While my adopted son is now 14, my first up-close and personal experience with a traumatized teen was in my classroom.
A few years ago, I had an adopted 15-year-old in my English as a Second Language (ESL) class. I’ll call him Vlad for anonymity.
Vlad had recently been adopted from Russia by a sweet, slightly older Christian couple whose other two adult children had already flown from the nest into independence. Vlad’s mom felt called to adopt him after visiting his orphanage several times on missions trips.
She knew that if they didn’t adopt him, he would age out of the system and be left to fend for himself on the streets. Vlad knew this, too, so he was doing everything he could to toughen himself up for the transition.
I met Vlad at his home in the summer only a few weeks after he came to live with his new parents in Ohio. He had no English at all and was terrified with the thought of coming to school for enrollment and placement tests — in fact, he rarely even came up out of the basement.
So, I did a home visit at first, just to get him qualified for ESL services. Then, I became his tutor to give him a jump start before the beginning of the school year. This started a long and very close relationship with his mom.
Adoptive parents – I highly recommend that you invite a trusted teacher to visit your child and family at home. There is something magical that happens in the parent-teacher relationship when we meet on family turf instead of school turf.
I think it would have been much harder for me to understand and teach Vlad effectively if I had never seen what his parents were dealing with.
Vlad was extremely challenging to parent and to teach because he was just so absolutely terrified of everything. He kept screaming, “I hate America! I hate English!” the first few days of our “tutoring” sessions, until he finally realized that I was not a threat.
Eventually, we developed a good teacher-student rapport after a month or so, and then he was in my classroom as a freshman.
The first day of school, he drew a big capital letter “A” with a circle on my chalkboard — the symbol for “Anarchy” — which is popular among disadvantaged and orphaned Russian youth.
He was dressed head to toe in black, with chains around his waist. Everyone was scared of him.
My maternal instinct kicked in right away, and all I wanted to do was pat him on the head, wrap him up in a soft blanket, and give him cookies and milk.
Vlad learned English pretty quickly, but his behaviors screamed TRAUMA on a daily basis. His angry temper would flare from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds, and he often had conflicts with others in the classroom.
Just about every day, we’d have a behavior episode in class, and I would take him out into the hallway for a a time of calm and brief check in — away from the eyes of his peers — to help him regulate in order to settle back in to the learning activity.
Vlad was a tough kid and wanted to keep that label for protection and survival. That first year in the U.S., he was angry, obnoxious, difficult, racist, sexist, and broke most of the school rules within the first six months.
But underneath all that prickly exterior act was a frightened, hurting, traumatized little boy. I saw it, when others didn’t. And he knew that I saw it. So he trusted me. Which meant that I became his favorite teacher. He is also one of my favorite students of all time. His mom and I emailed each at least three or four times a week, every week.
I was Vlad’s English teacher for four years and watched him graduate with a high school diploma – an amazing accomplishment for a kid who used to skip classes in Russia so that he could go beat up alcoholic homeless people for entertainment.
Over the course of four years, I saw an amazing transformation in this tough, traumatized teen. His mom and dad never gave up. I never gave up. And he eventually came along for the ride, because we refused to give up on him and he started to see himself as maybe,
just maybe being worthy of having a little happiness and success. His parents and I are so very proud of him!
Watching and being involved in helping Vlad build wings of transformation and relationship with his adoptive family also helped inspire me to become an adoptive mom. I owe so much to them for teaching me about trauma and the healing power of loving connection.
Vlad told me that he tried to kill himself in Russia — more than once. He didn’t see a future for himself there. He felt worthless. Like garbage.
I know that my daughter feels this way often, too.
Teens already have so much difficulty with self-esteem and fitting in with peers – add a history of trauma, neglect, abuse, and abandonment – and you have a recipe for potential disaster. It takes a very strong parent and a village of caring adults to help re-build this crumbling foundation of self worth.
I’ve learned a few strategies over the years of working with teens in my classroom and now with my daughter as a mom. There are some key essentials to building the kind of relationship that I had with Vlad and now with my daughter. And while I don’t always have that warm “cookies and milk” feeling at first when she is being ugly towards me, I try very hard to look deep below the behavior to her heart when she is being rude, obnoxious, and generally hard to connect with.
Based on my experiences and observations, here’s what I think teens really want and what we can do as their parents to build a loving, lasting connection:
1. MODEL RESPECT
Teens do not want to be TOLD what to do. They want to be INSPIRED to be better people.
Let go of the need to nag and demand better behavior. Instead, model respectful behaviors toward them and pour as much love and caring attention as you can into them all day, every day. This will earn their respect. Once you have that, then they will want to please you.
Intrinsic motivation to be a good person and do the right thing is the prize that I am working towards in all my parenting efforts – not simple obedience based on fear and false demands for respect.
2. LAUGH
Once you get to know them, teens are actually very funny. They do some of the goofiest things and can be very witty and quite hilarious when relaxed and in a good mood!
Teens really want to see their parents and teachers having a good time and being silly and goofy, too. This is a wonderful way to playfully engage with them.
Sometimes all it takes is a silly facial expression to send my daughter into fits of laughter. It is SO good for both of us to find the humor and just let loose once in awhile. They key is not to take everything so seriously and to look for silliness wherever you can find it.
3. FILL THE LOVE TANK
A great place to start when building a connection with anyone, including your teen, is to learn and practice using their love languages, a concept Gary Chapman made popular in his books and other materials on the topic.
The basic idea is to find out what makes a person feel special, even if it’s not what makes you feel special, and give them what they want and need. It’s about learning how to fill the love tank the way that person was divinely designed to be filled.
The Five Love Languages are: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch.
While most people have one or two dominant love languages, I’ve noticed that many adopted teens and other teens with childhood trauma are absolutely
starving for all five expressions of loving affection and attention.
I make an extremely conscious and proactive effort to include all five expressions of love in my daughter’s day – from the moment she wakes up in the morning until the moment she puts her head down on her pillow at night.
If we are not engaged in an activity together, I will also check in on her deliberately to pour a little love into her love tank – about every 20-30 minutes or so.
This could be a quick “I Love You!” or “Thanks for putting your dishes away! You are so helpful!” to a hug or fist bump, to just sitting with her and rubbing her feet, to giving her a small and inexpensive gift or running out to grab a surprise ice cream for her.
When I am SHOWERING my love and attention on her at all hours of the day, she feels so loved and cherished and taken care of.
One of my favorite things to say and that I have found very effective in building her trust is, “I love taking care of you!” This child who was not taken care of appropriately as a baby and toddler is so very desperate to know that she is cherished and taken care of.
4. UNDERSTAND AND NURTURE DEVELOPMENTAL GAPS
Traumatized kids and teens are seldom at the same developmental stages as their peers. My 14-year old often acts much younger than others her age, and her emotional age can range and fluctuate all the way on a scale from infancy to age 14 even within the span of an hour.
So in all of my interactions with her, I first have to observe her closely to determine what developmental age and stage she is operating from.
If I observe that she is an emotional 14-year old in this very moment, I might ask her to help with the laundry. If, however, she is clearly at the emotional level of a 3-year old, I would not. Instead, I might cuddle her for a bit or give her a snack if she is hungry.
It’s kind of like the old advice about getting on a stage to do a speech or performance and imagining all the audience members in their underwear. It’s a mindset thing.
If I can imagine my child as a three-year-old, or even as a hungry infant in a wet diaper, my reaction to a particular irritating or disrespectful behavior is going to be VERY different and much more empathetic than if I keep the expectation that she is always operating from a healthy, normally developed, 14-year-old brain.
This is crucial when the child is in a meltdown, tantrum, or violent rage. It is extremely important to quickly imagine that this is a very tiny, helpless baby who doesn’t even know how to articulate effectively what she needs.
Help her regulate, then meet her needs. Do not expect her to use her cognitive brain when she is not able to access it. Re-parent that baby first.
5. FORGIVE
This is a biggie. It’s the hardest one to do, too. And you’ll get more loving connection mileage out of this one than all the others combined.
Our teens are going to do some awful, exasperating things. All teens do. It’s their job to individuate from their parents, so they make dumb mistakes all the time in trying new things and being themselves to the best of their developing brains’ abilities.
Our adopted teens are most likely going to do some even worse things than what typical teens do. They’ve been through some traumas in life that have made them more vulnerable and at-risk to all sorts of dangers.
We need to protect them and prevent as much damage as we can, but also be realistic and understand that some bad things are going to happen. A family heirloom might get broken during a rage. (Might want to put the rest in storage for a few years.) Some ugly, horrible things might be said.
Our teens might engage in behaviors that shock and disappoint us. They will often hurt our feelings. Sometimes they are even violent towards us.
It’s such a hard road for adoptive parents, and when they are well-attached, it’s even worse because they feel comfortable enough to let their guards down and show the ugly side.
What do we do about all this? Keep score, throw our own tantrums in retaliation, punish and humiliate them, and build walls around our hearts for protection? This is what some parents do.
But the really BRAVE parents
forgive. Not in a wishy-washy “oh well, that’s life” kind of way – in a deliberate, sacrificial act of courage that defines their entire world view of love and humanity.
It’s nearly impossible to forgive when you have been hurt over and over again. But if you want to heal a traumatized teen’s heart, it is what you must do. You let go of all the anger and pain, and you move forward with love and forgiveness. It is absolutely transformative.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had to forgive my child for all the pain and damage his trauma behaviors have inflicted on me, my pets, my cherished belongings, my home, my health, and my career. His trauma has come through our home like a forest fire and cleared everything in its path.
Neither of us will ever be the same. We are growing a completely new forest of love and deep-heart connection together.
And we are both SO MUCH BETTER human beings than we ever were before.
———————–
Want information on how to become a Trauma-Informed Specialist, Educational Trainer, or Parent Coach? Check out our
Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification Program.