth and so I continued to say the truth out loud, but I said it loud enough for me to hear it.  I needed to speak the truth to myself so that I didn't listen to the negative and the lies that my child was just spewing out.  I prayed for my child and I woke up this morning and gave them a hug.  They were excited that they are learning about compliments in social skills and the teachers are giving them compliments and they get to start giving compliments to the teachers.  I told them that it would be nice if they could start giving compliments to family, especially mom and dad and that would be a nice thing to do too.  They said "thank you for giving me a family."  Oh what a change from what came out in the fit of rage.  I needed to hear those words.  I gave them a hug and said thank you as they went out to the bus.  I'm going to make them a little note of thanks and leave it on their pillow with 3 things that I am thankful for them on.  I'm also going to pray that we have a much more peaceful afternoon today!

And as a reminder as parents...when our kids spew negativity to us that cut us to our very core...sometimes we do need to just speak truth to ourselves.  When things calm down, our kids need to have truth spoken to them too.

If you're reading and don't know what Reactive attachment disorder is...you can click on this link on RAD to learn more.

Josiah

This is Josiah.  We got Josiah as a foster baby at the age of 13 months old.  He is our little whirlwind that never stops and he is always keeping us on our toes.  As our first foster placement, I thought he would outgrow a lot of what he did as I just thought that it was a lack of boundaries and nobody had ever told him no or taught him how to play.  This little guy could scale a room like no tomorrow.  We adopted him at age 3 and he is now 9.  He loves art and loves to draw and really has a talent there.  I was trying to find a quick picture of some of his art as he draws in minutes and it looks fantastic.  I'll have to do a post on his art by itself.  So proud of him with it....I just wish sometimes that he would choose to put all the energy that he has into something productive, like his art.

Josiah struggles from reactive attachment disorder (stems not getting his needs met when he was a baby by his birthmom) and has a lot of behavior challenges that stems from that as he does not trust adults to meet his needs.  He tends to get angry very easily and lots of stuff is broken around here, so we are in counseling a lot to work on issues.  It's been very hard at times, but we keep on keeping on and persevering.  We love him and want so very much for him.  He is very bright and I really think he could go far with his art some day.  So much talent!