Foster Care Awareness Month

“Trauma comes back as a reaction, not a memory.”

Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

Foster Care Awareness — Myth Busters Ed. 1

I recently shared this on my personal Facebook page. The quote above came through a page I follow on trauma-informed practices. Follow The Post Institute for more great seeds of thought and knowledge. And anyway, I wanted to share it here as well.

Being that it’s Foster Care Awareness Month, and being a foster parent, myself… I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. And I’m happy to share about what my experience has been like. So, today let’s talk about trauma.

On the myths of trauma:

We’ve been foster parents for almost 4 years now. And in that time, we’ve learned a lot (and are always learning more…). Foster care is all the beautiful and ugly things. It’s hopeful, and heartbreaking. Trauma, and healing. Smiles, and tears. And so much more.

I think one misconception about foster care is that the kids are somehow “troubled” or “damaged”… that they have issues that “other kids” don’t or won’t have. That they will be difficult to parent.Yes, trauma is a real thing. And yes, it can be hard to deal with. But trauma is pain, and hurting, and something deep that imprints itself and rewires the brain. It is not “bad behavior.”

One thing about foster parenting is the lens we view parenting through. The lens we HAVE to parent through. It can be challenging, for sure. But once you begin to understand trauma and adverse childhood experiences (even on a basic level)… you start to see things not as behaviors, but as reactions. And the way you learn to respond becomes very different. We don’t parent like other parents, because we can’t. But that’s okay.

Another misconception is that young children will have no trauma. That somehow “babies” are immune to having experienced this. But even young children, yes–even babies–can experience trauma. Trauma can happen even in the womb from stress experienced by their mother, substance exposure, and more.

I can tell you… our children (1.5 years, and 2 weeks old when we met them) do not “remember” trauma. They can not verbalize an experience they had that was “traumatic” but yes–trauma is still very real. And trauma doesn’t magically go away with stability, or even adoption, or even having been a baby picked up from the hospital. There is something in their fibers, in their brains, that do remember. And we see this come out in visceral, emotional, reactions. Not as talked about memories.

But there is hope. When we can understand life through a trauma-informed perspective, we can help. While we may never fully understand what it feels like for them… we can sit in the moment with our children, and help them work through it and learn to process what they are experiencing.

Want to learn more about what it’s like to be a foster parent? Just ask!