Trauma-Informed Parenting Trauma-Informed Parenting

Celebrating with kiddos with trauma histories and neurodiversity looks a lot different than neurotypical celebrations.
When raising kiddos with trauma histories/neurodiversities it is easy to get caught up in meeting physical needs.


In her article “Hopes and Prayers,"  Joyce Maynard describes what happens to many of us.


“We’re so consumed with the feeding, the dressing, the buckling into our car seats, the finding of bathrooms, and the counting of heads,” she says, “that we sometimes forget that there is any greater mission to raising children than making sure the crusts are cut off the sandwiches and that everybody gets a balloon.”


When raising kiddos with trauma histories/neurodiversities, this is especially dangerous.  It is easy to get stuck in the rut of feeding and clothing children and trying to deal with each phobia or medical issues, reading articles on attachment, talking to other parents about what to do, etc..  It becomes exhausting and overwhelming.  All the joy is sucked out of life when there is no celebration. 
Grab a cup of coffee and join me as I share ten tips on how to plan your own family events and practice the habit of celebration!

Kelly Edwards of 90 Minute School Day joins me today to talk about -healing, growth, and resilience in homeschooling.
Kelly shares:
I’m just thrilled to help parents in homeschooling make the transformation that I feel like I stumbled down the mountain and up the mountain and through the woods in the dark to get to myself. That’s really where the 90-Minute School Day came from: coming alongside parents who are either considering homeschooling or have already been homeschooling, make the shift in their homeschool from a top-down approach to being relational with their children as the foundation and going from there.Grab a cup of coffee and listen to this valuable conversation about homeschooling!

Dr. Jerrod Brown returns to the podcast to teach us about "The Gut-Brain Health Axis"
Dr. Jerrod shares -
"This is a topic that I’ve been doing more and more work on over the lasthandful of years. I became interested in this because in most of the cases I’ve consulted on over the years where the client has had a really severe mental health problem or a neurodevelopmental disorder or extensive trauma histories or drug and alcohol problems there’s something going on with the gut that isn’t working properly.As I dug deeper into this topic, a good handful of years ago, there’s a huge connection between digestive health issues and emotional/behavioral problems. That’s that gut-brain health axis." 
Grab a cup of coffee, a notebook, and a pen, and learn with Dr. Jerrod!

Our culture is what directs us on a daily basis. Our adopted/foster kiddos come to us with a culture already intact.

Culture – the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.
Sometimes culture requires you to meet ridiculous standards to fit in and your child feels the shame and guilt for being wrong 😑 or different.
Have you noticed that dysregulation from children is much less tolerated in society? 
Grab a cup of coffee and join me as I dig into how to counteract the culture and finish up with adult attachment styles.

What about being spiritually prepared? Although the emotional and spiritual components are often intertwined, there is an aspect of spiritual preparation that stands alone.

When a Christian decides to become a missionary or start a ministry, training takes place. Often it involves Bible college or leadership training at church. Missionaries study the culture of the people they are going to serve. They learn the language, habits, and customs of the people. Why? Because we understand that no one should ever enter the mission field without being thoroughly prepared.

Most of us entering the adoption/foster care world and/or raising a kiddo with neurodiversity do not receive this type of spiritual training unless we seek it out.
Grab a cup of coffee and join Kathleen as she digs into this topic and shares some answers from a survey on this topic!

A couple of podcast listeners (during a TIP workshop) asked me to share about spirituality and kiddos with trauma histories/neurodiversities. 
Honestly, this is a tough subject because of what we expect. We expect our kiddos to accept our religion of choice when they come home to us through foster care/adoption or have a Capital Letter Syndrome.
If we don’t understand our own foundation and place in the family of God, we aren’t going to be able to share our faith with our children. If you’re a regular listener/reader you’ve heard me say - we must make sense of and peace with our past and we must reframe our beliefs. Sometimes this means reframing our beliefs about our spiritual beliefs.
Grab a cup of coffee and join me for this deep dive into the subject of spirituality and kiddos!