One very difficult aspect of parenting is trying to help a child who harms himself. While self-injury is definitely not limited to the adopted child, your child is at a higher risk of struggling with self-injury if he lived in a neglectful or abusive environment before joining your family. How can you help your adopted child to stop harming himself?

Self-injury is anything that a child does to harm himself on purpose. Many people believe that self-injury is synonymous with cutting, but cutting is only one of many forms of self-injury. Here are some other... more

In my last post, Parenting Abused Adopted Child: How to Handle Unsupportive People, a reader posted the following comment:

It's not logical to expect children who have been through things children shouldn't go through to heal overnight, but it is true that they have to choose to heal. But how can someone convince them to choose to heal if healing hurts so much? – Chromesthesia from Parenting... more

On my post, How to Help Abused Adopted Child Heal from Dissociative Disorder, a reader wrote the following comment:

Now for the post on surviving this and dealing with people who don't understand that your child can't just be "fixed" right now. Thanks for this. This blog is really a lifeline some days.

In my last... more

On my post, How to Help Abused Adopted Child Heal from Dissociative Disorder, a reader wrote the following comment:

Now for the post on surviving this and dealing with people who don't understand that your child can't just be "fixed" right now. Thanks for this. This blog is really a lifeline some days.

Living with someone who is recovering from trauma is a challenge, whether that person struggles with Post-traumatic... more

On my post, Abused Adopted Child: Other Dissociative Disorders, a reader asked the following question:

Faith, Many of us parents of traumatized children, have reported that our kiddos, sometimes talk in different voices. I think the baby voice is probably the most common. Others might have a baby voice, robot voice, an age appropriate voice, and older child voice. Do you [think] this is related to DID?

The short answer to... more

My last several posts have been explaining what dissociative disorders are so that adoptive parents can understand their traumatized adopted children a little better. If you are parenting an adopted child with a dissociative disorder, you might be wondering what you can do to help the child heal. Here are my suggestions:

1. Provide your child with a safe environment.

A child cannot heal from a dissociative disorder until he is safe. The disorder developed because the child was routinely unsafe, so the child must feel safe before he can start... more

In my last two posts, Abused Adopted Child: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Abused Adopted Child: Alter Parts, I talked about an abused adopted child's experience with DID. In this post, I will discuss other forms of dissociative disorders.

As I shared in Abused... more

In my last post, Abused Adopted Child: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I explained what DID is. In this post, I will explain more about alter parts, which are the parts that were previously viewed as "other people" sharing a body of a person with what used to be known as multiple personality disorder. If your adopted child has alter parts, this post will help you to understand them better and be less frightened by them.

An abused child creates... more

In my last post, Abused Adopted Child: Emotional Segmentation through Dissociation, I talked about how abused children have the ability to segment their emotions. This enables them to survive horrific abuse. Abused children who suffer ongoing and severe trauma beginning during early childhood (generally before age six) might segment their emotions to the extreme of developing Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

DID is the same disorder that used to... more

If you are raising an abused adopted child, understanding dissociation can help you to understand your child much better. Dissociation is a highly adaptive way of surviving abuse, and it only presents a problem once the adopted child has been removed from the abusive environment. Dissociation is an effective way for a child to survive while living in a traumatizing environment.

An abused child uses dissociation to separate himself from painful emotions and memories. He does this by telling himself "this isn't happening" or "this is happening to someone... more