Permanency Tip of the Week: Everything Looks Fine from Here, So What is Their (Adult) Problem?
When we look back at our childhood, especially our teenage years, the idea that adults just do not see the world like we do is probably one of the more common themes. The same can potentially be even more true for individuals with personal histories of abuse, neglect, trauma and loss as no one can truly “understand” what they have individually gone through. Due in part to the chaos and unpredictability that many of our youth in out of home care have experienced, they may be comfortable in situations that to us appear seriously problematic. Let us employ a similar plan to last week – Pause (“something isn’t right”), read the situation (“they are confused, lost, and/or feeling unsafe) and Respond with compassion.
Permanency Success Story of the Week: After 23 Foster Homes, and 33 Years, Local Family Adopts Man
Daily Republic (Solano County, CA) – At 33, Dale Kiefer-Perrault is getting a new birth certificate. The one listing his parents as the State of Florida will be replaced with the names of his adoptive mother and father, Steve Kiefer and Michelle Kiefer of Fairfield…The Kiefers met their new son when he was 16 and living on his own. He was born to a severely disabled mother who had been assaulted. He grew up in the foster care system, shuffled between 23 homes, including one with an uncle. He was physically, sexually and emotionally abused at some. At others he was malnourished and shown blatant disregard, Steve Kiefer wrote in an email.
Michelle Kiefer met him first and was heartbroken by his story. He proudly showed her the run-down apartment he called home. Despite having four children at home, all in diapers, the Kiefers knew they had to help the teen. He moved in with the family. They saw him through high school…Kiefer-Perrault went on to college, married his high school sweetheart and had two children. That wasn’t the happy ending. The pain he endured in his younger years still haunted him and Kiefer-Perrault ended up in long-term treatment. He and his wife divorced and Kiefer-Perrault revealed that he was openly gay. He didn’t contact the Kiefers for a few years. Emma Kiefer, now the second oldest, reached out to him and the bond was restored.
“We just simply love Dale as our own,” he wrote. “Though some might bristle or (find) it odd or ludicrous, Michelle and I see it somehow as a picture of what God offers every human being with a sin-laden past – unconditional love, adoption, family.” “I feel like it’s come full circle,” Michelle Hartman Kiefer said…
Permanency Related Articles:
The Body Remembers – Adverse Childhood Experiences
On Being – Courtney E Martin – The life expectancy of individuals with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores of six or more is twenty years shorter than it is for people with no ACEs. And a person with four or more ACEs is twice as likely to develop heart disease and cancer.
This might sound rather extreme, but also pretty intuitive to you. You might assume that someone who had a hard childhood might not make the most self-preserving choices or have access to quality healthcare. But what’s not so intuitive is this: Having these kinds of experiences at a young age actually changes your physiology…The tiny body really remembers. While adults who experience something traumatic are often capable of re-wiring their stress response over time, the severity and stubbornness of the effects of trauma on children are more potent. Dr. Burke Harris explains, “The difference between adaptive and maladaptive reactions is all about the when.”
When little children are exposed over and over again to what is often referred to as “toxic stress,” it can cause a wide range of problems immediately — obesity, growth failure, ADHD etc. — and an even wider range over time…The good news is that the damage done to children because of “toxic stress” doesn’t have to be permanent… “The key to keeping a tolerable stress response from tipping over into the toxic stress zone is the presence of a buffering adult to adequately mitigate the impact of the stressor,” she explains…The biological mechanisms are admittedly complicated, but the cures are pretty simple: courageous conversation and buffering love. No one needs a medical degree to participate in this kind of healing
Permanency Tip of the Week: Everything Looks Fine from Here, So What is Their (Adult) Problem?
When we look back at our childhood, especially our teenage years, the idea that adults just do not see the world like we do is probably one of the more common themes. The same can potentially be even more true for individuals with personal histories of abuse, neglect, trauma and loss as no one can truly “understand” what they have individually gone through. Due in part to the chaos and unpredictability that many of our youth in out of home care have experienced, they may be comfortable in situations that to us appear seriously problematic. Let us employ a similar plan to last week – Pause (“something isn’t right”), read the situation (“they are confused, lost, and/or feeling unsafe) and Respond with compassion.
Permanency Success Story of the Week: After 23 Foster Homes, and 33 Years, Local Family Adopts Man
Daily Republic (Solano County, CA) – At 33, Dale Kiefer-Perrault is getting a new birth certificate. The one listing his parents as the State of Florida will be replaced with the names of his adoptive mother and father, Steve Kiefer and Michelle Kiefer of Fairfield…The Kiefers met their new son when he was 16 and living on his own. He was born to a severely disabled mother who had been assaulted. He grew up in the foster care system, shuffled between 23 homes, including one with an uncle. He was physically, sexually and emotionally abused at some. At others he was malnourished and shown blatant disregard, Steve Kiefer wrote in an email.
Michelle Kiefer met him first and was heartbroken by his story. He proudly showed her the run-down apartment he called home. Despite having four children at home, all in diapers, the Kiefers knew they had to help the teen. He moved in with the family. They saw him through high school…Kiefer-Perrault went on to college, married his high school sweetheart and had two children. That wasn’t the happy ending. The pain he endured in his younger years still haunted him and Kiefer-Perrault ended up in long-term treatment. He and his wife divorced and Kiefer-Perrault revealed that he was openly gay. He didn’t contact the Kiefers for a few years. Emma Kiefer, now the second oldest, reached out to him and the bond was restored.
“We just simply love Dale as our own,” he wrote. “Though some might bristle or (find) it odd or ludicrous, Michelle and I see it somehow as a picture of what God offers every human being with a sin-laden past – unconditional love, adoption, family.” “I feel like it’s come full circle,” Michelle Hartman Kiefer said…
Permanency Related Articles:
The Body Remembers – Adverse Childhood Experiences
On Being – Courtney E Martin – The life expectancy of individuals with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores of six or more is twenty years shorter than it is for people with no ACEs. And a person with four or more ACEs is twice as likely to develop heart disease and cancer.
This might sound rather extreme, but also pretty intuitive to you. You might assume that someone who had a hard childhood might not make the most self-preserving choices or have access to quality healthcare. But what’s not so intuitive is this: Having these kinds of experiences at a young age actually changes your physiology…The tiny body really remembers. While adults who experience something traumatic are often capable of re-wiring their stress response over time, the severity and stubbornness of the effects of trauma on children are more potent. Dr. Burke Harris explains, “The difference between adaptive and maladaptive reactions is all about the when.”
When little children are exposed over and over again to what is often referred to as “toxic stress,” it can cause a wide range of problems immediately — obesity, growth failure, ADHD etc. — and an even wider range over time…The good news is that the damage done to children because of “toxic stress” doesn’t have to be permanent… “The key to keeping a tolerable stress response from tipping over into the toxic stress zone is the presence of a buffering adult to adequately mitigate the impact of the stressor,” she explains…The biological mechanisms are admittedly complicated, but the cures are pretty simple: courageous conversation and buffering love. No one needs a medical degree to participate in this kind of healing. #adversechildhoodexperiences, #aces
The Gifted Child in Foster Care: Lost in the Shuffle
Education Week – Trauma, schooling instability, poverty: Any one of those challenges can make it harder for gifted children to be found and to show their strengths, and students in the foster-care system often have all of those disadvantages and then some…We get these kids over and over who are so eager to learn, but they have so many challenges against them, so they don’t look like they are achieving because they are struggling with all the trauma going on in their lives,” said Kathleen Casper, the gifted-education director at Solid Rock Community School near Tampa Bay, Fla., and an active foster parent for temporary placements…
There are no national numbers on how many foster students participate in gifted education or advanced coursework in high school, but a recent California study found that only 2 percent of students in foster care in that state were identified as eligible for gifted and talented education services, compared with 6 percent of low-socioeconomic students generally and 9 percent of the state’s total student population…
Better coordination among education systems, social services, and other child-welfare agencies could help, researchers and advocates say, but personal connections with even one or two adults in school who understand and encourage a student’s academic potential can greatly improve his achievement and success long term. “A lot of kids in the system don’t have a sense of themselves as ‘bright.’ Their intelligence might be put to simply surviving—getting groceries, taking care of younger siblings,” said Peterson, a co-author of the 2018 book Counseling Gifted Students. “Educators need to point out to them, ‘You have not had the easiest life, but look at all you’ve done.’ ” #education, #giftedstudents
Seven Core Issues of Adoption – Part 2: Rejection & Guilt/Shame
Sharon Rozia – Rejection – Feelings of loss are exacerbated by keen feelings of rejection. One-way individuals seek to cope with a loss is to personalize it. Triad members attempt to decipher what they did or did not do that led to the loss. Triad members become sensitive to the slightest hint of rejection, causing them either to avoid situations where they might be rejected or to provoke rejection in order to validate their earlier negative self-perceptions….
Guilt/Shame – The sense of deserving such rejection leads triad members to experience tremendous guilt and shame. They commonly believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with them or their deeds that caused the losses to occur. Most triad members have internalized, romantic images of the American family which remain unfulfilled because there is no positive, realistic view of the adoptive family in our society. For many triad members, the shame of being involved in adoption per se exists passively, often without recognition. The shame of an unplanned pregnancy, or the crisis of infertility, or the shame of having been given up remains unspoken, often as an unconscious motivator… #severcoreissuesofadoption, #sharonrozia, #rejection; #shame, #guilt
Military Domestic Violence and Child Abuse
Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel via C-Span – The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel held a hearing to discuss domestic violence and child abuse in military families. A panel of abuse survivors and an advocate testified about their legal, health care, and treatment experiences with the military, and made recommendations for what could be improved in order to better help survivors and prevent potential abuses. #domesticviolence, #military
Administration of Children and Families (ACF) – Children’s Bureau – Child Maltreatment compiles state data collected through the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. The report includes information on reports made to child protective services (CPS) agencies, demographics of the children involved, types of maltreatment, CPS responses, the number of fatalities, child and caregiver risk factors, perpetrators of abuse and neglect, and available services. Released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau, this is the 27th report in the Child Maltreatment Series.
To learn how to report suspected child abuse or neglect, access state-specific reporting requirements and contact information, and find additional help, visit Information Gateway’s webpage How to Report Suspected Maltreatment. For a detailed history of child maltreatment and ongoing prevention efforts, see Information Gateway’s issue brief, Child Maltreatment Prevention: Past, Present, and Future.
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