I often get asked why the children aren’t “over it” yet. By “it” they mean the trauma of their past, by “over it” they mean, why haven’t they opened their eyes to see how lucky they are?
Well, you see, tonight a perfect example of how differently their brains are wired just got thrown at me in a kaboom kind of way…
We were having a discussion about “how rubbish the day has been” in his mind or rather how it isn’t as “ruined” as he thinks. And then contentment returns, sleep may be possible (note the “may”). But just before he goes to bed a thought pops up in his head “when I lived with my foster family, all of the other kids got taken to school first. I was always last”. The tone in his voice suggesting that it was because he was liked the least. We had a chat. Caitlin’s nursery was the closest, and she could start the earliest. The other 2 children in the foster home were taken to schools in order of the distance from home. He was still in the primary school he’d been attending when he lived with birth family. 40 minutes from the foster home.
But for a child that’s been neglected, abused and scapegoated, the only logical conclusion that anything can have happened the way it did is because they are a bad person. So, because he’s a “bad person” and no one could possibly like, let alone love him, it must be true that everything they do is a representation of that. After all it’s all they deserve.
He went to school last because people hate him. He has the last birthday in the year in our family because we hate him.
This is his true belief. How do you even go about reprogramming those patterns in someone’s brain?
A Pleasant Chaos 