What Kinds Of Things Cause Your Child To Trigger?
Mon, 12/15/2008 - 12:15
As discussed in James' blog, trigger events "come in all shapes and sizes" and can manifest them-selves in a variety of different ways.
What events trigger your child? Are the anniversaries, smells, certain people? How do these events manifest themselves in your child?
Comments
Approximately one to two days after birth mom visits. The irony is that they are mad at her and not anything else. Approximately one week before xmas they were told that there would be no more birth mom visits. That made an interesting week running up to xmas.
One of the hard parts with them is that by playing with there brother or sister they will be reminded about their birth parents. Then it goes into the spiral of not being able to talk about their emotions.
I've noticed an almost immediate reaction. Seeing as the law says that the birth parents must have visitation until termination occurs, I guess there is little choice but to put up with it.
We never had to deal with visitation. Termination of parental rights had already occurred when our kid came to us. However, we did have an extraordinarily long transition from the old foster family to ours as there had been one failed placement in an adoptive family. While the transition was probably good, it meant for long commutes on a regular basis AND after the transition was complete, we stayed in close contact with the old foster family with regular meals together. There were often flare-ups after those meals, but I've always thought of that as being more of an excited kid kind of thing.
When our kids came to us they had been in their foster home for 11 months. Longest yet. That transition was not so difficult for our oldest 2 kids, but for the youngest of them it was hard. She really attached in that home and really is not that attached to her birth mom. It was a loss for them and for at least our youngest we had to deal with it the same way as we dealt with them being away from their birth mom.
Anniversaries of events affect my kid pretty heavily. Behaviors spiral out of control ranging from defiance to outrage to fury.
Our kiddo seems to almost always be nuts after seeing the therapist. She'll be deliberately disobedient, say nasty and mean things, be defiant, and generally obnoxious.
Immediate triggers:
Hunger
Tired
Change in routine
Seeing someone who looks like Birthmom
Sometimes delayed trigger:
Seeing an obvious drug addict
Driving by a homeless person
Hearing certain songs on the radio
Delayed Trigger:
Bad day at school
Birthfamily Visits
Social worker visits (sometimes)
Changes in a friend's (who is also in foster care) situation
Our Bio Child asks questions about when he was a baby, or when I was pregnant
There are so many more...
Yes, hunger is a big trigger for us too. It is pretty normal for kids to get cranky when they are hungry, but in our case that crankiness tends to be exaggerated in the extreme.
For my oldest (10), hunger is and has always been a big trigger. She is overweight and often eats to comfort. When she was a foster child, we had more fights over food than anything else. She would eat and eat and want more. We rarely have fights about food anymore but if she misses a meal, she gets extremely cranky and often yells and starts fights for no reason. I can now usually diagnose the problem quickly.
For my youngest (7), he gets extremely whiny and fixates on trivial things when he is tired. He is one of those kids who truly needs 10-11 hours of sleep a day and everyone suffers if he doesn't get it. He will whine about something he can't have and then have a meltdown about it. He will deny to the end that he is tired and refuse to go to sleep. What's so funny is that sometimes he will take a nap on his own if he is tired but if he gets too busy playing and misses that window then watch out. Life changes can also bring out past behaviors that we had previously eliminated. After TPR, he returned to the lying, hitting, and full out tantrums that I thought we had seen the last of. The duration was shorter but more intense. He also did things that he hadn't done before, like threaten to jump out the window or cut himself with a knife (butter lol). That period passed but now that the adoption is so close, he has started having full blown tantrums again. Not near as intensely as right after TPR but over silly things. He has also started telling me I won't punish him (by grounding, taking away privledges, time out etc) when I've just told him I will. Saying "No, you won't." I may continue with counseling for awhile after the adoption instead of stopping it like I was planning on doing.
We're still attending every other week counseling (Play Therapy) and it has been almost three years since we formally adopted. It isn't convenient, but we feel it is what is needed at this time.
One of the new things the therapist has us doing is ensuring we have some sort of snack food for our daughter after the session. The therapist says in the session my daughter works through so many issues that she needs something to fill the void again and thus the snack.