How to Shift Your Parenting Approach to Promote Healing for Your Child with Trauma
The goal as a parent of a child with trauma is to help them heal from that trauma. But when we are new to this experience of caring for a child with trauma, our attempts at helping can instead hurt or make things worse. Even experienced parents can sometimes misstep in helping their child when that child is feeling a loss of control.
It’s important to remember that your child’s healing journey is about them and their unique needs. Keep in mind that healing requires shifting focus from enforcing rigid rules and instead to rebuilding emotional safety and connection. It is also key that you monitor your own emotional regulation, validate your child’s feelings, and seek professional guidance.
The Survival Response
Society and people who don’t understand the intricacy of childhood trauma have a tendency to label children with trauma as “bad kids.” Outbursts are seen as disrespecting authority or acting out.
But in actuality, your child’s outbursts are a survival response to their trauma, not defiance. When you understand this, it can be a turning point in your parenting style. Understanding that these behaviors are a survival response to trauma and that trauma has re-wired your child’s brain can help you move forward from feeling frustrated to understanding your child and connecting with them more.
Even after realizing this, it won’t be a sudden change overnight. Parents of children with trauma often share how difficult it is to navigate the balance between offering support and guiding your child toward healing. Many have seen their actions and efforts backfire.
Healing takes time and patience. In order to heal from trauma, your child has to literally work to re-wire their brain once again. It is difficult work. But it is also not something you can do for your child, as much as we’d love to make their time of struggle and hurt as short as possible. That is why it’s so important to move from blaming your child for their behaviors to that of understanding your child. It’s about focusing on creating a safe, healthy, and positive relationship with your child, so they can learn to form a healthy attachment with the parent.
How to Shift Your Approach
If you feel your current methods are just further agitating your child, it’s time to shift your approach. Here are some parenting strategies that you may find helpful in learning to parent your child with trauma.
- Prioritize Connection Over Compliance: We all want a child who learns to focus and work on what is in front of them, whether it is school work or chores. But when your child is in distress, focus on emotional comfort and bonding over enforcing chores, homework, or behavioral rules. Validating your child’s feelings and putting safety and comfort over following rigid rules can help your child feel safer, which promotes self-regulation. Only once your child is regulated will they have the ability to focus on other tasks.
- Re-Establish Predictability: Create a consistent daily routine. When your child knows what to expect, this can lower anxiety in a traumatized brain. Make use of visuals, keeping a calendar in a common area so that everyone is on the same page.
- Avoid Pressuring Them to Talk: Never pressure your child to talk about their trauma more than they are willing to. Your child needs to process their trauma at their own pace. Give them the space to express the worries, or even memories, they have through non-verbal outlets such as journaling, drawing, or play.
- Practice Co-Regulation: Children mirror their parents. So when you are not calm, they won’t be calm. Practice co-regulation, learning what helps you stay calm. When dealing with your child during a situation where they are displaying unwanted behaviors, stay calm and speak in a relaxed tone. It may help to offer activities that can help to both soothe and calm you both, such as reading or going on a walk together.
- Connect with Professional Resources: Finally, working with professionals in the child trauma field can be a great resource for you and your child. A trauma-informed therapist can help your child work through their trauma as well as help you better understand your child so you can parent them better.
Final Thoughts
Child trauma requires parents to shift how they view their child’s behaviors and their parenting style. Traditional forms of parenting that rely on requiring children to follow rigid rules can only serve to further traumatize your child. What your child really needs is understanding, patience, support, and love. Understanding that outbursts are a survival mechanism for your child can change everything. When you start with that understanding, you can shift your parenting to one that focuses on creating safe, positive relationships where you become a safe space for your child as they work through their trauma at their own pace.
Want to learn more about creating positive, safe relationships with your child to help them re-wire their brain? Learn more about both of our books that provide insight and knowledge for parents of children with trauma.
