Parenting Class, Week 5: Behaviors, Grief

Hi friends!

I loved the class last night. It was all about behaviors, traumas, and managing behaviors. We went over the meanings and reasons behind certain behaviors and several questions to ask ourselves as parents of these traumatized children.

Is this a growth or developmental stage?
Is this an individual or temperament difference?
Is the environment causing these behaviors?
Does the child know your expectations?
Is the child expressing unmet emotional needs?

Patience and repeating the message over and over again are necessary.
Validations and acknowledgements are so critical.
Most children in care are developmentally delayed.

Seriously, our child is going to be so bored at our house. We have nothing fun to do here and no kids in the area that we know. We really do need to find some friends with teens for him or her to hang out with.

The first bonding a child does after meeting the family is with the family pet more often than not. A pet does not judge and will love unconditionally. The teachers actually encouraged us to get a family pet and adopt it with the child. Um, no.. Not right now, thanks. Lola is enough of a handful.

We also discussed grief. Children (well, everyone) don’t follow the stages of grief in order and can easily be triggered and revisit the stages at any time. While in the grieving process, emotional outbursts, withdrawal, aggression, and attention seeking behaviors are all super common. Also, kids have very little if any control over their brains while grieving. Their actions are usually not premeditated and are impulsive/ “emotionally hijacked.”

Another thing I’ve thought about a lot was confirmed – kids can either be in the “honeymoon” phase upon move in or be  super problematic. Either there’s smooth sailing and everything is peaceful, or the kid acts out and is horribly behaved. Expectations are often that they will be sent back or kicked out. aka… HORRIBLE! They said to absolutely not give up at all. At. All.

Behaviors – there’s both positive and negative attention with behaviors. Literally we were told to IGNORE negative behaviors as long as they didn’t injure themselves, another person, or destroy property. Um, what? We really have to come up with a good system for consequences and behaviors. With a teenager, ignoring bad behaviors might not go over as well as with a little one. The thought process was they would eventually give up the negative behaviors and that paying attention to positive behaviors would strengthen them. Basically praise positive and ignore negative. Maybe… we’ll see. Again, teenager.

This afternoon we scoured the Florida photo listings of kids 10-16 and picked out a few that we want more information about. They were pretty much all 14-15. We still have no preference of boy or girl at this point. It’s going to really depend on the child.

 

I don’t know who is reading my blog lately, but there have been some major spikes in traffic and I love you all! Please drop a comment here or on my FB page. <3

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