I’ve been reading and digesting Focal Point for two months now, feeling as if they must have taken notes from my house alone. The entire issue is devoted to traumatic stress and 38 of my 39 children fall squarely into that category. One does not lose one’s initial caretaker and not feel stress; most of my children were also abused and neglected.

My birth daughter and I have absorbed much of their stress, we’ve become nearly as traumatized after all these years of going between our family’s gratitude, resentment, happiness, grief and ten million other emotions, it has beat us both down over the years.

Moments of pure, unadulterated joy also occur. Watching her son play happily with my children and grandchildren has certainly been priceless, yet she, her son and her husband have also been exposed to black moods and vicious statements that families untouched by trauma will never experience.

In my readings today I find that

“studies of children in foster care suggest at least 50% meet criteria for a mental health diagnosis. Often, these difficulties are related to trauma they have experienced.”

Each day I discover new depths of my children’s pain, indeed it is a very rare day, if ever, that we do not have someone lashing out either verbally or physically. Usually I try and consider the source, remember where they’ve come from, and usually concentrate on how far they have come emotionally over the years. Some days I am devastated by the barbs, especially those days when they seem to think it is acceptable to lash out at the only birth child, or at the three grandchildren that didn’t go through foster care. They seem to be resented for that omission in their lives, go figure.

I spend time searching for answers, for therapeutic intervention and for counseling. In my early years in the adoption world, I did not seek out the therapy that we may have needed. I found counseling for a raging teenager at the time, but in looking back I wish I had made it available to some other children whose behaviors were more subtle, yet were a cry for help that I missed.

I know that life is a journey, that we are all seeking solutions to daily problems. In the adoption of older children that need is critical. I find myself facing the oddest challenges at times; it is a suspiciously quiet day when I don’t get a phone call demanding my immediate attention.

I’d advise parents of raging children to seek out mental health care providers that hear them as well, that truly understand the parent’s side of parenting severely troubled children. This is a fairly new field, one that specifically targets children traumatized, not necessarily by foster care, but by the process that forced them to gain and lose caretakers, or did not protect them from abusers.

Make certain that your therapist understands that one fact. These are not regular children who misbehave; they are children who are acting out their response to their own personal trauma. That issue must be addressed, accepted and acknowledged before it can be helped.