When Love Isn’t Enough: Practical Tools for Attachment Struggles

You're listening to the No Problem Parenting podcast. I'm Jackie Fineman, parent, coach, speaker, and host of this show. Here, we help parents move out of reaction mode and into confident leadership using steady, matter-of-fact responses that build trust, responsibility, and real change over time. If you're ready to stop reacting and start leading, you're in the right place.

All right, welcome back, No Problem Parents. I'm so excited, you guys. Karen and I have not seen each other in years, but we've reconnected and we're talking about a topic that many families live with quietly, and that is attachment struggles. So painful behavior patterns, and it can just be exhausting when a kid is pushing hardest against the people that love them the most.

Joining me today is Karen from the Radish Ranch. Karen supports parents in a real, practical, compassionate, down-to-earth kind of way, and I'm just really grateful to have you on the show. Welcome, Karen. Thank you.

It's great to be here. Let's start with the Cliff Notes version. Tell listeners a little bit about yourself and the work that you do and what the Radish Ranch is all about. Yeah, so I officially, I started working with or knowing about RAD in 2012.

Well, unofficially, it was about six years before that when friends of mine had a child with RAD and who wasn't diagnosed. So for six years, they were like, what's going on with our child? What are we doing wrong? He went through a whole list of misdiagnoses and therapies and nothing helped.

And then they found out about reactive attachment disorder through a Google search and found out about therapeutic parenting and care. And so I watched them through this whole journey. Like their child had every behavior and every struggle that our kids have. And nothing helped. Nothing worked. The entire family was falling apart. And then when they found out about this, they went to a camp in Florida for a week and came back empowered as parents. And their child still had the same behaviors he still does today. He still hasn't got his life together.

but the parents came back empowered. We know how to help our child. We know what's going on. We know what we can do. And so then I got to watch them for a couple of years, started to implement therapeutic parenting, and I saw the difference it made for their family. And so I got really curious what this was. So I had the opportunity to go volunteer at a camp with them and saw firsthand for a week what attachment struggles were, what that looked like, what these behaviors were, and then the effectiveness of therapeutic techniques to help kids. I did a deep dive into that. And since 2014, 2014, I started doing therapeutic respite care full time. Going into families' homes was how I started and working with a parent coach or a therapist. And then it slowly evolved into opening the Radish Ranch in 2016. And the whole goal with the Radish Ranch was to provide parents with very practical, hands-on, everyday solutions to help implement therapeutic parenting. And we've grown since then. So now over the last three years, we have started to focus more on trainings and community support for families. So I stopped doing Rest by Care,

but realized families still need it. And it's so much more beneficial when it's in their local community. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So we've started training respite providers and teachers and community support groups so that families get the knowledge and information they need and the support group to be able to do that effectively. I love that. That's so good. You and I are alike in that we used to travel to families' homes. We'd stay with them for days, if not weeks, to help support them and teach them what we knew and help that communication and relationship with their kids. But I also love what you said about that first kiddo that you worked with who is still struggling, hasn't gotten his poop in a group or his life together. However, the parents have the tools and the skills to be able to survive it and to live with it and to keep him right at home. So sometimes it's not this magic wand fix, but it can be less painful when we know what we didn't know before. Yeah. And I love, I tell that story at every training I do. And I tell parents that family that I first work with, I consider them very successful therapeutic parents because your success as a parent doesn't depend on your kids' behaviors.

You can do everything, but they still have to decide to make those changes. Yeah. When they don't, it doesn't mean you failed. And so successful therapeutic parenting means you're able to recognize your child's needs and meet them in the best way you can. You're able to set appropriate boundaries for your family. You're able to keep yourself regulated and sane, and you're able to help the other kids in your families. And that's my definition or my look of a successful therapeutic parent, whether the child with the attachment disorder makes those choices to change or not. Yeah, that's so good. What do you think made you care so deeply about helping parents in general, much less parents raising these kiddos with breaks in attachment or trauma?

Oh, that's a big question. It started out, it was just curiosity. And before I got into this, I was teaching at a private school. And looking back, like I definitely had a couple of students who would have been on the attachment disorder spectrum somewhere. And I realized when I was teaching them, it was always the kids you consider the naughty kids are the ones with bad behaviors.

They were my favorites. And it's because I realized I could connect with them on a deeper level. I got a problem. How can I sit with you in this and help you? Whereas my students who were the better behaved ones, you didn't get to know them on that level. And it wasn't such a rewarding connection as it were. How can I sit with you and help you with this?

yeah and then so for years i just worked with the kids and i just did the kid part before having enough knowledge and experience to get into the parent coaching part and when i started out some of the professionals i worked with was very much here's a set program you have to do this and then i would go to family's homes i'm like but that it doesn't fit right it's not this family style it's not their personality they're dealing with trauma and ptsd themselves and all this other stuff. And so I just had this compassion, like, how can I go and just sit with these families? And how do I just come into a home and just be like, hey, I'm here.

If you want to make changes, I'm going to support you wherever you're at. If you just need a moment to just sit here and be a sane person in your house, I will do that. And I think it was just that. Yeah. Just that compassion, like, how can I just be with you? Yeah. From there, help to implement new techniques or whatever is going to help your family in the best way possible.

But it's so true that we can all take programs. We can learn parenting approaches and all the different things, but applying them in our own home, oftentimes you have to tweak the approach that you learned. Yes, you do. And sometimes you need a sounding board or another person, another set of eyes, but right in there with you. I did in-home for over 20 years and it was all in-home family counseling. There was no coming to my office. It was me going directly into the family's homes. And that is where I learned the most, more than being in college, more than reading books, more than doing anything. It was sitting with the actual families in their real life situation. So I love it. You and I have talked about too that oftentimes parents are actually doing better than they realize. And what do you think it is that parents aren't giving themselves enough credit for the things that they've done? What do you wish maybe those overwhelmed parents could actually see about themselves. So I often have parents, they're like,

I'm not doing enough, should have done more, should have known more, should all the shoulds. Yeah, shouldn't have done it yourself. Yeah, exactly. There's so much shame and guilt that comes with having a child with an attachment disorder. And when I work with foster and adoptive families, it's we should have done more training. We should have looked into this.

Why didn't anybody tell us? Oh, that's a big one. with yeah when i work with birth families they're like what did i do i caused the problem and there's so much guilt and shame with it so i always tell parents like the fact that you are willing to change your entire life to help your child is you're doing something right in fact they sent an email that you called that you signed up for a course that you're willing to make changes and then i also tell parents like you've got to you have to let it go yes you can do all of this stuff and that's not reality. I'm very much about like getting families to live in reality. So yes, you can do these hundred techniques and in an ideal world, your life will be amazing.

Practically, let's do three. You feel really empowered as a parent. And when you feel empowered, then you can do another technique. Start small. Start with the things you love.

Start with the things that speak to you or are easier for you to do. And then you grow from there. And give yourself credit, if nothing else, for the days that you made it through, even if it didn't go as planned. One of my favorite quotes is, on particularly rough days when you feel like you cannot possibly endure, you need to remember that your track record for getting through those days so far is 100%.

Yes. And I always say, I think that's pretty darn good. So even if it didn't go smooth or what you made it through, as long as you made it through a day and hopefully with services like Radish Ranch, parents will find some support so that they know that they don't have to go it alone. And there's people that get it.

When traditional parenting doesn't work, that's what we're talking about today. Things that can work for neurotypical kids as well, but really the things that work best with those kiddos who reject your love. And so for the parent, we should, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves too, but for the parent who hasn't heard about attachment disorder, which if you haven't heard, you should have been listening to episode four and five of my podcast because I give you some good information there. A lot of times, too, parents don't even realize that they have a kiddo, whether their child was adopted or maybe had medical pain as a baby. We're talking primarily about the first year of life up to the first three years of life, right? And sometimes parents will come to me and they'll think their child has some kind of attachment issue, but it's really that their child's been overindulged and the behaviors can look similar. But what would you say is the cliff note version of attachment if a parent doesn't really understand what an attachment disorder might look like? Yeah. So I always say like RAD and developmental trauma disorder is like a two-part disorder. So you've got to look at what is the attachment. And with RAD or DDT,

it's typically a complete lack of attachment. Then you get the milder versions of trauma and attachment disorders where it's insecure, avoidant type of attachments. And then you've got to look at the trauma that happened. And we always look at those first three years of life.

And then you look at how those two interacted because trauma impacts the ability to build attachments and a lack of attachments takes away the buffer to the stress of the trauma. off. So it's always what did your child experience and being the myth of normal by Gabor Mate a while ago. And he gives such a great explanation of the big T and little t trauma.

And big T is like kidnapping, rape, assault, abuse, severe neglect, big natural disasters, combat. And then small t trauma is when over and over again, we didn't have our basic needs met. our emotional needs, our physical needs, those caring interactions, constant rejection, like little things over time. So I always get parents to look at if there was no big T trauma, let's look at the possible little T traumas that happened. Because you might think this happened, but it's not a big deal. I was away from my child for a week. I was dealing with this was going on. Something happened. But it's when you add those up over three years, it's not.

So you look at a part and then we look at the attachment part. And I always tell parents, you've got to take your emotions out of it because it's not how much you loved your child. It's how much love your child was able to take in, meaning did they perceive that you loved them or not? and then so from there when I can give parents like okay there's this behavior this is what we see they're like oh yeah my child does that not they were attached but it's those control behaviors or it's those people pleasing behaviors to try and stay feeling safe so yeah I look at the trauma I look at the level of attachment and then I don't officially diagnose kids of course but it's kind of if they are on that attachment and trauma disorder spectrum or not it is often pretty obvious. Yeah, I don't diagnose here either. And sometimes kids come to me with that diagnosis and other times they don't have it. And but we talk about that first three years of life and the pregnancy if the parent knows about it. They're adopted. Sometimes the parents have no knowledge of that. But then what are the behaviors? And then we can get the behaviors to me are symptoms and or coping skills. And so we get to the root of those. Yeah. What kinds of behaviors would a parent be dealing with that or some signs that the kiddo's struggling with attachment wounds or attachment-related behaviors? What might parents notice at home first?

One of the biggest things that I always check for and then parents more often mention is that when their child is in an actually distressful situation, they won't come for help or comfort. So they get like a paper cut and they are wailing away and they need a band-aid and all like the give me your attention type of behaviors. And I worked with a family, I think it was last summer, the kid fell and broke his arm. Never said anything. They said it was days until they took him to the doctor because he wouldn't say anything. Never cried. He was never in pain. He didn't come for comfort. And it's just like that real pain is so scary because kids really believe no one's going to take care of me. No one's going to be there. I've got to figure this out on my own. My arm's broken. How am I going to get through life on my own? And so they do it.

And those kind of little, they get the paper cut or they get their, someone didn't do what they wanted them to do or whatever the situation. I often call, put those in the category of the control behavior. This little thing happened. How can I use it to control my environment? So how can I use it to make sure people are noticing me? If I make a really big fuss, everyone's going to know I'm here. And when everyone knows I'm here, no one's going to forget about me. I'm going to get my needs met in that way. But not necessarily, that's different. That's subtle, but it's different than running to mom or dad because they got a paper cut or because they broke their arm or because they're in some sort of pain, have a stomach ache, have an ear infection that went on for weeks and the parent never knew. That's different than I want the attention, I'm going to get the attention of it, but I'm not going to actually seek help. And or then the parent does go to help and they reject the help. Yes. Yeah. And like kids who have healthy attaching, they get that paper cut and they come and it's this really hurts and they're able to take in the comfort. Oh, they get that hug and they're like, OK, I just need my parents. It's an attachment disorder. It's often like a big kind of dramatic production. And it's just a paper cut. Right.

Yeah. It's so over the top because it's their way of meeting a need that they have without the fear of that closeness of connection from a parent. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes we think of that and we use this word gets used a lot.

In fact, in the first, I don't know, 10 years of working as a in-home family counselor, I would use the word manipulation a lot with kids because a lot of behaviors, it's like they well know what they're doing. This is manipulation. They're manipulating me. But we need to look at that word or that situation different.

When a kiddo is rejecting help or pushing a parent away, I think what's important for parents to understand before reacting or judging it as manipulation is what's going on underneath. So what would you say about that? What's the behavior often communicating underneath? Yeah.

So we tend to think of manipulation as like someone creating a situation where they get what they want. When we're looking at trauma and attachment disorders, it's a child creating a situation where they get what they need. They need someone to know they're there. They need attention. They need all of these things. And the only way they know how to get those needs met is through these chaotic types of behaviors because real connection is too hard and too scary. So it's meeting these vital life needs that they have.

And yeah, I used to use the word manipulation a lot and it was how I was trained. And over the last maybe five, six years, I'm like, that's just, it's not, yeah, it gives a whole different mindset, kind of that control manipulation mindset that we tend to miss out on. It's actually needs that these kids have and they're meeting them in the best way they know how. Yeah, exactly.

Like when I, and I think it's episode four where I talk about that first year of life bonding cycle, that baby's having me. There's that whole, they have a need. How do they let us know? They cry.

If we don't get there soon enough, they turn, it turns into a rage. Their little bodies just clench up and arch their back and they turn purple almost and sometimes even can't catch a breath. And so then as quick as possible, we get over there and we gratify them, pick them up, bounce them, smile, eye contact, touch, change a diaper and give them sugar, lactose, the milk and all those things looking in their eyes. And we build trust with that.

They look at us and they say, oh, you're responsible for that good feeling I'm having. That's how that trust is built. Happens zillions of times. I don't think anybody's ever counted how many times that happens.

But where that break between the crying and the gratification, when that's not consistent, when mom or dad doesn't come consistently or meet that need, the baby goes inward and it's, I am responsible for the good feeling I'm having. I am responsible for getting my needs met. And people are just there almost like my servants in a way. It's a really different thing to understand or to catch sometimes.

Can you think of a situation like that where, what would that look like in real life? So something interesting that I've noticed, one of the techniques I teach in therapeutic parenting is having kids ask for their needs. Every single need you can possibly have a kid ask for, you have them ask for it because it rebuilds that first year of life cycle. They're like, no one's going to take care of me.

So now I've got to do something really hard and scary and ask my parent if I can have this thing that I need. Snack, a drink, go to the bathroom, put away their chore supplies, whatever it is. Just the very basic of things that we would mostly take, like. Why would you have to have your child ask for that?

Exactly. And then they ask and it's, oh, no, what's going to happen? And when a parent says yes, it's, oh, okay. And then we can do that thousands and thousands of times.

We help to repair the cycle. And what I've noticed in so many kids, and I would say probably all of them, is that they will ask things like, just recently I had a little guy, he needed a napkin. He had something all over his face. So instead of saying, may I please have a napkin?

It's, will you please pass me a napkin? and it's such a small difference. But asking, may I please have this, is putting yourself in a vulnerable position. I need something.

I've got to rely on someone else. Saying, will you please pass me a napkin, is just they're going to get what they need anyway, but are you going to help them out or not? And to say no, it hurts less. Because it's not, I'm not going to have my need met.

It just means you are not personally going to pass me one. Yeah. And it's such a small difference. So this is really subtle.

And some people think if you don't, if you're not, by the way, if you're not raising a kiddo, like this is going to seem crazy. Yep. This is going to seem like over the top, like strict parenting. When there's that vulnerability, it gives the opportunity for trust to build because it opens a child up to someone else has to now meet my need.

Someone else has to take care of me. And so when the person, whoever it is, the parent, the caregiver steps into that role, we can help build that bridge there between the vulnerability and the trust. And so I don't like it sounds crazy, but the more you can do this, the more trust you're building with your kid. And so if you can do it a thousand times, do it a thousand times.

So, yeah, well, and all crazy to use typical parenting. But here's the other really important part of that is that your kid is so used to being told no. Because a lot of times they're doing things that they're not supposed to be doing, risky behaviors, demanding things that they absolutely cannot have or are not safe for them. And so they're constantly being told no.

So when we can flip that script and shift that around where they're asking for basic needs that are a no-brainer that obviously they can have, but having them ask and we get to say yes, that's where you're talking about. It's rebuilding. Exactly. Yeah.

And parents get to add in, you know, dozens of positives a day when they're saying, yes, you can have a drink. Yes, you can have a snack. Yes, you can clear your dish. Yes, you can go to the bathroom. Yes, you can get your shoes on. But there are so many more positives that come into parenting when we implement like just that one little technique.

Yeah, that's good. What are some of the common maybe mistakes that parents make when they're parenting kiddos like this and they're desperate to help? What usually is maybe a mistake and a better way to do it? What you said right there is they're trying to help.

And there is. So one of my sayings I use a lot is that you have to meet a child's level of motivation. And so you have to care less. And I don't know if you're familiar with the 10 units of concern, but I use that a lot.

So the 10 units of concern is like every problem or behavior or whatever has 10 units. The person who holds the most units and cares the most is the one who will change their behavior. So it's like all of a sudden I've got all of this concern. If it's not working, I've got to change it. And parents are too helpful or too caring. And so they pick those all up.

And so the saying I always use is care less, which means you care less about the behavior than you care about the child as a person. And you care less about the behavior than the child cares about the behavior. The role as a parent is you love this child no matter what. You love them whether they brush their teeth or not, whether they swear at you or not, whether they call you the worst mom in the world or not, whether they punch holes in your wall or not.

Your love stays the same for the child. And you cannot help them so much that you bypass their ability to recognize and solve their problems. So I tell parents, you got to be less helpful. Yeah.

It's so many of the techniques or skills that we use in parenting kiddos with attachment issues is, I call it bass-ackwards. It is not typical. And sometimes when you're doing something that everybody says, oh, do this, and you're doing it, and it's not working, and you're beating your head against a wall and blaming yourself and thinking you're a bad parent, throw that out the window. If you've tried something a zillion times and it's not working, it's because it doesn't work for your kid.

They aren't wired the same way. They aren't wired to trust. And they aren't wired to feel safe to ask you for things or to do things your way. Again, because of that break in that first year or so of life.

So I love that. I read a really great quote, and I think it was in Gordon Neufeld's book, Hold On to Your Kids. But he talks about trust building. And he says, we don't build trust by offering help.

We build trust by asking for help. And so when parents just give all of the help, it feels like we're building a connection. yeah but it's actually that trust is actually built when kids have opportunities to come and ask for help i need my needs taken care of asking for all those things i can't figure out my problem do you have some advice for me and that when trust gets built again sounds backwards right yeah the more let our kids be themselves and they feel that full acceptance we love them no matter what they're going to decide to do, it gives those opportunities for them to then build that trust from their end, which is where often it needs to start.

Yeah, for sure. And sometimes kids come and ask us to do things that we know they're capable of doing. Absolutely. So an incredible amount of effort to having someone else do the work.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so passing those tests every time, but not with, oh, you know how to do that.

it's saying no to something by saying yes to something else. So yes, I sure will help you just as soon as. And I would love to say, absolutely, I'll help you. I will give you as much time as you need.

Absolutely. I will sit right here and hang out with you while you figure it out. Yeah. So you're still there.

And often they're coming to ask because it's that I need to be in your face so you don't forget I exist behavior. Asking, can you do this for me? Can you fix this thing? I already know is often just, how do I get this person to stay, stay? How do I get them to stay with me? And so when you're like, hey, you can have all the time you need. Hey, I'll sit right here. Hey, try it this many times and let's see what happens. It fills that need for the connection relationship that they have. And often the actual thing they're working on is not the thing of importance. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. Can you give us some examples of kids that you've worked with?

Like maybe a parent comes to you, give us an idea of a really tough behavior situation that they needed help with. I worked with a little guy last year. I think he was five at the time. And I had talked with his parents. We did a few consultations.

And they were telling me like all of the behaviors. And the biggest, most recent one was that he had killed one of their pets. And this little tiny guy. And the parents kept saying, but he has attachment.

He's attached to me because he always wants to be with me and he always is close by. They took it as attachment. And so when I worked with them, I had him with me. He was going to work on a project and the parents are going to go, I don't know, paperwork or a meeting or something.

And he there were glass doors in the building where we were. And so I had to physically pry him off his parent and had him with me. And the parents walked out and he was like screaming bloody murder. and as soon as he could no longer see them out the window they turned the corner it stopped and the parents were gone for maybe 15 minutes and they told me before they're like there's no way he can be away from us for that long because he's really attached and he's really anxious separation anxiety he never asked when is my parent coming back where are they how can i see them the only thing he would say was i have to tell my mom something that was a very much i've got to be in control of what's going on. And so when I was able to explain this to parents,

because they were like heartbroken. Our little guy is there. He's sobbing. He's so upset. He misses us. I was like, he doesn't. And it is the hardest part of my job. One of the hardest parts to tell parents your child doesn't care about you. Yeah. There's no attachment. And it's all about that need for control, the need for safety, the need for survival. But so often then I explain the situation to parents and they're able to step back. I'm like, leave all your emotions behind.

It's your heart that has the separation anxiety. That's not your job. Back then they were like, oh, you know what? He does do that. Oh, so when he does this, it's about control, not connection. And I think that's a common one. When I work with families who have birth kids because it's not a loss of a primary caregiver through adoption or foster care or something like that. Yeah. So I think when there's that recognition, parents become more open or more able to be like, okay, what do we do about this? Now we have a problem. What's our solution? And how hard as a parent, whether you're a birth parent or an adoptive parent to hear, I can just hear the listeners right now. If they, again, if you don't know, you don't know.

I know. And to hear your child doesn't care when that is exactly what I mean, we're so caring. Right. And we're pouring everything into this child. And it's not intentional. I want you to hear that. It's not intentional that your child doesn't care. What advice do you give to a parent that like in that to those parents? What did you say to them then that they should do the next time they drop them off somewhere or. Yeah, I told their plans to not go somewhere because they can't their kiddo. Yeah. Luckily, we're at a week-long family camp. So we had an entire week where there were opportunities for them to practice letting go. And I told them, it's practicing you guys letting go. You've got to realize that your child is okay. And so in that situation, I was able to take pictures. Like, he left the building screaming and crying, mom, if you loved me,

you wouldn't make me go. Like, all the stuff. And as soon as parents were no longer in sight or within earshot, it stopped. And so I'd be able to take a picture of their little guy calmly doing a brain shifter and being like, here's what's going on.

And we're like, oh, he's okay. He's good. Yeah. And I think it's also the understanding of why your child is doing this.

Like you have to have that. And so I have to tell parents, like you love your child so much. That's not the problem. You loving your child enough is not the problem.

It's your child's capacity to take that in. And so I often say like trauma and attachment disorders build a wall. And this kid is, I am in a battlefield. Everything is scary. I've got to survive. So let me build this really big, really thick wall. And so you can throw all the love you want at the wall. It's not going through.

yeah and when you recognize like why your child isn't feeling your love and that you've got to find techniques that build ladders over the wall and that help your child dismantle that wall from the inside out that's when we start to be effective so yeah it's just that change in mindset i love that you mentioned that though because we all know about unconditionally loving our kids definitely unconditionally love them however the root for these kiddos until they actually learn to take in the love and reciprocate it. The root is safety. Right. In their lens, it's just about providing safety. It's not about pouring on more love. You will be rejected to your core. It's just not going to work. So we need to see their control often is a need for safety. And once we know and we can be that confident leader for our kids and we can understand that educationally and take out some of that emotion, then things start to go better. Their behaviors don't always get better,

but you are better and you're parenting from this knowledge standpoint versus I'm being rejected for me I've got deal with your loss of dreams make sure you're talking to somebody about all those hopes and dreams you had for this child that you brought into the world or that you adopted and make sure you're taking care of that because if you're not you will consistently get pulled into the trauma or the disorder and your child will suffer from that yeah yeah I always tell parents like you've got to be your best therapeutic self which means you take yourself out of the equation emotionally probably 80 of the time at least and you got to bring that safety in well safety i was safety first you got to have safety first physical mind emotional safety yeah and for the beginning of the healing process that is how your child will feel love they're not going to feel the mushy caring nurturing love that you do with all your other kids they need the safety and that's your way for them yeah yeah the actual traditional comforting mushy gushy soft feeling love it's like fingernails on a chalkboard for them then get the heebie jeebies and there is for many of these kids a really deep-rooted fear in that because if they were rejected, even though it might not have been your fault, rejected, had medical pain,

et cetera, et cetera. When they were infants, they feel that rejection and they're scared to test the waters again. They don't, you know, and I was, I tell this to a lot of families. A couple summers ago, I was driving and there was a road construction here and a truck drove past like a big semi and a rock hit my windshield, eye level, and like a good size crack in there.

And for the next, I can't remember how many months, completely involuntarily, every time a semi was coming towards me, my body would do this. Like, just cranking. And my eyes are closed. I'm like, I can't do that while I'm driving.

Yeah. It's a one-time, one rock. And every time, my body was like, something's going to happen. And so I'm going to prepare.

And that's how our kids are. They're like, something really scary happened. I am constantly going to be prepared for that to happen again. And it took months until my body stopped having that reaction.

And that's one little thing. Nothing terrible happened. I was fine. Windshield didn't crack.

I didn't lose control of the car. Like, I was fine. Yep. And I think, like, our kids have this big, deep, traumatic reaction to something that happened.

And it's their automatic reaction they have. I'm going to push that love away because that is something that is going to hurt me. And I don't want it to happen again. Yeah.

But you mentioned something about healing beginning. And so I've seen it. I know you have seen it over and over. Healing can happen. Family relationships can improve. What would you say? And there is hope.

I tell them that healing is not going to look like what they want it to look like. Like that's like the very rare unicorn situation, right? So let go of all of your expectations. Your healed, healthy child is not going to be all of these big expectations that you have.

Like they're your close best friend, that you have a great relationship, that there's no negative behaviors. We have all these things. Yeah. And it's healing for your child, I always say, is two things.

So it's the child's ability to have a relationship with you as a parent, like a real actual relationship, and the ability for their trauma to no longer be the biggest factor in their life. It no longer controls them and dictates their entire mode of living. So what that looks like is different for every kid. What type of relationship that is going to be is different for everyone.

And like you said, for a lot of kids, that comes way later. It doesn't happen when they're 9 or 10 or 15. It's when they're in their 20s and they're not at home anymore. Okay, now I've got to figure this out.

And how do I repair it? And how do I come back to having a relationship with my family? Yeah, there's no timeline. there's no template of this is what healing is. I think it's so individualized. And when kids can recognize that, it's easier to find kind of success in the little things that happen.

My kid and I could go out for coffee together and we chatted about nothing. It doesn't have to be deep and heartfelt, but we could be together. Yeah. Yeah. I always look for the little things. I was just going to say that sometimes it's a little list of things.

awesome sometimes we are doing the best that we can and we need a little bit of help you have an event coming up here in may tell us about it who's it for what are parents going to learn yeah it's one of our therapeutic parenting courses and my goal when putting it together was practical hands-on information because i had been to so many trainings and events and read all the books and the courses and it's always a lot of theory and it always sounds good until you go home and you're like, this does not work. And so it's based on my years of being in family's homes, being like, okay, this technique sounds great in theory, but it does not practically work in the family's home. So the whole course goes through, it starts off with better understanding of trauma and attachment disorders and symptoms and behaviors and risk factors and effects on the brain and the first year of life cycle and all that good stuff. Then it goes into safety first.

Oh, I love that. Physical safety. Yeah. You've got to have the safety plans.

It covers safety for everyone. Not just your child with a trauma and attachment disorder, but parents and siblings and pets and everybody. Everyone's got to be safe. And then to that felt or deep safety.

And how do we build that? Because it's got to be the foundation for everything else to have a chance of working. Then we cover intentional nurturing. And it's just a very intense type of nurturing.

Like, how do we intentionally take all these little moments and really facilitate the opportunities for the parent-child bond? Then we do therapeutic interventions. So how do you therapeutically deal with all of the behaviors your child has? How do you keep connection and regulation as part of that?

Talk about those units of concern. How do you get your child to care the most about the behaviors so they can change them? then we talk about playtime and how beneficial it is for healing and development and growth and how to use it therapeutically so we talk about individual playtime and then also family playtime so that families get to have fun together because like you said there's often so many no's it's how do we bring in those positives how do we get that back in we talk about chores and work why it's so beneficial for kids to contribute to the family in those ways. And then practically, what does that look like? How do you get your kids to do their chores? Yeah, good. What chores should they be doing? We cover structure and routine, helping families get like a set structure in place. What is their day going to look like? And then all those little routines, because the more structure and routines we have, the more felt safety we typically have in our homes. And when parenting kids with big behaviors, parents often have depression, anxiety, PTSD. And those structures and routines just make parenting a whole lot easier to manage for everybody. Then we talk about respectful, responsible, and fun to be around. So the goals we have for our kids. And then we talk about goal setting and how we can help our kids to make goals to help them view the future more positively, to be able to have the motivation to work on goals and have all these feelings of

success. And then our last session is self-care for parents. And I always tell parents it is the most important session, but we do it last. Otherwise, nobody listens. And it's so true because we're going there to fix our kid. We want the help for our kid. We want the help for our kid. So don't take it as yourself. But what do I do with my child? So I put it at the end. Parents have had an opportunity to feel more empowered, to be able to implement things in their homes, and then they're like, okay, I've dampened the fire. Now how do I take care of myself?

Self-care is not like the fluffy go out for the day and go to the spa. It's like, how do I actually create an environment where my physical, emotional, and mental health is taken care of? And go through all the different little things parents can do. and i go through the course like in each technique that i teach or each session i talk about a whole bunch of different things and it's okay here's play times here's five different play times i want you to find what works for your family this little piece here this little piece here this technique for this child this other technique for this other child this technique this week that technique next week yeah it's you gotta find what works for you And I always say therapeutic parenting is, it's got to be a lifestyle. To be the most effective, it is just how your family is. And to be able to have a new lifestyle, you've got to have the practical, hands-on, individualized, here's what we do. So that, in a nutshell, is what we cover in our upcoming parenting course.

And it's how many weeks? It's nine sessions over four and a half weeks. So we do it monthly two evenings a week. Okay.

So good. And it's virtual? It's virtual. Yep.

And we do, there's the live sessions. And then we also have every session is recorded and then made available to families. Go to theradishranch.org.

It's on the homepage right now when registration is open. So if you're missing the mark by the time you listen to this episode, you can still go back and catch one of Karen's other trainings that she'll have coming up. You do them periodically. and if nothing else, they can reach out to you and just book a time with you to be able to say, hey, here's our family situation.

What do you suggest? So if you're out there, parents, and finding that nothing's working for you and the same old advice is starting to annoy you and make you really crabby and feel defeated, reach out to Karen. She is going to, she's going to help you. She's going to tailor it to your home.

And parents, if this episode encouraged you, share it with somebody else who might need to hear it today. Be sure to connect with Karen. info at theradishranch.org if you want to send her a quick email. Until next time, fewer words, slower pace, matter-of-factly parents lead on. Hey parents, if this episode shifted how you see your child's behavior or yourself, take the next step. You'll find practical tools and support at noproblemparents.com to help you lead with clarity and confidence. Less reacting, more leadership. That's no problem parenting.