….and decided to be a learner instead. 
Many people encouraged us that our kiddos’ behavior would settle down around the adoption/after the adoption from the comfort that will come from having a forever home. Throughout the past couple of weeks, WonderBOY’s behavior has done just that. He is using his words, calming down on his own, and showing increasing levels of affection towards us as his caregivers. With many comparisons between the two, we got WB much younger in his trauma and his brain was so much more READY to receive love and re-wiring and we are so proud of the work that he has done with regards to his own regulation of his body and emotions. He has responded amazingly well to Trust-Based Relational Intervention approaches introduced to us by some of our foster/adoptive parents tribe.
WonderGIRL on the other hand came to us with such severe trauma and brain disregulation – we have truly been on a rollercoaster ride on how to parent her and how to retrain her brain with regards to behavior choices, learning cause and effect, and being at the mercy of her severe deficits in working memory. Her lying behaviors in particular seem to trigger my own insecurities around parenting – thus making a negative environment both for her and I during these daily hourly battles.
After a few bouts of grounding as an experimental consequence, Scott and I realized that we were essentially grounding ourselves during this time with NO behavior change from her. We even pulled her in to tell her that while we were not giving up on HER, we were giving up on trying to punish her for her behavior. We would try a new approach….
As many current parents do in times of struggle – I went straight to Amazon to see if I could find some resources that were direct and to the point about a new approach we could try. After devouring the first book in 2 days, I HIGHLY recommend these titles to any parents of kids with trauma struggling with symptoms most often referred to from a Reactive Attachment Disorder lens. Forbes and Post take traditional approaches and views and contrast them with their own suggestions that come from treating all behaviors as fear-based behaviors in a very real and easy-to-implement way that I love and want to pass along to anyone that may benefit.
I love this quote that if nothing else, gave me permission to prioritize love over expectations and relationship over right vs. wrong….something I felt in my heart but was having a much harder time implementing in real-time:
“Love-based parenting elevates the importance of the relationship to the highest position. No homework assignment, no chore, and no social etiquette is ever more important than than the parent-child relationship. Maintaining connectedness and attunement, thereby sustaining the balance of love of self and love of child, is the primal outcome of every interaction the parent has with the child. When this is achieved, the other less significant items will take care of themselves.”
My next step includes reading the same author’s take on how we can help and support these children within the school setting….what a great win-win for me when I can apply similar philosophies at both home and work!