Stahlke Adoption

An Aside, Continued Again

Our church youth director, who follows my blog, saw my post on April 13 about frantic over-activity as a defense mechanism for traumatized children. I received the following responses from her via Email, which she gave me permission to quote:

4/14/10, 10:20

Mary:
I just read the last few entries in your blog. I had images of Adam at his first Youth Quake and Rachel at their confirmation retreat in 6th grade. Both of them exhibit the frantic over-activity you described. The behavior seemed to escalate to out of control when we tried to discipline them.

I'm thinking ahead to the retreat in August. Do you think that Sarah may have a similar reaction to this new and very stimulating situation? If so, maybe we can work on both ways to help her prepare and also ideas for the adults to help her cope if she does have an adverse reaction to the new experience.

Judy
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4/14/10, 13:58

Mary:
Yes - certainly [feel free to] quote [me]. I'll keep reading the blog and maybe when I find some time, reading the whole [Deborah Gray] book would be helpful just in life in general.

Whenever we would visit Lutherbrook [Child and Adolescent Center], I was so interested by the methods they used to manage the children. I always thought it would be nice if someone would teach us parents some of these things so that we could be more effective. We just make it up as we go along or try to read a few books, but some hands-on training would have been so helpful. Maybe some of those kids wouldn't even be there if their parents had been shown.

Interesting stuff.

Judy

posted by Stahlkes @ 4:30 PM