Why Your Traumatised Child "Behaves Badly"

(upbeat music) Welcome back to the fifth episode in the therapeutic parenting podcast from COECT, the Center of Excellence in Child Trauma. We are committed to providing people living and working with child trauma with proven strategies to achieve the best possible outcomes for families. I'm Serena Gay, your host, and today, I'm talking to Sarah Dillan. Sarah is the COECT's therapeutic lead. She's a child and adult therapist for those with attachment difficulties and complex and developmental trauma. She delivers therapeutic parenting training courses and is an author and international keynote speaker on adoption and fostering. Many of you listening will know her already. She has four children of her own and five grandchildren. On today's podcast episode, Sarah is going to discuss the emotional age of the child and how it affects their behavior. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah. - Thank you, thank you very much for having me, Serena. - Now, Sarah, I understand you spent much of your childhood in the care system. Do you want to give us an idea of your story so that we can understand your perspective? - Yes, so I did spend much of my childhood in the care system. We were in and out of care. I've had four foster homes and I've lived in four children's homes. And thankfully because of my last foster parents, she really helped me to catch up a lot with many of the things that I'd missed out on. And also to really start to become the person that I am today. So I owe a lot to her. - That's really useful to know, thanks, Sarah. So can you then start off by explaining to us what the factors are that affect a traumatized child's behavior? - I think it's a very interesting question and there could be a lot to say about that. But in all my work over the years, I think I've been able to sort of slim it down to make it more easily accessible and understanding, understandable, sorry, for parents. One of the things that I focus on a great deal are the unmet developmental needs of our children. And I'm well known for saying that an unmet need remains unmet until it's met. So if our children have experienced neglect, then there are going to be many unmet developmental needs and these needs will be expressed through the child's behavior. We must remember that behavior is the main way in which we communicate as human beings. And if you think about babies, 100% of the way that babies communicate is via behavior. And for children from trauma, I think that we are certainly looking at a very high percentage of communication, perhaps 80 to 90% of the way that they communicate again is via behavior. So what are they communicating? They're communicating those unmet developmental needs. They're communicating what they feel on a physical level, on a sensory level, psychologically and emotionally. And they are also communicating what they've experienced. So what they've been through, the traumatic things that they may have witnessed and the traumatic things that they may have actually experienced themselves. So what might characterize a traumatized child's behavior? We may see behaviors in perhaps an older child that could be more easily attributed to that of a younger child. We may see children who have many fear-based behaviors. So if we think about a child who's been physically harmed, you might find that they are so frightened of an adult, that they are overly friendly towards an adult. They may be friend and adult, which could be perceived as them attaching well and feeling safe. Actually, that couldn't be further from the truth. They may avoid an adult. They may spend a lot of time in their bedroom struggling to engage, fearful of connection and avoiding it at all costs. All you might find a child, much like myself, when I was younger, who's very aggressive and defiant and rude and controlling, and all those other negative words that we attribute to such behaviors. So we can expect, then, that children who have been traumatized will be expressing an emotional age that may be much younger than the age that they really are. Absolutely. In fact, I am yet to come across a child from trauma who isn't expressing themselves at an emotional age, much younger than the biological age. And what sort of form might these expressions of behavior take? Well, you may have a child who, for example, if you think about an older child stealing, you might be horrified by that and think, my goodness, he's a thief. But actually, if you took a toddler to the supermarket and they came home with a tangerine in the push chair, you'd probably think, well, that's quite normal developmentally for a toddler. So it's about viewing things through that sort of lens, so it could be something like throwing a tantrum. Or even lying as many of our children do, whereas, again, if we think about toddlers, they live in this fantasy world. I certainly wouldn't consider my toddler grandchild who tells me that she's a princess who lives in a castle. I wouldn't consider that she was lying, but actually that's her way of expressing her fantasy world. Now, I'm well aware that there's also the role of shame and the negative internal work in model of the child that causes them to lie. But if we're thinking about just the developmental, emotional developmental age of the child, we may see many of those toddler behaviors, that if a toddler was doing it, we'd think, well, that's perfectly normal at that age. But when we see an older child behaving in such a way, we're aghast, you know, it becomes a big issue. We don't really know what to do about it. You say we don't really know what to do about it, but of course, there are ways and means to help them catch up. How do you help them then develop to the point where they've caught up? Yes. Well, I think it's a very important thing that we, as soon as we begin to look after a child from trauma, that we view them through the lens of a toddler in many ways, that doesn't mean to say that we're going to speak to them as if their baby's all the time, but we carry that constant awareness alongside us of the developmental and emotional age of the child. So we need to allow a child to regress. And when I say we don't know what to do, really, I think many parents say I don't know where to begin. I don't know what that looks like. How do I begin to meet those are developmental needs? And I believe that they make themselves known via the child's behaviour. So one quick example of that might be that the child cannot sleep through the night. The child keeps waking up, getting out of the bed, et cetera. Now, we could say that something bad may have happened to them when they're in their bedroom. We could say that they're frightened, but actually it may just be that nobody got up to them in the night when they were babies. So therefore they have not got a well-developed sense of object permanence, which is the knowledge that even though I can't see my parent, I know they still exist. So then we would put some strategies in around actually going back and doing for that child what should have happened to them when they were tiny. So you perhaps could have a 12-year-old biologically. And actually you've set time aside, perhaps three times a night to get up and go in and just touch them and let them know that you're still there and that you haven't forgotten about them. You don't even have to wake the child. But the child will have this knowledge that you've been into their room. Some parents choose to put a little tick chart on the wall so that particularly if the child is fostered, so that they know that the foster parent has been in the room. Of course, all of this is done with the agreement of social workers and with the agreement of the child. So we are thinking also about the fact that many of our children developmentally have missed out on the experience of co-regulation, which is where they are regulated by a mostly regulated adult. And so I often use the analogy of a radiator and that a radiator without a thermostat doesn't work very well. And the child needs the parent to become their thermostat. So it may be something more general, for example, how can I become the regulatory figure for my child? How do I keep myself regulated in order to do that? Or it may be I need to work on a specific area of need that's not a specific developmental stage. So it sounds quite complex, but I firmly believe that the child will give you that information via the behaviour. And what is the COECT doing or offering that would be helpful to people listening now as to how to cope with these situations? Well, other than the books that we've written together, there are also many webinars that we offer and training. We have our listening circles at the NATP where parents who are parenting children from trauma can get together and support each other through these things. We've just written a new book that's due to come out in August of this year and I personally have written a tool called the Developmental Foundation Planner, which will enable supporting professionals to come alongside parents and to devise a very bespoke plan for an individual child thinking about their history and the behaviours that they are seeing in the children to work out a way of meeting the needs for that individual child. So there's lots of things that we are already offering and there are many things in the pipeline. Yes, I'm just thinking that a customized package in a way would be the ideal way to treat these problems, wouldn't it? And it sounds like the COECT has really got some good ideas. Yes, and I've just written this tool, which I think will be very helpful for parents because it gives them a map of where to begin and where to go and to be supported through that. It's going to be called the Developmental Foundation Planner. It's about relaying that foundation. Well, that's something I'm sure we'll be doing a podcast edition on in the future to talk through in more detail. But to go back then to our theme of today, the emotional age of the child, you talked about sort of regressive behaviours. And I'm thinking how, you know, sometimes when you're outside in the street, in the supermarket, and you see children behaving sort of so, well, in normal terms, you see them behaving badly. And it's so like embarrassing for the parent. They feel they're being judged left, right, and centre. How are they supposed to cope then? What form could those regressive behaviours take in public? And how should they be dealt with? Yes. Well, just to go back to what you said a moment ago, it's very difficult for her parents. Extremely, which is one of the reasons we set up the NAVPP. Because, you know, many of our parents fought very isolated. And as you say, judged, misunderstood, and blamed. So, if you're in the supermarket, this child, of course, may have a sensory overload going on as well. There may be too much information to take in for the child. So, if you think of a toddler emotionally, and they become overwhelmed, they may have a tantrum. They may throw themselves on the floor. They stop kicking and screaming and crying. But when they're two, and people around you see that happening, well, you know, you might get the odd eye roll, but in the main, people understand that that's appropriate. When you've got a 12-year-old doing it or a 9-year-old, you are going to find that very difficult, not only because of judgment for others, but also around containing the child, because of the size of the child. So, I think that the way that we need to manage that is to be aware of it and to plan in advance. So, a lot of this is not so much about being reactionary, but being proactive around recognizing what might be a trigger for your child. So, if we were just to use the supermarket example, perhaps we would go when there were less people, maybe we may not even take that child chopping at all if it were possible. But if we were out, and this happened, you know, and nobody was prepared for it, and there was some form of trigger, the child became overwhelmed, then it's about us remaining regulated. And I use the analogy that we have to have a skin-like an elephant and a heart like a marshmallow. We've got to let a lot of stuff bounce off us. You've got to have a very thick skin when parenting a child from trauma, and yet you've got to keep this warm, unconnected heart for the child, understanding that their behaviour is a result of what's happened to them or what they've not had. And that's a big ask of a parent. And what we've recognised at the COCT is that parents cannot do that in isolation. They absolutely can't, you know, we know about compassion for teague, but the most important thing for us to know is that there are other people who get it. Yeah, yeah. And so we've talked then about the emotional delay that, you know, a traumatised child experiences. But what about the other delays that come into play here, that physically, for example, are such children often held back physically too by their experiences? Oh, yes. Absolutely, many of our children are. Just recently, I worked with a boy who came into care at about seven. And he's now 15, and he still looks at like he's about nine years old. He's very small in stature. And we know that touch produces growth hormones. And obviously, it's quite clear that this child, and we know from his history, in fact, it's not guesswork, that he hasn't had a lot of human contact. He hasn't been held very much. You know, he hasn't been hugged and cuddled and soothed. So we might find the child is quite small in stature now. Personally, I'm very tall, and I've always been tall, but I have quite bad arthritis because when I went to my last foster parent, and had lots and lots of hugs and affection, I grew a couple of feet in just over a year. And so there is still some problems as a result of that. So we might find as well that they haven't learned to walk properly. They may have problems with their gates. They may have problems with coordination. There are lots of things that are affected when those needs aren't met. And that might also then mean that their social and cognitive developments are held back. Oh, most definitely. We often find particularly when children are at school that they just cannot interact with their peers in the same way that a neurotypical child might do. So there are lots of problems with friendships and other children because they don't have those social skills. And if you think about it, if you've got a child who perhaps emotionally is about two years old, and they are mixing with eight-year-olds, well, the eight-year-olds are going to find this child quite strange and so often you find the child will be either a bit of a loner or will be drawn to other children with such needs, which was certainly my experience. Or they become quite controlling of their friendships and want to own the friends. So it really is very difficult for the children because they struggle to not just make friendships, lasting friendships, and certainly authentic ones, but to maintain them. And then the cognitive side of things. Again, many of our children are quite behind a school. Of course, not all of them, but that's for another podcast, but just to say that many of them are because if you're in a state of survival all day at school, you're not even accessing the front part of your brain. You are waiting for the next bad thing to happen. And there's all the sensory information going on. How on earth do you learn? It's impossible. So, you know, I left school with nothing, you know, took me to my 30s to begin to catch up. So it really does, I feel, impact in so many areas of our children's lives. And they are very misunderstood because, you know, a serenity says they look so normal. They look like you're rather a seven-year-old child, but actually they're not. And I always think we need to shrink that child in our mind's eye. From the adoptive parent's point of view, as they begin to help their child fulfill some or all of their potential in a therapeutic parenting setting, will the emotional, the physical, the social, and the cognitive developments, will they all grow at the same pace? Well, can you not expect that to be the case? You really can't expect that to be the case. There is a real fragmentation of our children. You know, I often think about our child as a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. So there may be sort of socially four or five. They could be educationally seven or eight. They may be emotionally two or three. Biologically, they're 12. So any given moment, the parent has to think about where their child is at in all of those areas. So they're never going to catch up all together and they may not catch up completely. I don't even think that I have really. But we can certainly get to a place where a lot of it heals and we can catch up in many areas and the rest of it you learn to manage. And that's the most important thing. I suppose it might not be that a traumatized child comes across as young for their age. I imagine in some instances they can seem to be much more mature. What should be done then? Should the child be helped to revisit their childhood, do you think? Yes, I absolutely do believe that. I don't think that we should wait for the child to show us their unmet needs to show us their emotional aid. I think that we, unless proven otherwise, need to assume that. Because otherwise we could fail our child. We may think they're OK when they're not. If we think of the child in three parts, we have the emotional and developmental age of the child, which is often toddler and under. I know I'm generalizing there, but more often than not, that's what we see. Then we have the biological or chronological age of the child, perhaps that child might be seven or eight. So they may have been alive for seven or eight years, but they haven't lived in the way we would want them for seven or eight years. And then we have the experiential age of the child, which is what they've been through, what they've experienced, what they've seen, what's happened to them. If you think of a child who's had perhaps been adopted a little bit later on, they may have actually witnessed and experienced many things in their life that thankfully the vast majority of adults would never have to go through. So that child has to survive life. And the only way they can do that is to become an adult, is to be a little adult to survive life. My experience of being one of those children and also of working with these children for many, many years is that they usually kind of move between those different parts, the smallest part of the child is the biological part of the child, but they move between, you know, adult and toddler. And they kind of in and out of those phases or somewhere in between. So if you think about Rosie and being, you know, acting as though she was much older. - This is, we're talking now about. - Serenace's eldest child, mentioned in our books. - Yes. - What we would have seen there is a child who had to be an adult to survive life. That doesn't then mean that the younger part of her is okay. So in answer to your question, we need to find ways to enable that older child to revisit the younger parts of self. How do we do that again by offering ourselves as that regulatory figure to the child, noticing and therapeutic parenting helps us to do that? Because even with some of the behaviors of our older children, where we might think, you know, they're behaving as if they're much older. Actually, if you really look at it, their behaviors that could easily be attributed to a toddler yet again, defiance and control, anger, that sort of stuff. - And what specific steps then do you imagine could be taken to help a child revisit their childhood? What would you do? - One of the things when I give consultancy, particularly to foster parents, I work with many adopters and foster parents, is that we've got to seek ways to enable regression where it's not readily available to us. In other words, where the child is not showing us those needs, we've got to create ways for that child to have those needs met. So that might be, could be some simple things, like making sure that we spend lots of time with that child, that we get them to help us to do things, that we seek ways to meet needs. A small example of that is memory games, no playing memory games with an older child. There are so many things that you're able to do there, the child wouldn't even be aware of. Not getting caught up in arguments with a child, not getting caught up in debates, making sure that you're very aware that what might be coming out of their mouth, in fact, isn't representative of what they're actually feeling, to recognize the small child within behind the child. Much of this is actually about the parent's continual awareness of the very little person inside the bigger child. It's so important that we stop judging the children's behavior as much as we possibly can, particularly as supporting professionals, and judging parents who struggle with such behaviors, children from trauma are extremely difficult to look after. It takes a lot for a parent to keep going with some of these behaviors. It's very difficult. When you've got a small toddler doing these things, they're much easier to contain. When you've got a 15 or 16-year-old behavior in this way, it is extremely difficult for our parents. So I think what I want to say really is, let's do all we can to remove judgment and to dilute the need, if you like, to fix. And sometimes what we just need to do is just to be there for the parent, just to hear them and support them so that they can continue to be there for their child. - Thank you, Sarah. I'm sure this will have helped many listening parents to understand the motivating factor behind the way their child or children are expressing their emotional age and how to cope with it. It's invaluable the advice that you've given. - Thank you. To find out more about COECT and to access help, please visit www.coect.co.uk or head straight for the Facebook page where you can get answers 24/7, including at weekends and on public holidays. The Facebook link is either at the end of the Daily Bulletin emailed by COECT to you or in the show notes to this podcast episode. The podcast is listed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and many others. Find us on one of those sites and you'll also find the subscribe button to press to automatically receive this podcast every week. We'd love you to leave a review for the podcast on one of those sites. It'll help other people find us and find all our helpful advice. Bye for now. (soft music)