Holt’s director of U.S. foster care programs reflects on the need for foster and adoptive parents to heal their own traumas before they can help children heal from theirs.
It’s not uncommon to think of traumatic experience as a point-in-time incident, such as September 11, 2001. Or a short-term experience like a veteran serving our country during times of war. Relational and developmental trauma, which results from a child’s exposure to repetitive, invasive and interpersonal traumatic events, is often left out of the trauma narrative. That is unfortunate because this is the type of trauma that nearly all children in need of foster care and adoption experience.
Continue reading “Relational Trauma: Healing Our Children And Ourselves”