How Positive Safe Relationships Can Help Guide Your Child with Trauma Toward Healing
My direct experience with my children with trauma has taught me a lot about childhood trauma. I learned that trauma is a real brain injury, and while you can’t see it, it can be debilitating if left without proper care and healing treatment. Because of this direct experience, I learned how healing occurs and that every child with trauma has three questions they need answered.
In this article, we’ll look at those three questions your child with trauma needs answered and how you can answer or address those questions.
The 3 Questions Every Child with Trauma Needs Answered
Trauma is the breaking of trust. Whether it’s neglect or abuse, your child has experienced a loss of safety and trust with the adults in their lives. This makes it hard to trust others and to develop healthy relationships.
Every child with trauma needs these three questions answered by the adults in their life:
- Do you love me?
- Can I trust you?
- Can you help me?
How to Answer These Questions Your Child with Trauma Has
Answering your child isn’t simply stating yes to these three questions. You have to prove to your child the answers are yes. Remember, your child has difficulty trusting adults because of their traumatic experiences, and once that’s broken, it’s not easy to trust again.
So what can you do?
While it’s simple to explain, it can be difficult to do. The simple part of answering these three questions and helping your child heal from their trauma is focusing on Positive Safe Relationships (PSR) in every aspect of your child’s life, but particularly with you, the parent.
It’s important to remember as a parent that it’s about your relationship with your child, not about controlling your child. Trying to control your child through rewards and punishment only furthers their distrust of adults. Because they have lost trust, they will automatically reject your authority, only continuing to strain your relationship.
Instead, offering compassion and connection is what helps your child understand that you love them, that they can trust you, and that you can help them. Innately, children want to please their parents or caregivers. But they want to do it when they know they are loved, respected, and can be helped by the adults in their life.
So What is PSR and How Does It Work?
Positive Safe Relationships, or PSR, is focusing on creating a safe, loving, and compassionate relationship with your child. It requires love, hope, and empathy.
Showing empathy to your child with trauma is the ultimate way to convey to your child that you can relate to them. Empathy is expressing that you understand what your child is feeling and letting them know that these feelings are valid. Do not dismiss your child’s feelings as this will only cause further mistrust and therefore, they won’t see you as someone they can come to for help.
If your child is dysregulated when they come to you for help, be sure to help them regulate. Allow them time to calm down by heading to a quiet space, doing deep breathing, or giving them a fidget toy. Remember, it should always be a calming experience coming to you for help, as this is what will allow them to move to the next step when a problem arises.
To show your child there is hope, you must guide them on their healing path. After your child is regulated and you have established empathy, you will then be able to find the real reason behind why your child is upset or displaying unwanted behaviors. Only after finding the underlying cause of their behaviors and emotions can you actually address the problem or use redirection.
Remember to allow your child a sense of control. This could be helping them decide what the next step is in a problem after brainstorming ideas together, or if you are redirecting their attention, giving them a choice of a new activity to do. Allowing them to have a sense of control in their life helps them feel more safe and secure. Also, never force your child to do something they aren’t ready to do.
Finally, you have to offer your child unconditional love no matter what. This lets your child know that no matter what they do, there will always be someone that loves and supports them.
Key Takeaways
Your child with trauma needs love, safety, and help. By focusing on building a Positive Safe Relationship with them, you can not only answer those three questions, but help guide them on their path toward healing. You can build a healthy and positive relationship with your child by focusing on providing them empathy, hope, and unconditional love.
Remember, each child’s path toward healing trauma is unique and personal. Never push your child to heal faster than they are willing. You are there to guide them and allow them to heal in their own time. Your child must be the hero of their own story. No one can do their healing for them, but by creating a safe, positive relationship with your child, you can help them begin to heal and flourish!
Want a more in-depth look at how to use Positive Safe Relationships to help your child heal? Check out my book, Where Do We Go From Here?, which provides adoptive parents an in-depth guide to helping their children heal from trauma through PSR.
