Quicksand Thinking

I grew up in a rural farm town in western Ohio. Every hazy August, the Mercer County Fair would be held at the local fairground. The excitement of the tents, rides, and new faces distracted from the humid heat hanging in the air. My favorite part of the fair was to browse the tents selling the trinkets. To me, the wares seemed strange and almost exotic. They seemed to hold the secrets of their travels and the barkers advertising their worth. These were items you could not buy at the local Barr's Dimestore.

One year, a particular trinket caught my eye. Sand art. Different colored sand layered one on top of the other in a glass jar to create a design. To me, it was a design of complication. Sand seemed so vulnerable as it could be scattered by the wind. Yet, here it was, layered into a jar of itself! A hardened container made from those delicate pieces mixed with lime and soda and forced into liquid form with the punishment of 3092 degrees fahrenheit. "How terrible," I thought, "to take one form of nature and turn it into a hardened and bizarre form of the same and fill it with itself?!" Then I thought, "What happens when you shake it up?" The colored layers would be indistinguishable. The trinket would now not be unique or special. It would just be a glass jar holding some brown or gray sand.

When I think of how kids with Developmental Trauma associate the word 'Mother,' I think of those jars with the layered sand shaken into a nondescript mass of gray or brown. A mother recently stated, "He doesn't see ME!" She was correct. Her child did not see her as a unique individual contributing to his personal history or how his behavior and affect contribute to her own narrative. To him, she did not have her own story, her own feelings, her own needs or rights. Kids with Developmental Trauma have been hurt or neglected at the hands of the primary caregiver. Kids with Developmental Trauma have been unavoidably taught by the system to see 'Mom' as no one special. 'Mom' does not have his or her own layer of colored sand. All of the 'Moms' they have experienced are jumbled into a gray or brown mess and poured into a container labeled 'Mom.' 'Mom' is just a label of the person who will eventually hurt you or make you move away. 'Mom' is just the glass jar. And your kid with Developmental Trauma is stuck in that quicksand of controlling behavior, dragging you in, because of the past trauma. It is exhausting and difficult to think of good parenting interventions when you feel that both of you are drowning.

The work in forming a relationship with your child is to sift out your layer of sand so that he or she can see where you are in his narrative. It is a constant reintroduction of yourself to your child so that he or she can tell the difference between you and the other moms in his or her life. Just being 'the Mom' can trigger your child into attempts of controlling the tone of the house or your reaction to destructive behavior.

So, how do we do this, because we cannot unshake a jar of colored sand. Helping your child to accurately define the roles of the characters in his narrative is a good place to start. Creating a family history with your child by talking about 'last Christmas' or 'Remember your birthday last year?' Making a visual aid, like, a timeline or scrapbook, are all helpful reminders to your child that 'this Mom' is not like the 'old mom' or the nannies in the orphanage. Layering in curiosity about his or her feelings about events and adding in your own feelings about the same makes the story more tangible for your child.

#DevelopmentalTrauma #reactiveattachmentdisorder #PTSD #adoptionissues #triggers #trauma