Trauma Bonds

We have a visit with baby sis coming up in 2 weeks.  It's the first one since kiddos sweet 16 party. After the party, baby sis went off the deep end and trashed both tv's in the group home she was in.

When siblings get together and they’re reminded of the past and everything bad that’s happened, they may transfer their fears and anger onto their sibling.  It makes sense, given the person that did the abusing isn’t there for them to lash out at.  It can be worse than the anger they have at the grown ups in their lives. They are there with each other and the one constant. It has to be dealt with and not ignored.

Many times they can’t be together without supervision.  Sometimes it can result in being separated, like our daughter and her baby sis and not live in the same house.  Sadness, fear, frustration and fatigue turn into anger. The separation is working for the girls and they are nice to each other and love each other.  The first visit they had after kiddo had a break in residential went very poorly and was scary for everybody involved. It was at that moment that it was presented for them to be separated.They are learning to be kind to each other. 

Activities between them need to be kept fun, but relatively low key and short.  Burning off energy is also good.  All that keeps the drama at a minimum.  I noticed that after 2014 with the frequent visits that our daughter got much worse temporarily.  2015 there were very few visits and by 2016 our daughter was a completely different person and acting like a regular teenager.  The trauma history was no longer evident in her behaviors.

It will be interesting to see how their relationship ends up as they grow up and become adults.  Kiddo thinks her baby sis will want to move in with her and she said she can’t do that.  We promised to do what we can to help her be close without being in her face.

Baby sis is very rough in her play.  It happens frequently and it’s because of the trauma bond.  Trauma bonds are frequently considered as the bond between victim and perpetrator, but it can also happen between those that shared these traumas together.  Because of the girls difference in age and understanding, they were at different developmental stages at the time of trauma and their healing processes run differently.

The intensity of what the girls experienced and no suitable outlet? Can you imagine going through that? How would you react? Why are people judgmental?  Why would people call kids and their behaviors bad, when it’s really the only coping skill they knew? They can’t use positive coping skills until they learn positive coping skills. They can’t learn positive coping skills until they trust those that are trying to teach them these skills.  They can’t trust these people until the grown up has earned the trust. That trust will take longer than your average person.  Why? Why not? It’s logical that trust would hard to come by.  They were unable to trust those that were suppose to love them best.  Why would somebody outside the family be trustworthy?

Today marks 4 years since the day that the judge pronounced us family.  It's been 5 years since our daughter was our daughter in our hearts.  It was just last year that our daughter finally said she knows this is forever.  4 years to get to the point of knowing you're home forever.

As adults, when we get together with our siblings, we can find ourselves taking on the role we did as a child in that sibling set.  My hubs, for example, has a trauma bond and after more than 30 minutes of time with his sisters, his accent comes back.  Kids may go back to acting as they did when they were in the chaotic environment they first knew.  If adults regress around siblings, wouldn't it stand to reason that kids would too? 

Just the act of being separated creates sadness and loss. They've lost their parents and most bio family, then they worry they are losing each other.  But sometimes, they need different things. 

What they really need though:

• Parents that are open minded and willing to keep contact.  Baby sis is scared to death that if she's adopted, they will not allow her to still see her sister
• Parents that are able to listen to the childs needs, both the verbal listening and the behavior and body language.  Our daughter tells us what she needs now, but before we had to read between the lines.
• Parents that recognize this is a loss and that a desire to be connected to their birth siblings doesn’t equate to a lack of desire to be connected in their new family.  After acknowledging curiousity and normalcy of this, the searches in kiddos history of her bios quit showing up in her internet history.  She knows we'll get the info we need.
• Parents that are honest, open and compassionate

Our daughter first saw the separation as a punishment and a loss that was dictated to pay her back for all she’d done.  As time went on she realizes not, it wasn’t about her behavior, but about her needs.

And that brings us to survivors guilt…..

Coming soon

WOW!! What a weekend

Thursday we drove 4 hours to see our niece graduate Friday morning.

We got there and found out that the graduation had been moved to Saturday and nobody had bothered to tell us.  Our niece said her mom had said she'd told everybody.

Fortunately, kiddo didn't get too wonky.  Normally a change in schedule or appearance of rejection would have her off the wall, but fortunately not this time (so far)

We had dinner with our niece and came home Friday morning instead of after graduation.

There were no extra rooms in the area, we had teacher scheduled to come out and babysitter for the dogs only thru Friday  night.

Hubs and kiddo both think it was intentional.  It may or may not have been and honestly, whether it's intentional or not, I'm just glad we got to see our niece. It was obvious she had no clue we hadn't been updated.  I'd have been mad if we drove 4 hours each way and didn't even get to see her.

Why intentional? Hubs and sister in law do not get along at all.

The positive is that we avoided the trigger of crowds (graduation) and loud people (sis in laws family).

The negative is this schedule change last second, combined with mothers day weekend could potentially blow up.  Trauma kids can act out big time mothers day weekend. Some because the first moms were abusers, others because the first moms didn't protect them from their abusers.

As we were driving down the road, when it was hubs turn to drive, I was checking my messages and I'm very concerned that baby sis's placement is getting ready to disrupt. I hope they'll keep trying.  We have respite scheduled for next weekend for them, but it's sounding like it may not make it until then.  I really hope it doesn't disrupt before then. Kiddo is looking forward to this visit so much.

One placement disrupted the day before our adoption was final and little sis didn't get to make it.  If another disruption is right before they get to see each other, this will add pain for our daughter.

I am hoping that they'll postpone making a decision and let us see if we can make some progress with her, show her that her big sister is fine and not acting out, coach her a little and help her be calm, eliminating at least one stressor.

Fingers crossed, praying, join me in whatever you'll do.

Avoiding the Past

After the last few sibling visits, I realized we were totally wrong for even considering adopting the baby sis. The more I see them together, the more I understand that they probably would trigger each other horribly and we'd see bad regression.

They enjoy seeing each other. They worry about each other. They love each other.

They do NOT need to be together though. S's eyes dilated beyond belief (the fight/flight, anxiety, excitement), pulling Kiddos's arm off nearly, Our daughters's distress, all of it was more obvious than normal this last visit. Kiddos's PTSD was triggered at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas. I don't usually see that during visits.

October-December, we had 3 visits together, that's way more than normal.

Kiddo moved in in December 2012.

Her first visit with baby sis after placement with us was April 2013, then June 2013, November 2013, December 2013, March 2014, May 2014, June 2014, August 2014, October 2014, November 2014 and December 2014.

I think they're too frequent now and we need to back off. As the frequency escalated, so has kiddos's anxiety.

Two recent signs of this:

I was sitting in the bathroom talking to kiddo while she was getting ready for school before winter break started and cuddling the kitten. I said something about my mom and she told me to not talk about my mom in front of the cat, it would make the cat sad and maybe she doesn't want to think about the past.

This weekend S called Kiddo and we missed the call. Kiddo refuses to call her back. No reason and I'm certainly not pushing it. I think it's obvious she's not ready for that right now, but still....I wish I had a crystal ball and knew how to handle things like this.

Sometimes our kids just want one family and would prefer not to see things from the past that are reminders of past neglect and abuse.

Kiddo has been a tad wonky since Thanksgiving. With these things, I wonder if it's because of the escalating visits.

She no longer even pulls out her life book.

I'll take the lead from Kiddo, I think instinctively she knows what she needs, I just wish she was a little more obvious about it sometimes, so I didn't feel like I was barking up the wrong tree later. Her body knows what she can handle and she may not be able to process these things at this time and stay healthy.

Even worse, it's hard because I know S is the opposite and needs more time with her, especially now, but our #1 priority is our kid and we have to protect her first.  We'll do what we can for S of course, but we have to do that around what must be done for our own child.