20 THINGS ADOPTION PODCAST with Sherrie Eldridge
However, many times, the adopted child pushes love away. This can be because of RAD and the trauma that keeps hijacking the child’s brain.
Some children don’t exhibit pushback behavior until their teen years or when they are searching for their biological roots.
Adoptive parents must prepare themselves for this possibility by hearing the stories of other parents. They will realize:
1. They are not alone.
2. The pushback isn’t proof of ineffective parenting.
3. Their child can heal.
20 THINGS ADOPTION PODCAST with Sherrie Eldridge
Dafna Lender LCSW, Describes Adoptee Loss
Teen and adult adoptees will be encouraged by such a gifted therapist as Dafna Lender LCSW. Dafna shares initially how her upbringing challenged her to be a voice for those that have no voice. Hearing her validation of the adoptee loss is moving and will bless the heart of every adoptee that listens.
Additionally, Lender addresses the need of adoptive and foster parents to know what will help them address control issues, such as procrastination for going to school.
Lastly, Sherrie Eldridge asks Lender if she thinks a recovery-type program should be created for adoptees and adoptive parents.
All Rights Reserved. @sherrieeldridge
Welcome to the 20 Things adoption podcast with your host adoption author Sherry Eldridge. Adoptive parents will find hope here. Hope that strained relationships with their adopted children can heal.
Speaker 2:I am so happy to introduce our guest for this podcast, her name Isna. And I'm gonna read you a little bit about her biography cuz she's such an awesome person. She has been working as a child and family therapist for over 20 years. She has trained in 15 countries in three different languages. She's the co-author of therapy. Let, let's see, what's the subtitle? The practitioner's guide. She has been successful in working with children and parents from all kinds of backgrounds. So welcome. I'm so glad that you could come on and talk a little bit about adoption. There's just, uh, a lot of parents that are waiting for this podcast. A lot of parents that I've worked with have not felt heard in the field of adoption and have not seen, even though their kids may go through therapy, it didn't turn out successfully. And that my heart just kinda bleeds for those parents and it bleeds for the kids cause we're both hurting and we both need help. I loved how you talked about how your therapy practice was honed over the years. Can you share a little bit about that? How you turned from being a, a really sensitive girl into clinical social worker and then in residential care and then there wasn't the success you hoped for. Right,
Speaker 3:Right, right, right, right. I mean, I think the way I come to be a social worker is that like many therapist, I felt other people and other animals pain so much that I like identified with them and wanted to like, you know, help them like be by being with them, which I'm sure a lot of people identify with this, but like there was a straight cat and I refused to come inside and like, you know, my parents were like, oh my God, this child is not gonna come inside<laugh>. And they were forced to bring me inside and the cat, I really have always been looking at things from the perspective of like the underdog or the person who's like, who's voiceless. And um, it comes from my own childhood. My mom was voiceless, my grandmother was voiceless. And so it's all a part and parcel of why I became a social worker. But when I went to social work school, you know, I did all this schooling and then I took the first job that I got talked to your friends' parents or whatever, you know, so there's this like sense that like your parents are persecuting you because you have a lot of scary feelings of shame and stuff like that. This kind of, my guess as to that, part of it is just this like built in thing that you're triggered by stuff that you don't know what it's about. Especially if we all know it doesn't matter if you were adopted at birth and had like a healthy year of birth, mom had a healthy pregnancy or not, you're still like at loss in some way. Yes. But especially if you had things happen to you in utero or that you had separation where you were not held in the arms of somebody Right. Who was loving towards you and who had that loving gaze that every baby who didn't have like somebody look at them and feed them and say, oh, you're hungry baby. And be able to take the bottle out to give them the time to drink and stuff, all that. If you didn't have that, it's much, much worse. You know? And so you're sitting on some of that not knowing why you're triggered. And then there's this who's like watching you all the time and then your parent has their own stuff your adoptive parent has, and also they are completely different from you. They don't have to be even this different color, but especially if they're a different color, you feel so different. It's almost like the entire childhood is set up for you to be in conflict with this parent. So far you feel like you identify with that?
Speaker 2:Oh yes, definitely. It's a challenge being adopted, but I wouldn't trade it for anything really. People get mad at me for saying that, but you know, I've had a wonderful, wonderful life and have found all of my family, you know, my birth family and stuff like that. So yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3:People are get mad at you for saying that you not give up your experience of being adopted.
Speaker 2:Right. And I'm pro adoption, they, you know, people have grilled me over that, but I was a tiny baby with a mother that fanta suicide and she was gone immediately and I wouldn't have had home without adoption. You know, I think about all the kids out there that need homes. So anyway, I didn't get off on that.
Speaker 3:There's like, no right or wrong here, we just are dealing with a phenomenon of children that need care. You don't deny the person's longing for their birth family.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 3:The opposite.
Speaker 2:No, it's always there. And that's okay. That's the
Speaker 3:Human tradition essentially to be have this, like the human condition is to have duality.
Speaker 2:Can you tell more about that, what that means?
Speaker 3:Basically like we can't have everything. We have one thing, we look at the other thing and wonder about it. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, we have that other thing. We think about what, where we were before. It's the same thing with having like mixed feelings. We love our child, but you know, they're an encumbrance on, we love our partner, but he, she whatever is making us feel Yeah. Whatever, suffocated or, or limited or we wanna see our ourselves in a different prism or we wanna have mm-hmm.<affirmative> additional relationships. Like I think that having ambivalent feelings for the most part as long, long as it's, it's not like the most predominant, you know, feeling in your life that like, that's really human and we have to accept that we can't fight that and consult being this dialogue within ourself to say like, oh, what's wrong with me? You know, why am I thinking this way if I only did this? And just to say, oh, I'm of two minds about this and that's okay. I don't have to resolve this.
Speaker 2:I like that. That's very cool. I'm sure that will be meaningful, especially to adoptees that are watching. Thank you. Well, I told you I was gonna throw you some curve balls. Are you ready for that? Some examples? Sure. Um, okay, we already talked about a newborn really. So what about a school-aged child who just has a meltdown every time it's time to go to school or go somewhere else? Is this common for adopted and foster children to act this way? And what can parents do?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness. Is it common? It's extremely common. Yeah. The reason I said oh my goodness is because there's so much that depends on the reason why he's having a meltdown. However, one of the things that creates the most pressure is when there's this like building like tension towards a deadline and the deadline is the school bus is leaving or whatever, the car is leaving, you know, you're gonna be late to school and then if you're late to school, the teacher's gonna blame me. You know, you're gonna lose out on whatever. They're gonna punish you, they're gonna punish me. My boss will also be mad at me or the whatever it is. Whether it's an a concrete pressure or a perceived pressure of I can't get to my kid to school on time. What's wrong with me as a parent? That is usually the first place to try to let go. Okay. And I mean, you do not have control over whether your kid is going to go smoothly into the car with their backpack and shoes on and get to school on time. That is the first thing to give up is like, you need to set up everything so that the possibility for it to go well before, you know, to go out the door smoothly happens. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, yes, absolutely. Get the pack backpacks ready, get the lunches packed, get a good night's sleep, et cetera. But usually it's that sense of like, okay, you gotta get your shoes on, come on, we're gonna be late. And that is the thing that doesn't allow the parent to be attuned to the child and be able to like flow with'em and that whole thing escalates from there. So that's the first place I would take a look at is how much pressure and take the pressure off, don't get to school on time, it's not worth it.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's good. So that parents can escalate it as you just said. Right. Just make the pressure even more,
Speaker 3:A lot more. And it's built our expectations as parents, so you expect that you can control it and if not, like what's wrong with you or what will teachers say or whatever
Speaker 2:Yeah. What will the neighbors say? Yeah. And got an adopted kid there, you know, adopted kids don't behave, that type of
Speaker 3:Thing. Oh
Speaker 2:Yeah. Society.
Speaker 3:And so I don't know if you're asking like for actual like possible behavioral solutions at this time, but I am answering the question. Yes, it does happen a lot. Well, you're definitely not alone. If so, whoever's asking the question, you know, so for behavioral solution you can only control yourself. So you would need to notice if you are, um, getting into control battle and trying to like cajole and prod child thing to do is to move through your morning in the direction that you wanna go, which is out the door. And if the child is like, you can suggest that they, you know, help them to put their shoes on in a playful way or you know, set out the breakfast and see if they're gonna eat. But if not, like you take your child without having breakfast and you take their shoes in your hand and you move towards the car and you send the car and then you wait. You know, you hope that they come in and come along with you the control battle of cajoling and prodding and asking 10 times and then going, oh, oh, I can't believe this. You know? Yeah. That is where you're not like letting go of the control battle. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so that is a lot about what I, I mean I have to spend time with parents on that.
Speaker 2:Well do you think dafna that adoptive parents and foster parents that it would really benefit them to do a recovery work? Like I've had to do that myself, you know, to get free of hate and anger and all that kinda stuff. Just when they're, you know, willing to take a good hard look at themselves, admit failure and so on, and then to get built up again in different ways. But do you think that would benefit them? Yeah,
Speaker 3:Absolutely. That's what I mean when I say to you have to take the time to be with yourself, examine yourself. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, figure out what your patterns are. Let go of old, you know, beliefs and patterns. Yes. And,
Speaker 2:And you have to
Speaker 3:Work probably in therapy, you know, and be able to check in with the therapist on a regular basis to be able to maintain that, you know, more less reactive self. Mm-hmm.<affirmative> and like, you know, the maintaining your practice of self-care. It requires maintenance and kind of you need somebody to re re reorient you all the time also. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, especially if your kid is changing all the time, you know, the kids are growing. Right. Changing. It's interesting you called it recovery.
Speaker 2:That's smart book. Yeah. Ok. Recovery. What comes to mind? Ok, when I say recovery is that recovery from the, I've seen it as the condemning self, you know, where they're so convinced that they can't, can't meet the needs of the child that they parent outta fear sometimes.
Speaker 3:For sure. Yes. I'm with you on
Speaker 2:That. You know, our time is almost gone. It's gone so fast. I hope you come back sometime. Please share about your training that is coming up. I believe it's just for therapists. How can parents and adoptees and birth parents find a competent adoption competent therapist? What should they look for?
Speaker 3:Okay, first of all about my training. So I do D D P training for therapists, but they're, I also have a training for that. Parents are welcome to attend as well and adoptees. And it's on my website called Integrative Attachment Family Therapy. And that is, you can look on my website for that or people can email me at daphna com. My recommendation for an adoption therapist, I would like them to be able to articulate first of all that they work with the parent and child together. That's the number one thing. And never exclude the parent unless there's a really strong reason of, you know, parental pathology or something like if or if the teenager needs to talk about things that are happening. Which, okay, so I understand that if you wanna work, if a, their adolescent wants to work with a therapist one-on-one, but that parent is oftentimes the biggest catalyst for change in the child's life.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's encouraging.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then I would want that therapist to articulate to me what trainings have you taken that you're actually certified in or have deeply trained in rather than, you know, a one day overview or a four day training. I'm sorry, but taking a four day, you know, level one therapy play or D D P or one, you know, a three day emdr. It's not enough. I would prefer to go to a therapist who doesn't say that they specialize in 50 million things in all age groups like adoption, A person who is adopted and especially is coming for attachment issues needs a specialist. Mm-hmm<affirmative>. So I would just read their website. Do they say I work with geriatric and babies and children and adolescents and couples and you know, and I work on every single thing under the sun. I just don't know that that is a person who's in depth enough. So those are some things, and I think in the first moments that you meet a therapist, you know, the first meeting should be about checking to see how much that therapist makes you feel like you're okay the way you are. Like that they
Speaker 2:Understand. That's good.
Speaker 3:You know that you make sense. That's a feeling. Yeah. And you get it from persons, you know, everything. They're nonverbal and they way they answer questions and the way they move, but also how they answer your email and whether they came on time, like are they trustworthy? That's just kinda help sense thing.
Speaker 2:Fabulous advice. Thank you so much. Now thank you for sharing your wisdom with all of us.
Speaker 3:It's my honor. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the 20 Things Adoption podcast. If you can think of friends or family that would benefit from this information, feel free to share. See you next time.
