In my previous blog, I posted the “story” that Sammy wrote about his life with attachment disorder.

There were some positive things in it. The fact that he acknowledged his current situation of being in trouble with the law and being in a treatment foster home is about as close as we get to him taking responsibility for his actions.

It is also the first time that he has put into the words the fact that he doesn’t trust people. He has never verbalized that before, even though we knew it.

It also shows how prominent the trauma is in his life. We discussed the fact that he summed up his entire life in two and a half pages, and his life between the time he was removed from his birth mother and the time his grandfather passed away did not receive any mention. It is the largest part of his life, and some would say the most positive part of his life. He wrote only about his trauma.

His grandfather’s passing is a big sticking point for him. I knew that, but I didn’t realize how much. He is angry with his grandmother for not telling us that his grandfather was ill, and quite frankly, so am I. Had I known, Sammy certainly would have been given the opportunity to say goodbye. It wasn’t possible for him to attend the funeral since it happened just after his being admitted to his first residential placement.

The biggest revelation, and the longest part of our discussion, was over the incident where he describes being hurt with the belt by his birth mother. He said he was about two or three when this happened, but obviously, it had a huge impact on him. Why this event over all the other abuse? I have no idea.

However, it was such a huge trauma for him, that he has confused it with another event. All through our time in attachment therapy, Sammy has sworn that I did this to Kory. I KNOW that this event did not happen in my house, but in Sammy’s mind it did. Our therapist was wonderful and understood what was happening. Sammy’s mind has confused two traumatic events. The physical trauma which took place at the hands of his birth mother and the trauma of losing Kory as his brother. The way I explained this to Sammy was taking two colors of Play Doh and mixing them together. You have all little pieces of both colors, and you can’t tell where one starts and the other begins. His memories are like this.

The last thing we discussed was Sammy’s feeling of responsibility for the abuse that happened to him. He feels that he should have been able to protect himself from his birth mother. We discussed how children of that age are not capable of protecting themselves and that what parents are supposed to do. He said that he feels “stupid” for not stopping the abuse. This is such a difficult concept for me because I have never felt it. I know who is responsible for my abuse, and it wasn’t me. I hope some day my son will feel the same way.

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