I just finished reading this book by Katharine Leslie,and all I can say is WOW!

One of the cool things about Katharine is that she’s a parent in addition to being a therapist. Actually, my favorite therapists all parent traumatized kids. Not to say you can’t be a good therapist if you haven’t parented a traumatized kid, but it sure does give them an additional insight into our lives.

Back to my point. This book is incredible. Katharine is writing about the parent/child relationship, or in many cases, the lack thereof. There are several key points that I’d like to touch on, but encourage you to read the entire book yourself. This “review” can’t possibly do it justice.

Katharine talks a lot about brain development and trauma, and puts it in words that the average person can understand. My favorite analogy was that of “wet cement”. She says that trauma to a child is like writing in wet cement. We will hopefully have the foundation for our garage poured this week, and I intend to do just that. It will leave a permanent mark that our family was here. Our kids’ trauma is the same way. The trauma leaves a permanent mark on their brains. It can’t be erased, and even if you can pour new concrete over, what was written is still there. You can chip away at the mark, but that leaves a mark of its own. And so it is with our kids. The trauma is part of them.

She also talks about reciprocal relationships and having give and take. We plop foster kids into families and expect them to “get it” and give back to us. Well, how are they going to do that? They didn’t have a normal family life modeled for them. In a best case scenario, they would go to somewhere where they can learn how to “do family” and give something back to the people they live with before actually joining a family. That is fantasy land, and we live in reality, and she acknowledges that.

Along those lines, she poses a question. Is it easier to parent a kid who has a few negative behaviors but doesn’t give anything back to the family, or is it easier to parent a kid with many negative behaviors who does give back? My answer is the latter. I have two different types of kids. Sammy has many negative behaviors and doesn’t give back, and boy is it stressful. Hannah has a few negative behaviors and gives back tons. I’m at opposite ends of the spectrum. However, getting something back from Hannah gives me incentive to go through the bad times with her because I know there’s light at the end of the tunnel. With Sammy, I feel like I’m sinking in quicksand and there’s no life saving device anywhere.

The last concept I want to cover is coaching, but I’m going to do that in my next blog, because it’s a little bit more complicated. Stay tuned. It’s good stuff.

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