Being A Parent Is Not Easy

One day I will wake up and everything will be different, less complicated. Right now, though, life feels so overwhelming; like I am barely keeping my head above water.

Being a parent is not easy.

So often I ask myself: “Am I a bad mom?”

Despite the basic instinct to share only the highlight reel as a means of preserving dignity or to camouflage the truth, everyone is fighting a battle that no one else sees or understands.

A recent Instagram post from @fleurdelisspeaks said: “Many of us are having a hard time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just know that you are not alone, sweet friend. You are loved & cared for. #fleurdelisspeaks”

As a means of catharsis – and to possibly help someone else feel less alone – I’d like to share more about my iceberg; my struggles as an adoptive parent.

My husband and I are adoptive parents of three amazing kids. Like I said before, being a parent is hard. But as I talked about in a post about our foster care adoption story, raising someone else’s kids who have suffered trauma, have been ripped from their home with little more than the clothes on their back, and battling possible (probable) physical, mental, and/or emotional distress because of it all is absolutely hard! *I encourage you to read that post to get more background.

My adoptive son (“H”), who came into our care at the age of eight, recently turned twelve. A lot of foster/adoptive children struggle with transition, but my son has never had difficulty with that. For him, settling has been the hard part. Three and a half years seems like a long time, but to a kid who spent nearly eight years with an entirely different family, experiencing abuse and neglect, the three and a half years he has spent with us is nothing. Unlearning behaviors and rewiring the brain takes much more time and really tough work.

Trauma affects the brain. Per the Institute of Child Psychology, trauma is the leading cause of mental health disorders in the world and a catalyst for depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, personality disorders, attachment disorders, and attention related issues, etc. Trauma-induced changes to the brain can result in varying degrees of cognitive impairment and emotional dysregulation. Here is an info-graph the Institute of Child Psychology shared on Instagram explaining more about how trauma impacts the brain.

This directly relates to the difficulties my family is experiencing.

We were not blindsided. We knew going into foster parenting that there would be hardships associated with trauma parenting. We had some basic training on how to handle various “common” behaviors in children of trauma. However, in my opinion, having trauma-informed parenting knowledge and executing/acting with that knowledge are two completely different things.

Having a child who is struggling doesn’t make you a bad parent, just as being a child who is struggling doesn’t make your child a bad kid.” -Ann Douglas

As parents, my husband and I have tried our best. That’s all you can do, right!? We take H to therapy, have gotten him on medication, have taken him for additional testing, and utilize tools/techniques recommended by his medical providers. We read books and listen to podcasts on trauma parenting and children with difficult behaviors. We try every day to forge a connection despite H’s reluctancy or push-back.

As much as I wish “all you need is love” was true, we have been learning (the hard way) that getting past trauma takes far more than love.

Unfortunately, the need for mental health care far exceeds the resources currently available. We have been lucky enough to have some treatment options, including cognitive behavior therapy and medication management, but we have been also on wait lists for family therapy for over a year and were recently added to wait lists for dialectical behavior therapy and something called “wraparound services,” a collaborative effort between the state and local behavioral healthcare professionals to provide more intense, in-home treatment options geared towards the individual needs of the child and their family.

I can’t imagine how things would be if we didn’t have access to any services at all. My heart goes out to those families that have struggled to find the necessary or affordable mental and behavioral healthcare they need.

Nine times out of ten, the story behind the misbehavior won’t make you angry it will break your heart.” -Annette Breaux

My son’s biological family history is heartbreaking. He witnessed and experienced worse things than most adults could even handle. His feelings are very much valid, but his behaviors at home because of those feelings are not okay.

It is possible to feel compassion for my son and his past while also creating and maintaining strong boundaries to help him learn what are not acceptable ways of expressing his feelings.

At the same time, I am a human. I am allowed to feel all of the sadness, disappointment, anger, frustration, and fear that his trauma responses and behaviors associated with his diagnoses evoke, and my feelings are also valid.

Being human makes me vulnerable. I cannot feel “okay” about my child physically hurting me, my husband, or his defenseless four year old sisters because he is mad or told ‘no.’ I cannot feel “okay” about my child threatening physical harm to death upon us. I cannot feel “okay” about false claims of abuse as a form of intimidation to get material items that he could use as a band-aid for his pain. I cannot feel “okay” after hours of dysregulation that physically and mentally exhaust every member of the household. None of these behaviors are okay.

Over the last several months, I have developed secondary trauma (my own trauma response as an answer to his trauma responses, for which I now treat with therapy myself). I now have fight-or-flight responses to his aggression and violence because I am only human and human instinct tells me that I need to protect myself, my toddlers, and my husband.

Trauma creates trauma. It’s a truly vicious cycle.

What can feel even harder sometimes is knowing most people never see this side of H; the side that’s hidden beneath the surface of the water. The tip of the iceberg that’s above water reveals a generally happy, smiley kid with fantastic grades in school, plenty of friends, kindness, curiosity, willingness to help, respect, and more. I almost never hear anything but praise from teachers, parents of friends, and extended family when he spends time alone with them. On one hand, I am thankful others see what a good kid he can be, but on the other hand, I just wish he would treat us – his family – the same way.

I know our home is his “safe space;” that’s normal for most kids. I don’t expect perfection or anything even close to it. But there’s a difference between feeling comfortable enough to “be himself” and the behaviors we see that make safety for the other members of the house a huge concern.

He spent nearly eight years surrounded by chaos, witnessing and experiencing abuse and neglect, and that’s the type of environment he has created in our home because that was his normal and what he thought a home should be like. Chaos feels like home to him.

At this point I don’t care who I disappoint. My whole life I was worried about what others felt about me. What people say, how family feels, etc. Once you realize people are going to talk regardless of what you do then you’ll free yourself. Don’t built a prison in your mind trying to please people.” -@M_ainfeelings

After three and a half years with little improvement and a rapid escalation around his birthday, I reached a breaking point. We needed more help.

After a particularly rough night with more than two hours of extreme dysregulation that included physical violence and verbal threats to set the house on fire with us in it to “just be done with it all”, I made a tough decision to take H to the emergency department for a mental health check due to safety concerns and worsening aggression/violence.

My heart shattered into a thousand pieces that night.

What mother wants this for their child?!

After admitting to wanting to harm us when he didn’t get his way and more, H was referred to an acute psychiatric facility.

Again, what mother wants this for their child?!

He didn’t ask for this life. He was a victim of abuse and neglect. The love of my husband and I was not enough to help him because his past trauma opened the doors to aggression, oppositional defiant disorder, adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance of conduct and emotions, and reactive attachment disorder.

As hard as it was driving him to a psychiatric hospital nearly three hours away, I don’t regret it. I don’t have mom guilt for trying to help my son. I am, however, sure that neither he nor I will be the same because of it. I am also sure I will be judged for “letting it get to that point” or “not lightening up on the kid” or some other form of criticism by someone who has never walked a step in my shoes.

He spent two weeks at the acute facility. In the end they wanted to refer him to a residential facility (which happened to be multiple states away due to lack of resources in our own state). We wanted to give him the chance to come home before resorting to a residential facility.

Things were not magically fixed. Obviously. No one expected a cure-all after two weeks at a facility where he was the target and instigator of violence, had little time and a complete lack of willingness to work through his feelings, and learned more coping skills that he doesn’t care to use (which we already experienced at home after several years in cognitive behavioral therapy and being told by his counselor that he knows coping skills/how to use them/when to use them but is choosing not to use them).

With things still strained, if not more so, and continued threats, after just two short days, I took him back to the emergency department following a conversation with the acute facility he was just released from who advised he was “too difficult on the unit” to be accepted back and recommended the ED for immediate assistance and seeking a residential stay long term.

Talk about feeling hopeless.

He and I spent the next four days in the ED on a psych hold while they searched for another acute facility bed. Thankfully, the psych team that met with us worked super hard to get him to a decent point with the help of medication to where we felt safe bringing him home.

Safety has been the longstanding biggest focus in the home.

With the medication additions and physical safety measures to the house (combination lock boxes for knives, lighters/matches locked away, extra cameras, and the addition of alarms to the little kids’ bedroom doors), we felt we could handle him returning home rather than continue to stay in the ED on a psych hold until an acute facility bed was available.

Since coming home, again, things are still not wonderful. We are working to help him build a connection with us and gain “felt safety” (which is totally different than actual safety to a child of trauma) while also trying to teach him how to be angry and work through his feelings in a way that doesn’t put anyone in the home at risk.

Don’t wait for things to get better. Life will always be complicated. Learn to be happy right now, otherwise you’ll run out of time.” -unknown

We still have a long road and a lot of work ahead of us.

Just yesterday, H tried to pull me down the stairs (in a harmful manner) as I tried to enforce a boundary. Later in the evening, I still took the short time between him and his sisters going to bed to have one-on-one quality time with him, in an effort to help build a bond, despite my own feelings of anger and sadness and overwhelm from him trying to hurt me earlier in the day.

But that’s part of being a parent, right!? …being selfless!?

It’s tough!

I absolutely need to prioritize my own mental health, but as an emotionally immature twelve year old who didn’t ask for his circumstance, I also need to be available to help him as well. It’s not easy juggling these things. I’m trying to fill his cup while mine is being quickly drained. It’s a struggle! And let’s not forget that I have two four year olds that need attention and love and to be kept safe while big brother relearns how to be angry.

Our family is very much a work-in-progress.

As I get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday out of town with my husband’s large family, I am hoping to find peace rather than the chaos I’m anticipating. Holidays, birthdays, and trauma anniversaries are particularly troublesome, recurring, chaotic days.

In sharing all of this with you, I am also hoping to find true support, free of judgment while offering my own support if you’re struggling too.

My husband and I are just trying our best…doing what the therapists, counsels, physicians, psychiatrists, etc. have advised over the last three and a half years. Growth is not linear, so all we can really do is keep trucking along.

All I ask is that until you live in these shoes, please refrain from judging why we seem “too uptight” (because we have to walk on eggshells while still maintaining structure and holding our boundaries, per every therapists’ guidance), why we don’t usually cook to allow for seconds (because one of his Rx has brought him within 5 mg/dl for cholesterol on a lipid panel and .4% from prediabetic levels on a HGA1C test, and a drastic [for him] weight gain in less than a month’s time in addition to trying to teach him healthy limits for his impulse control, knowing food insecurity was never an issue in past or present), why we choose to have him use plastic plates/bowls/cups (because meal time with family is a trigger and has resulted in physical rage), why we strictly limit screentime (because screens were a babysitter for years while bio family did unthinkable things in his presence or screens were used by bio family to shut him up so his hyperactivity wouldn’t annoy them and because when screens are offered now, he still becomes super aggressive after), etc.

No one truly knows what another person is going through, and judgments/assumptions/unsolicited advice only make things worse.

If you’re going through something similar, as isolating as it can feel, just know you are not alone.

I’m thankful for so much support – from my parents, in-laws, extended family, to friends, my therapist, H’s medical providers, and more.

I’m learning to lean on those supports, slowly but surely, because self-care isn’t selfish and asking for help does not make me a bad parent.

And for the record, this was very hard for me to write. No one really enjoys “airing their dirty laundry,” and mental health talk still comes with a stigma.

There’s so much more to our story, as is the same for anyone. I encourage you to look beyond the surface, offer meaningful support or less judgment to others, and take care of your own self throughout your struggles as best you can.

If you need help, SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders – Call: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)