Repair Over Rupture: Staying Connected When Caregiving Is Hard (with Dr. David Adams)

Renae: Well, hello, David. Thank you so much for joining us for the first TraumaWise Parenting Summit.

Dr. David: Yes, thank you so much for inviting me. And I'm so glad to be here to share with you guys.

Renae: Well, you know, you and I have been in the same spaces and places for the last number of years. Teaching in the same places. places. Serving in the same places, walking with people, and having similar lived experiences, and so I feel like I know quite a bit about you, but for those who are listening or watching who have not met you before, I'd love for you to introduce yourself.

Dr. David: Well, sure. I think my primary authority is being an adoptive parent of two teens. I have now, it's my 16th, my daughter's, Kayla's 16th birthday today, and then I also have an 18-year-old son, and I adopted them when they were seven and nine as a single parent. And as a single parent, I have come through a lot of challenges, like all of you guys have experienced, I'm sure. I adopted my kids out of the Orange County Heart Gallery, which are considered hard to place kids in the county, and like all kids who come into the system, have a rich trauma history. And I got through If you've ever had a job that you felt totally unqualified to do it, but felt like you were ready to begin, that's kind of what happened to me. I also am a clinical psychologist, and I do specialize in trauma and attachment and working a lot with therapy with foster adoptive families and kids. And I came into this thinking, hey, I've got this, but realized really quick that I had much more to learn as a foster parent. And so I love sharing about my experiences and my challenges along my journey and sharing stories along the way, because that's how we all learn.

Renae: Absolutely. And I appreciate, too, the moment that you just took of sharing the humility, the part of, oh, I thought as a professional, I mean, I help people figure out how to do this. I'm sure I've got this. And that moment of. Oh gosh, maybe I don't quite have that as much. So what is it about this? Because I know that you'll share at the end of this a little bit more about where this has led you to in this moment right now in history of how you're helping to support people in the world. But at what moment did you realize that you had something to share with the world because you didn't see what you needed out there? Right.

Dr. David: Well, I think I learned from day one that things weren't going quite as expected. And I kind of came into the process, Renae, of just feeling like if I just shower my kids with this unconditional love, that everything else would fall in place. And even as a psychologist, I was a bit naive to truly understand. Understanding the long haul and the challenges there are in raising children and teens with trauma backgrounds. I knew all about trauma, but I had firsthand experiences of dealing with it. And even from the day one, when my kids were in the backseat of the car, my daughter decided to share some artwork with me with her lipsticks all over the backseat of the car. My son was throwing toys at me and said, if you really care, take us back to our other home. We don't want to come. And realizing that at that point, they were just responding to protect themselves from getting hurt. And I realized that traditional disciplinary practices are not going to be effective. And even as a psychologist, I could say, oh, we'll do this, this, and this. But when you're in there in the moment, experiencing it, and the chaos is abounding in that moment, you realize, wow, am I really equipped for And I actually was talking to a mentor of mine and at one point was wondering, am I able to truly continue this? When my kids were being hospitalized, we had police calls, troubles with the law, and I really thought, am I going to be able to handle this? And my mentor said, they said, are you able to handle today? And I said, yeah. Are able to handle tomorrow? Yeah. I said, keep that up. And I realized at that point that I was projecting my own fears of what was going to happen. My kids are going to end up in gangs and prison, causing havoc in relationships, stealing, in jail. Fortunately, a lot of those have happened. But I projected my own fears of the future into right now. And so what I have learned through this season is to focus on today, set goals and hopes and dreams, but connect and love and in that relationship to find. Healing that comes through that connected relationship. At the same time, the passion that I have and when I share with you and all of you listening is kind of how this toil not necessarily affects our kids, but how it affects us. And we have to make sure that we are aware of how to truly keep sane when the chaos abounds. And there were times in which I wondered if I had to throw in the towel. And I decided I'm going to take one day at time and repeat, take one day at time. And I'm so glad I didn't because my kids are completely different kids now. I would have to say there's a little bit of chaos in the house. If you would come, you would see some chaos. That's because trauma impacts our kids throughout the lifetime. I don't always do the best job that I should as a parent. And sometimes I make mistakes. And sometimes I raise my voice. And sometimes I do the things which I tell you not to do. Because it's hard. It's hard and the effects of it. But part of what I've learned through this is the need to accept help and to take care of myself. And that's what I really want to help encourage all of the listeners out there today with. Absolutely.

Renae: And I appreciate that. The reality of it is we actually as parents don't want to get it right all the time because we will not teach our children the importance of repair. That rupture and repair piece is really, really important for growing resilience, for being able to withstand distress later. And so when we do mess up, it's not a, oh, I'm a bad parent. I have an opportunity to show my kid that there's a way back in a relationship.

Dr. David: Oh, I love that. And if I could just share with you guys, I have recently written a book called Trauma-Informed Foster and Adoptive Parenting. And in Chapter 12, have a chapter called Repairing the Rupture. And I am more concerned with the repair as compared to the rupture. And obviously, we want to make sure that we don't re-traumatize our kids and that sometimes our behaviors and our practices can. But if you were really good at repairing, that will overcome the rupture. But if you focus so much on the rupture and you don't focus on the repair, you're going to get a repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat cycle. And so one of the things that's really hard sometimes is to do what we expect our kids to do, which is to say, I'm sorry. I messed up. You've got to realize I didn't do this like I wanted. I need the redo right now. Will you forgive me? And I I don't always do a good job of that, I have to say. Sometimes I miss the mark, and I continue to miss the mark, but that's my goal. And I think it's so important that when we do mess up, that we can make that repair and focus on it.

Renae: And I think that's an important piece for when we're thinking about for ourselves as well, right? That when we haven't maybe parented the way that we have wanted to, or we're recognizing that at some point our caregiving has exceeded our capacity for healing, right? And so we sometimes owe apologies to ourselves in that same way, and to show that same compassion that we would want to show to that one in front of us, to show that to ourselves. And something gets in the way when we don't have that compassion. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your own understanding. Oh, wow. That's so good.

Dr. David: Thank you so much. And part of when we look at compassion fatigue, that's a term that maybe we throw around a little bit. But it was originally defined as kind of the negative cost of caring, right? There's always a cost in what we have to do. And when we pour our whole life into our kids, I have to be honest, a lot of us by temperament are so focused on caring for the needs of our kids that we don't always realize that there's a cost associated with it. And that cost, if not dealt with, there's a neurobiological reaction that occurs in our body. So if you think about compassion fatigue as a neurobiological process of the effects of stress in our lives, it allows it to be a little bit more grace and be able to understand that what we're dealing with. is literally the neurobiological process of stress in our life. And I think it's almost like a self-protective mechanism of our nervous system that's activated by ongoing stress of caring for our kids. Those higher brain functions that are needed for caregiving cause our nervous system to develop that defensive stance. And I have to tell you, I have met dozens of parents who are well-intentioned, good, loving parents, okay, who'd actually start to develop temporary feelings of disgust for their own children. Why? Is that because they somehow have a problem with their parenting? No, it's a neurobiological process of what's happened in their bodies from having to deal with their own stress. And I've seen this happen to where people will have these temporary feelings of, man, I'm not sure I really like my child. Or I'm having these feelings of hate toward my child. And you think, oh my gosh, how could that happen? Well, that's compassion fatigue, if not dealt with. They are wonderful parents. It's just the effects of stress in that person's life. And I think it's important to understand that. Yeah.

Renae: I love that you're really talking about it from the standpoint of, you know, our brains and bodies are absolutely amazing. We have these amazing brains that from the moment we are born are doing such a good job of keeping us from dying and are constantly scanning and looking for where are my safe places, where are my safe people. And when in any stage of any type of parenting, whether we're parenting children who have significant trauma or children who have experienced the collective trauma of COVID, because all kids now have experienced a level of trauma, and that's a whole. It has changed how the world is functioning from this point on. Whether we're on either side of our other spectrum, anywhere in that spectrum, the cost of caregiving, it's not the cost of, to pay the bills and feed the child and take them to school and go to recitals or any of those types of things. While there is a cost to that, it's the staying mindful and present. Staying in that space of mindfulness of what am I bringing to this? When do I need to take a break? What do I need in my support system? And then the attunement that helps us to see what is really being communicated by this kiddo's behavior. And that level of concentration is exhausting. Uh…

Dr. David: Uh… Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So, and this is the part that you can't actually get in any class, that you, until you get and experience the stress and turmoil on our mind, our emotions, and our brain, our behavior, and, you know, how that all impacts us, it's hard to relate. And quite honestly, a lot of times people who don't have a child with trauma history or attachment, it may be a little bit difficult for them to understand, and they may even judge some of us in the way we're responding as parents. But that's why it's so important as parents that we realize that we truly cannot take care of our kids and support them unless we first prioritize taking care of ourselves. And I'm always reminded, excuse me, when you go to get on an airplane, and they tell you, you know, when the oxygen… Put it on yourself first. No, I'm going to put it on my kids first, right? And that's our natural reaction. But we realize that if we don't really take care of ourselves and we try to focus, we're not going to be able to put it on our child's face, you know? And I think that's much to do with fostering and adopting or being a resource family that you've got to begin with self-care in your mind. In fact, in my book, the newly released book, The Trauma-Informed Foster and Adoptive Parenting, I share in the first chapter all about compassion fatigue, the need to gather a team around you, and what kind of specific strategies that we need to do to prepare for the ongoing stress that we have. Because if we don't begin with that, we can't expect that we're going to get in there and start practicing the skills then. We've got to start practicing it now and continue before the stress comes. If we wait till the stress comes and then try to, oh, we're not going to be. There's no way I could think about trying to take care of myself or get a break or do these kinds of things. And how could I even think about doing that when this is happening, right? But I have learned, and I've learned very quickly, one, the need to accept help from others. As an independent single person, coming into this, I was kind of hard in accepting help from others to begin with. And from day one, I got a team of people around me supporting me, and that was hard to accept, but I realized really quick, I need this. Because if I don't get the support, I'm going to burn out quickly. And number two, that I have to protect my ability to stay involved in my hobbies and interests and do those things as a single parent. Here I am full-time working, have a couple of jobs, taking care of kids. You know, how in the heck am I going to have time? Well, we really find time to do things that we really prioritize. And if I could encourage all of you parents out there, is you're not being a bad parent. by taking a break, taking a time out, doing what you need to do. mean, early on, I found that I would go and spend extended time in the bathroom. I thought that was a time of privacy that I could have. I found out pretty soon that that didn't work. I wasn't even getting privacy in the bathroom, right? So I need to use the bathroom. And we go and get a book or read it for about 10, or they would just kind of, you know, that sort of thing. But finding times to do that, getting respite breaks, if you have, accepting help from others, if you have help around to be able to say, hey, you know, and sharing the load, say, I'll take your kids, you take my kids, and doing that. And finding times to do that is so important to be able to continue the process of the negative cost of caring for others. You've got to put back into your tank. And the problem is if you remove and remove and remove and move, but you're not putting back into your own tank, you're going to burn out. And you're going to have, you're going to become ill. You're going to become sick. Your body's not going to feel it. You're not going to get sleep. You're not going to eat. And now your emotions are going to follow. And now all of a sudden we're in the deep stages of true compassion fatigue. Yeah.

Renae: I think there's two pieces in there that I think are really important for us to highlight. And one of them is the self-care. And I just want to be real. I've said this with more than one interviewee during this summit because it is so important. Self-care is not so that we can care for others. Self-care is because we are actually worthy of care. And we aren't going to be able to really develop that margin, that capacity, that whatever, until we can advocate for ourselves and say, I'm worthy of care too. And if we didn't come from a family structure where that was maybe modeled in that our caregiving did not care for us in those ways that we're caring for others, that's going to be a bit of a struggle, right? It's learning new ways of us really standing up for our worthiness, that it's, I don't have to, it's not like I worked so hard, I deserve this care. No, you just deserve care, just like your kids deserve care without them having to work for it.

Dr. David: That's really hard to have that mindset when all of us and all of our needs and all of our attention are going to our kids. And by nature, we are, you know, compassionate souls who are investing our time and energy. And so it can seem like we're being selfish if we take the time to. To go out and get the manicure or the massage or request, you know, a time where you have a closed door and say, don't bother mommy and daddy for an hour or two and, you know, or hire the babysitter or whatever, right? It can seem as selfish. And I think sometimes guilt can also play a factor. If, as you mentioned, we don't really feel we're worthy, then if we are trying to spend time in ourselves, then we can have kind of this dissonance between the way we feel about ourselves. And then we have guilt that we're actually taking care of ourselves because of our foundational identity that you just discussed, which I think is really critical.

Renae: Yeah. And so that then plays into the second part, which is part of why it might be hard for us to trust other people is maybe we're worried that we're going to be judged. Maybe the people that we have, very caring, loving people in our circles who do think that traditional parenting and stop behavior management and modification is the way to go. And so it wouldn't be so hard if you just spanked your kid or, you know, oh, you shouldn't get so attached. You know, I haven't heard that even as an adoptive parent, that like, oh, you shouldn't get so attached because it's an issue. So part of that, that might be a worry for how do I accept help or share with people outside if I'm struggling because I'm seeing these Instagram parents.

Dr. David: Right, right. How have you found your way of saying, this is how I'm building my support system? Yeah, well, luckily I've had. I had a great support system always around me that I found through my own connections. I currently am a part of a support group. I have a support group that I kind of co-facilitate that meets weekly that we've been meeting for some time. And we're just real with each other. I would have to say over time, my friendships did change. What I found was the friends that I used to have slowly changed as I had kids. And what happened was I started developing friendships with other foster and adoptive parents a lot because I felt like they truly understood. And there are so many times, as I said, you know, when I take my kids and they're running around in circles in Target and people look at me and say, you just should spank that child, you know. And, you know, if I had a parent, my child would never do something like that. like smile. I say, I know. I thank you for that, you know, and just think, oh, my gosh. And then sometimes kind of. Well, maybe am I doing this wrong, right? So, I mean, these are all kinds of things that we ongoingly experience. But my support system through my church has been invaluable to me. And I've had to learn to step up the plate to ask for support and help. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn't. But realize that's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. And what I also discovered is that a lot of people want to help. But if I don't ask, they may not necessarily assume or know. And in a sense, we rob a blessing from others for the people to bless us, right? If we don't give them a chance. And so there have been times that right now I have expressed the need and I've got a team of people who come out on Tuesdays to bring out meals to me and to our family. Right now I have a five-year-old child, foster child, who's a half-sibling. of Andrew and Kayla who came into the system, maybe taking another actually, the other seven-year-old sister who's on the spectrum. So I have three, maybe four, and then fifth tag along with my daughter's boyfriend who pretty much lives in the house. So we have a lot of chaos around our house and to be honest, I sometimes am a little bit shameful to inviting people to come into the house because they're going to see this is just a crazy messed up situation. Look at all the drama around here. But you got to get rid of that. And you've got to be able to say, okay, I've got to accept help. I've got to be real. And they say, hey, this is what it's like, but this is what I'm doing. And I think the blessings that you will get from that, the blessings that other people get to supporting you, some of you may not have that. And you may have to ask for it. You may have to do some work at trying to get there through, you know, luckily I I'm can I'm I've been a part of a church that really embraces and has helped supported foster families. That may not be a resource for some of you, but you have to work hard at trying to find people and don't be ashamed to ask for help.

Renae: Well, and we might not even know sometimes. I know my own experience of when I actually experienced clinical compassion fatigue, I didn't know I was experiencing it because it had been so normalized. It had been five years of very, very intense things that were happening and tragic. And it was sitting in a professional's office and them asking me questions and my answers. And they said, OK, so you're in a really intelligent person. You work in this field.

Dr. David: I'm going to ask you a question.

Renae: And they asked me and I had a physiological. going ask you a a question. to I'm And fear, startle response and burst into tears. And all they said was, do you ever feel trapped? And I looked at, like, I had a trauma response to that and I could feel the cortisol flooding and I just started bawling and they're like, okay, so let's go ahead and talk about it. Like, here's how we're gonna scaffold you in this. But it had to be shown to me in a certain way. Like, someone had to come and give me an assessment. And so I know that you have some tools that people can use to just take a snapshot of, might, you know, might there actually be something going on? Because when we're in that, when we've gone through burnout and we're heading toward compassion fatigue. Oh, yeah. That disconnection, we stopped seeing our warning signs.

Dr. David: Oh, yeah. And I think some of those I want to speak to before I speak about the tools, I just want to maybe give you guys. A little bit of resources about some of those physical and emotional symptoms that maybe are going on. A lot of these times, trouble sleeping. A lot of times, gastrointestinal issues, fatigue. Headaches can also be a common physical symptom. And I found a lot of times just inability to relax. You're always on the edge and tight. Sometimes people will experience a real soreness in their neck or chest area. And as you talk about, when cortisol is released in your body and some of these chemicals, it increases your blood pressure. But when you have this constant flight, fight, or freeze, the chemicals go to the muscles to get ready to run or contract. And over time, that can cause muscle soreness. So a lot of times, there's unexplained muscle soreness, especially in certain parts, maybe the neck, the shoulders, the chest area as well. Those are all physical symptoms. And then, of course, there's emotional symptoms that you would experience as well. And all these things are… Our behavioral and emotional symptoms such as feelings of hopelessness, loss of pleasure, they call it a hedonia, A for no, hedonia, hedonism, pleasure, withdrawing from others. Some of these things are just natural from being a faster adoptive parent and a decreased motivation to do things. And so these are some of the emotional behavioral symptoms that may be associated. And looking at this, know, compassion fatigue was actually first developed when they studied the effects of nursing and medical staff and realized as they were, especially those who are working in the ER and they were investing and pouring their lives into helping people. And then all of a sudden they noticed common characteristics for these people who were spending so much time. And then over the years, they've used this term to refer to just anyone who's in the process of such as caregiving can develop that. And there are two questionnaires. that provided a resource for you. One is less on the compassion fatigue, more just on stress. And there's something called the Holmes Rahe Stress Scale for Adults. And that is a list of about 42 questions. And there are questions such as, have you experienced a change in job? You get this amount of points. Have you experienced the death of a loved one? Has there been a financial challenge? And it gives all these negative things. There's one positive thing on there, which is something I thought is really kind of funny. Not funny, but interesting. It's one of the questions is, you know, have you gotten a major success promotion or something at work? I thought, why would that be the case? Well, a lot of times people who have something major good, they had to do a lot work toward getting that, which caused stress, right? So they have each one of these things that you add up the points. And then it will give you, based upon that, if you have a low risk, a middle risk, or a high risk of, get this, becoming seriously ill in the next. It's, you know, five, six months or so, I think they said. I remember how long it was. But it's if you had this score, you had a low risk or medium risk or higher. So they basically corresponded the scores and found those people at higher scores, right, had greater risk of getting ill. Kind of like we see in the adverse childhood experiences study, the ACEs study, where they said the kids who had these traumas or the adults, that they had greater risks of having health problems, which actually have greater risk of having seven of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States or in the lifespan, I should say. So the Holmes-Rahi Stress Scale, just to kind of give you an idea of the amount of stress that you're experiencing and the risk factor that you have to becoming sick, the one that I also included was what we call the Procol 5, which is the Professional Quality of Life Scale. And that was a Likert Scale between one, never, up to five, always. And it gives, I believe, 30. And it talked about in your work, which would be so kind of your work as a foster parent, and would ask you different questions. And it scores three different categories. One is compassion, satisfaction. How much pleasure do you receive from being a foster parent, right? I think, of course, I receive pleasure. But when you're in the heart of compassion fatigue, it may feel like not a lot of pleasure at all. And to be honest, when you have your child yelling at you, telling you they hate you to go away, and they're constantly, you know, sometimes that can build up. And that can be hard when you're having to deal with the effects of their own trauma, right? So what level of satisfaction do you have in being a caretaker? Then it talks about burnout, and their burnout would be kind of a symptom of compassion fatigue, which would be kind of the difficulty in being a foster parent, the helplessness, the hopelessness that occurs as well. And so it'll give you kind of a rating on the burnout. And then what we call secondary traumatic stress, and their definition would probably be more rare, but that would be kind of the exposure secondhand to other people's repeated exposure to stressful life events. So you hear about someone who has repeatedly going through trauma and they share with you, and then all of a sudden you take that in, and now it becomes traumatizing for you to just hear about the other person's trauma, of vicarious trauma. They call it secondary traumatic stress as well. And so they give you a rating scale for those. So I find that that may be helpful for you to kind of evaluate and see how much you are at risk for these things as well. I wanted to give that to you as a resource as well. Excellent. Thank you.

Renae: And I think the piece in there of the secondary traumatic stress, and I'm not even going to say disorder, it is actually very ordered for your brain to develop strategies. So it's not even disordered. The system around you is disordered, and your brain and body is doing what it's supposed to do to protect you.

Dr. David: That's exactly right. Yes. It just unfortunately takes an uncomfortable toil on us in the process, right?

Renae: As we know, the body keeps score over the years. Absolutely. And so for that, when we're thinking about parenting children who are healing from trauma, that they're going through micro-narrative reenactments all day long. They're trying to get different endings to their stories of, are there safe people? Am I in a safe place? Is there, am I going to get a different ending to the story? And so as that's happening, their trauma is coming to the forefront in big ways and in small ways. And part of the hyper… Vigilance of a parent of who is walking alongside a child in this, that attunement piece is what need is behind that. And so the word compassion literally translates to suffer with. And so we think about it where we're entering into that emotional reality of the person who's experienced the trauma. We are allowing ourselves to enter into their emotional reality, even though we're not centering ourselves in it, we're not letting it take over, but we're entering into that reality so that they feel felt and so that we can start to figure out what is the need behind all of this that is happening right now.

Dr. David: Yes, thank you for that. That's a great word. We kind of have to be detectives at times to find out that that behavior makes sense. The meltdown makes sense. If you think about it, they're, you know, they're protecting themselves. So when my daughter and son were throwing toys at me and doing artwork, it wasn't because they were bad, manipulative kids. It was because their brains were saying, I'm about to get hurt. And if I can send you away, I'm not going to get hurt anymore. And so that's part of what our role is to be able to understand and interpret these kind of behavioral symptoms in that trauma-formed lens. And that, in a sense, takes us to have incredible compassion, as well as to be a little bit of a detective in being able to understand and give sympathy to our child's meltdown in the moment. And that's one of the things, if I could just one last plug, the second part of my book, Trauma-Informed Foster Parenting, is methods for managing meltdowns, mishaps, and maladaptive behaviors. And I discuss in there from homework battles, defiance, disrespect, digital media addiction. Some proactive strategies to avoid, how to respond, and the main thing is how to teach our kid new skills. So if we realize that our role is to kind of be that coach to teach them new skills to cope and realize their behaviors are simply patterns of survival, that survival was a strength for the child. And so unfortunately, that strength is now being displayed in a way that's maladaptive. We just have to learn how to teach them to display that strength in an adaptive way. And that's kind of what my book is all about. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share with you as well.

Renae: Well, and as we're closing this out, I just want to say too that, you know, as we're talking here, I know your work is largely around kiddos that have different ways of experiencing the world than might be typical. And that your life is with the kiddos from care systems. And in an adoptive placement. And so it may be that some people might hear, oh, this information is not for me. And I want to go back to just for a moment to remind everyone that the definition of trauma is an event, a set of, a series of events or set of circumstances experienced by an individual as harmful or potentially life-threatening that has lasting adverse effects on their full functioning. Any part of them. And if we look at the collective trauma of COVID, of a pandemic, when the in-charge adults didn't know what to do, and that the kids were looking to the in-charge adults and we didn't know what to do, there was, that, that was a trauma on top of a trauma. And so when we're, the stuff that might've worked five years ago is not going to work now because we're rebuilding. We're doing a lot of repair work with our kids, regardless of if they've experienced trauma before or not. And so everything that we're talking about really is about all of our kids. It's about all of our kids. And so I just want to encourage anybody who's like, does this really apply to me? If you're a parent and you have a child, yes.

Dr. David: Even if you don't have a child. I think it applies to you.

Renae: And if you're a caregiver of anybody who was looking for brain mentorship during that time, and it was a real struggle because we were not regulated. The in-charge adults were not regulated because we didn't know what to do. And therefore, we were not able to co-regulate our kiddos. And so there's a lot of repair work that we're going to be doing. And so if you're like, man. so… so… so… How do I decode this? We're starting from there. That's it. We all get to put on our detective hats. Detective hats, chef hats, teacher hats, all of these hats, and take care of ourselves. So I'm just going to thank you very much for your time, David. NOTE: Two endings – one for the TraumaWise Parenting Summit and one for the TraumaWise Podcast. Ending #1 – For TraumaWise Parenting Summit

Renae: David, thank you so much for coming to be part of our TraumaWise Parenting Summit and for sharing from your experience, your lived experience, your knowledge, and your wisdom. Thank you so much. And I know that you have a special gift for our summit participants.

Dr. David: Yes. So I would love to offer each of you a code so that you can get 20% off the book Trauma-Informed Foster and Adoptive Parenting. And so I've included that in the samples as well as the assessment tools that we discussed. So I have multiple gifts for you. For those of you who may not have foster and adoptive parents, this book is actually for… … Relevant for professionals and for any child, parent who has a child with trauma history, and so I hope that you find it to be beneficial for you.

Renae: Beautiful. Well, thank you again. We're so thankful. Thank you for being part of the TraumaWise movement, and thanks again.

Dr. David: Thank you. Ending #2 – For TraumaWise Podcast

Renae: Well, David, I just really appreciate you bringing your wisdom and your knowledge and your lived experience to this conversation. And you have collected a lot of this in the book that you've been telling us about. And I would just love for you to take a moment to, I know you told us a little bit before about why you wrote it. But what is it that is right about this moment right now that it's time for this book to get into our hands?

Dr. David: Well, I think much of my book was written for myself and the things that I've learned through the years. And I know in the psychology world and those. who are in the helping profession, there is kind of been a recent people throwing around this term called trauma-informed care. And what exactly is that? Sometimes people may think it's one thing versus another. And we've also heard about trauma-informed parenting. And so what I was wanting to do in this book, the first section of my book, is to kind of talk about what are the things that we learned in trauma-informed care? What does that even mean for us as parents? And so I talked a little bit about how the trauma impacts both the brain, the behavior and health outcomes, as well as what we can learn from the principles of trauma-informed care with our practice as foster and adoptive parents. And so the book was primary audiences for foster and adoptive parents, but it is also for professionals who work, and it's also for parents of children with trauma who want to… Learn how to practice some of the trauma-informed care practices. I then also kind of explore kind of the heartbeat of TBRI, trust-based relationship intervention, and discuss kind of the empowering, connecting, and correcting principles in a chapter each, as well as what we learn from the role of attachment and behavioral science on how that impacts our parenting. And so one of the things that I do I think is very unique in this book that I'm not aware of any other book out there that does it is outline three ways to change behaviors. We can do things to avoid the behavior from occurring, right? We can teach a new skill, or we can change the way we respond. And a lot of times as parents, we got into this process of trying to put a consequence, to try to punish, and we deal with behavior after it occurs. But when we punish a child, that's actually the least effective way to change behavior. And so what I wanted to do is to take a look at specific behavioral challenges that we experience, such as homework battles, defiance, disrespect, meltdowns, and take within each one of those kind of proactive strategies to avoid it. How can you respond once it occurs? But the key is how can we teach a new skill that meets that same function? And so understanding that that behavior serves a purpose in your child's life and understanding that and then teaching a new skill. And so that's why I think this book is unique, because I have practical scripts, suggestions, and feedback in how to parent all within an attachment mindset. So I think there's probably key words. We're looking at neurobiology of trauma. We're looking at attachment. And then we're looking at behavioral science and intertwining all three of those. If you take one and you deemphasize all the others, it's not going to work. And I think… That's why it's important to make sure that all three of those are intertwined. And so sharing, as I said, from my experiences with some humor, and so I've been excited to kind of share the things I've learned, more so not as a psychologist, but as an adoptive parent, and sharing also some from the science of what it says. Excited for you to be able to read the book and hopefully get something out and share with others. thank you for that.

Renae: Yeah, well, we'll put a link to David's information in the show notes, as well as a link to where you can pick up this book. And we're just really grateful for the time that you've spent with us and the time that you spent putting into developing this manuscript. Thank you.

Dr. David: Well. I have to let the audience know that I got about nine or 10 different people who were experts in the field to give me feedback along the development of it. And so Renae was helpful enough to read the early manuscript and give me some very helpful feedback and suggestions of the process. So thank you for your involvement in the development of the book as well. I appreciate that.

Renae: I'm excited to share this with others. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for taking, carving out time in the midst of your chaos so that we could have some connection. And thank you again for all that you're doing, David. Thank you..