Anger

Anger and frustration aimed at the wrong people.

How do you teach traumatised children not to hurt themselves or other children?

This question I have been asking for the last few years and I still do not know the answer and I don’t think I ever will!

I have done lots of research and training over the years, read every book on trauma informed parenting and tried to understand that it is all goes back to their early years trauma and how to navigate all those feelings with children who do not want to remember or talk about their past experiences.

How do we help them understand and work through their trauma when they don’t want to as they know it will be scary to go back to that place in their heads. Doctors, social workers, teachers all trying to support the family and keep it together while the foster family are dealing with the fallout of it all seven days a week and sometimes 24 hours a day if it’s a particularly bad time of the year which is usually birthdays, Christmas or any other celebration day.

There are daily fights where someone always ends up hurt and/or lying to protect their biological sibling while their foster siblings get overlooked and hurt! How do we break the cycle?

This is extremely hard to navigate, how do you balance their frustration and anger with another child crying because they have been pushed, hurt or their favourite toy smashed up again. Time in or time out? Try natural consequences which usually result in more broken items or screaming and shouting for hours on end because they are so overwhelmed with their feelings that they can’t understand it’s wrong to hurt someone or break their toys.

This anger usually follows on from an important meeting or a social work visit where biological parents have been mentioned or discussed or an incident at school where they have been in trouble with their teacher and they can’t cope, the fear of rejection or violence is too much for their brain to cope with and they go in to the zone that they think they don’t deserve to be loved or happy or it’s their fault they are in the care system.

Life is hard for our children and the families that love and care for them, they want nothing more than to include them in their family life and give them the childhood they deserve without the burden of their past sabotaging their future. It’s a path that no child should ever have to walk down but there is light at the end of the tunnel, small achievements are big successes for our kids.

One day the anger will be gone or managed effectively that people will not need to know their history in order to understand their behaviour as the coping strategies will work and our children will be able to understand it’s ok to be loved, it’s ok to be happy without feeling guilty, angry or that they don’t deserve the life they now have because they absolutely do deserve the life they have now and that they will always have someone in their corner supporting and guiding them through childhood into adulthood.