A look into Nancy Thomas parenting

I do believe that when dealing with abuse and trauma it's better not to wait. I do agree. But what is dealing with it mean? It means so differently to so many people. you say have them discuss it with peers this is strictly for teenagers. Teenagers actually deal with trauma much different then kids. why is forcingӔ them to do it so bad. Parents force their kids to do things all the time. I dont why, it just really makes me uncomfortable. I wish I knew, I guess if goes against everything that i have been taught. Forcing trauma is not like forcing them to do homework. I just dont think there are any quarentees that forcing the trauma actually works, It could backfire and it could be dangerous. Is there anyone out there that can see how this can be dangerous? Maybe its just me.

That is just heart wrenching. Your poor dad & uncle. :( It's just so sad to hear that such trama can drive a person to just want to die.

But my child would be a dangerous adult without it, so you know, even if it doesn't work (and there is a large chance that it will not), I will take my chance. Without this, my child will grow to be an abusive parent, a bully, a rage filled adult, in jail most likely. You look at the news everyday and we see more teenagers commiting horrendous crimes against society. I see their rage in my house. I see where they are coming from. Those teenagers are my daughter's idols. And I see that maybe, just maybe, if they had dealt with their rage at a younger age they would not have committed such atrocious acts. Maybe it would not have worked, but obviously letting them deal with it on their own didn't work either.

Additionally, on the forced facing of trauma, it doesn't appear that the parents are doing this alone. It seems to be a group effort; parents, therapists, doctors. Not that I'm saying that 'only the professionals can do this', BUT professionals can help parents learn key points and how to approach the process more safely than just 'Hey, I'm gonna make you talk!' Even with professional help and guidance there CAN be problems and danger. Those involved must do their best to place each foot carefully on the path, considering and evaluating before taking the next step.I understand that the idea of forcing a child to do something is uncomfortable and can make your gut hurt just contemplating it. This is akin to a child being burned severely. Letting the scars heal over is the least painful in the short run. However, debriding the burns before the thickened scars start growing, treating infections under the tissues as they develop, doing plastic surgery to remove scar tissue and doing skin grafts all provide the best outcome in the long term. As with most medical treatment every intervention with a burn patient is risky. It is not danger free. Yet if these extremely painful things are not forced on the child they would definitely grow to be crippled and in chronic pain, or die. Personally I do not ever want to witness ANY of these things, (either the therapies with RAD kids or those with the burned kids) but I do know that they save lives. This is like the difference between you, Dad, being tackled and tickled mercilessly against your will just for the entertainment of the other kids, and having a painful lifesaving intervention, like a tracheotomy without anesthetic, against your will. Just as skin grafts or trachs aren't done on people not needing them so should forced facing of traumas not be done on a child who doesn't need it. Having said THAT, though, I think that persons involved in these therapies should be ultra, extra, uber careful in how they undertake to do this. And I'm not suggesting that parents here don't do that, just pointing this out as an obvious point.

I was told before we started therapy that if anything happens in therapy that makes me feel uncomfortable that I can stop it at any time. I just say the word.

I guess I just never saw it as forcing trauma but more as being forced to face the trauma. J wasn't abused during his sessions. He wasn't molested, beat, threatened or belittled. He was spoken to with kind and soft voices. He was played with and cuddled and allowed to face his fears in a safe environment. He didn't want to do this. He would have preferred to stay at home or in the car or even in the lobby than enter the room with us and deal with his abuse. But he bravely did and allowed himself to be healed because of it. It was a very painful process for all of us. I learned so much about his past in those sessions. It hurt me physically to see him in pain like that. But I did it, because I knew it was what needed to be done. Just as I held him down on the ER while they numbed his hand so they could sew his fingertip back together. It hurt him, but was necessary for healing, ya know.As for my Dad, he did face his trauma eventually. Sorry, I forget to finish that part of the story. It took years, but he is a much happier man and a wonderful husband to my mom, father to my brother and I and grandfather to my kids. Had he not had his breakdown, who knows where he would be. And my uncle is missed everyday by all of us. But he's actually a reason that so many members of my family seek out mental health care now.

I have to agree with all the recent posters about facing the traumas, so to speak. In my own case, I didn't face up to what happened to me until I was thirty, when everything was going wrong in my life. This was the late eighties...for adults they called it codependency. I was diagnosed with PTSD and attended a thirty day inpatient treatment where half the group was there for an addiction, the other half for "codependency". Most of us "codepedents" were survivors of sexual abuse. We actually had group sessions where the therapist (a wonderful, gentle lady) would work with us one on one, the rest of the group supporting the person working. We were able to get in touch and let out our buried feelings - that was the real beginning of my own healing. They don't go away unless you feel them - talking about them and all that other stuff you mentioned doesn't do a thing to get to core issues that promote real healing. What causes the biggest anger for me was not that the abuse happened in the first place - it's all the years I lost because I was bogged down by all the feelings I had stuffed deep down in my psyche when the abuse occurred. It alll those years I lived alone and in fear, too afraid to live. Your teens and twenties ought to be wonderful years in your life.....mine weren't, they were totally lost, wasted.As far as "forcing" a child to face his/her traumas - that is certainly a fine line. I do have to say that if we didn't encourage R to work through his feelings I'd hate to think where we'd still be - it would be a scary place. It is difficult as a parent to watch them work through their pain. I always tell R that he needs to work through it now, and that for him, as much as it sucks to be in his position, it is a real gift to work on all this now - when you are older the stakes are much, much higher......failed relationships, failed lives.

I just wanted to add something here... This thread seems to be talking about 2 different things. Nancy Thomas is a theraputic parent. Her books and videos deal with crating a theraputic environment for attachment disordered kids and parental support. She is not a therapist, nor does she claim to be one. Holding therapy is a technique used in Attachment Therapy. Not all attachment therapists use it, and not all kids require it. My own son who was attachmen disordered did not need this kind of treatment, although there are kids out tehre who's trauma is so deep that they do. I just wanted to clarify for anyone reading all this for the first time.

I'm jumping in late again, but it's been a long day. Speaking as someone who doesn't know you and doesn't know your history with your kids or on these boards, it kind of has appeared, at times, as if you are attacking NT parenting and attachment parenting as individual wholes. I know if I was reading all this for the first time, I would take it as if you were vehemently opposed to both. I doubt anyone here would think that it does. We all have done and said things we regret to our children. Geez, I've been the mother to a teen for less than four months. When she mouthed off to me yesterday that she could walk the remaining mile and a half to school, I stopped the car, told her 'Fine. Get out.' There is more to that story, but the first words out of her mouth when she called to let me know she'd gotten home from school that afternoon were that she was sorry, she apologized and it was stupid for her to behave that way. You know, speaking as a writer, a well written book doesn't just contain good grammar and spelling. Sure, proper spelling, punctuation and sentence structure are nice and make anything easy to read. But the purpose of most any book or article is to make us feel something. Whether it's to feel uncomfortable or happy or sad, angry or just interested enough to try finding out more, the purpose is to engage us enough to make us want to buy the next book or simply to continue reading. I know for myself, when I worked as a proofreader for several years, I found it very hard to slog my way through poorly written and punctuated articles by award winning law school students, people with doctorates and degrees in such things as anthropology and literature, who couldn't be bothered to insert an apostrophe here, capitalize this word properly, etc. I'm sorry, I'm going off on a percoset tangent again, I'll get back on track.... Even though the book made you uncomfortable, you were compelled by it enough to read it, to buy the next one, etc. You felt something, whether you agreed or disagreed, which is what the publisher is really looking for. The author just wants to tell their story, the publisher just wants to sell books. I'm not sure what this had to do with special needs parenting. Sorry. Percoset again. Should come with a warning label-do not surf while under the influence of this drug. Like I said, I'm recovering from major abdominal surgery, so please excuse my rambles. I had no idea you were a therapist. What type of practice are you in? I know you said you work with criminals, but geez, that describes half the parents of the system kids, at least in my county! haha For some reason I thought you were a probation officer. Would imagine that therapists have at least a master's degree though, and I know in Florida you can be a probation officer on a bachelor's. Tangent again, sorry. Do you find your experience working with your patients to have helped you with raising your kids? I was really interested in your response to the question I asked about duplicating those early childhood lessons for older kids who would have missed them, but the thread has gotten so long they would have been easy to miss. Particularly now, reading that you are a therapist yourself, even if not for children, I'm interested in figuring out how to duplicate that type of thing. No one here really had any suggestions, but I intend to adopt again fairly soon and would like to try someone much younger than already begging for a driver's license! I personally think of it like baking. Take out any one ingredient and you might still get something that tastes good but is probably a little bit different. From everything I've read here about the different special needs, I think each of these kids is their own 'secret recipe.' So some things work for some kids, not for others, and it's up to the parents to figure out what to remove. I'm much better in straightforward, follow-the-directions types of situations, so I sometimes really question how good I'll be as a parent in general, much less a special needs parent. I left this whole thing in because I wanted to say that I know how easy it is to miscommunicate things online. While I didn't think anything was directed at me, sometimes some of the things you have posted on the attachment parenting subject seem to be directed at individuals rather than at the parenting practices you are discussing. I'm sure they feel they were responding in kind. It's all so subjective and so easy to be sensitive about. I try really hard in my posts to word things so I'm not upsetting anyone, especially since most of the people here, including you, have much more parenting experience than I do and I think we all have a great deal to learn from each other. Just my $50.00. (Inflation and the pending recession has caused me to raise the value of my opinion to more than $.02 cents. I'm sure you understand. :eyebrows: Hmmm, I like that. Maybe I'll make it a new sig.)Sarah

To add to my post....My older sister has never dealt with her trauma - she refuses to see what it has done to her life. She and her husband adopted three children, all of them at birth so with the right parenting they should be healthy children....all three of them are a mess. The oldest one (now 17) has serious attachment issues.Just another example of what happens when one doesn't do the feeling work.....Fran

skirbo, Speaking as someone who doesn't know you and doesn't know your history with your kids or on these boards, it kind of has appeared, at times, as if you are attacking NT parenting and attachment parenting as individual wholes. I know if I was reading all this for the first time, I would take it as if you were vehemently opposed to both. I realize you dont know me and that is why i posted who I was and what my situation was, you need to read my posts and tell me where I said that I dont agree with AT as a whole and that I didnt agree with NT parenting at all. I tried spelling out my feelings on AT and NT as a 'whole' already, and I even asked someone to help me interpert it better, but clearly no one did so I am not repeating it again. there is nothing else I can say. I know for myself, when I worked as a proofreader for several years, I found it very hard to slog my way through poorly written and punctuated articles by award winning law school students, people with doctorates and degrees in such things as anthropology and literature, who couldn't be bothered to insert an apostrophe here, capitalize this word properly, etc huh? I think it is the percoset because you are reading my post wrong. I never claimed anything about how it was written...lol. I said it was a diffilcult read because I found it on the cuff of abusive at times. PLease do not take any offence, but you did mention you were on percocets, but I dont think I need to keep coming back here to keep explaining myself and who I am. I already wrote it down. YOu are more then happy to go back and read my old posts, some of them of under archives, but they are still there. It really is getting tiring. Even though the book made you uncomfortable, you were compelled by it enough to read it, to buy the next one, etc. really, is that what I did, I didnt realize. If your interested, Id be more then happy to share with you on how I got the book, or books. I was at an attachment conference and I bought a few books on attachment. I also bought a few books by NT, because I really wanted to get my hands on 'when love is not enough', so I bought a couple of more while i was there. I personally dont know anyone who can actually tell if a book makes them uncomfortable until they actually read it. I cant believe you are even questioning me on why I bought a book....but then again, you are on percoset, so i will have to assume you are out of it. I was really interested in your response to the question I asked about duplicating those early childhood lessons for older kids who would have missed them lol.....could not agree more....I have done this with both my kids and I thougt I did explain already. However, I do NOT think that my kids missed out on being restrained for what I percieved to be, no reason at all. When I was growing up, My mother never came up to me and retrained me for no reason, while i fought to get away from her. It never happened. I dont think my kids or any kid, had missed out on that. You seem to think that your kids or some kids missed out on the fun...I just dont. Hope I answered your question. I dont want to even go into 'normal' parenting techniques with you. That should be a whole new thread. As i said in an earlier post, that i was almost tickled to death and I couldnt get away, it was traumatic for me. I remember it clearly how I couldnt breath and I got real dizzy on trying to get away....I feel its almost the same feelings a child would have if an adult picked up a child against their will, for no other reason for them to fight to get away. Just so everyone is clear, this is MY ISSUE::hissy: FOR ME starting this thread, I put it out because I feel the therapist had picked up the girl, held her for no apparent reason, but just to prove who is more powerful, and have her fight for freedom for 45 minutes until beth tired out, and then, WHAT I PERCIEVED to be a mocking comment (out of love of course) I did NOT see this 'getting the trauma out' and found it pretty close to abusive. I can actually see this girl vomiting all over the therapist while trying to break free, i can this girl hyperventalating because of the restrain, i can see this girl fainting out of fear and exhaustion, I can see a few things that could go wrong with this type of therpay. She was not restrained for safty, she was restrained to prove she was not powerful. I just dont see the value in it. I dont know how that proved to her she was not powerful. While beth was being restrained, Im sure she was in fight or flight, and most anyone would be. One does not learn anything in that frame of mind. IMO I had no idea you were a therapist. What type of practice are you in? I know you said you work with criminals, but geez, that describes half the parents of the system kids even though you didnt say it, but I feel in the undertone of your post, you are now questioning who I am, and I could even post my license if you would like, but I WONT. I am here as a parent, not a therapist. I can serperate them. DO you even want to question if I am a parent, I can prove I am to, I have pics of my kids, but Im not big on posting my kids pictures on the internet. I see no problem disagreeing with this 'in your face therapy', as a PARENT, it makes me uncomfortable and could be conceived on the side of abusive. you think it is not, thats fine, but i never questioned you or anyone else if they were being honest on who they were. and with that said, im done. I tried to bring the converstation back as lorraine suggested, but clearly people still want to go after me and bait me. Percocets or not, is not an excuse. I am goinng to ask that this thread be closed. I think it ran its course. and yes, if you read my tone in my post as being angry, then you have read it correctly.

Closed due to OP request.