Early childhood experiences of fear, void of a responsive caregiver, have created this dynamic. It is the lack of ability to selfregulate internal emotional states that is at the helm of this powerful and stressful force, restricting the child's ability to engage in positive social interactions with the adoptive parents.

Relational Focus Required

Children with trauma histories typically project their fear, anger, resentment, and sadness onto the mother; the mother becomes the main target. Attachment theory explains this reaction in its definition of the mother's job: to keep the child safe. For children with trauma histories, their mothers were unable to fulfill this role. Thus, the trauma occurred within the construct of the relationship.

In helping families of children with severe actingout behaviors, the focus of the intervention needs to be the relationship, not the behaviors. Emphasis should be placed on creating a secure base for the child within the relationship with the parent. Research has demonstrated a direct correlation in the quality of the relationship between the adopted child and the parent to the adoption outcome.

From Love to Fear to Love Again

When traditional parenting techniques prove ineffective, and as parents work to implement strategies to connect with their children to no avail, the feelings of rejection and helplessness can be devastating. As stress builds in the home when parenting a child who does not respond positively and who does not seek his parents for comfort, parents find themselves disconnecting in an attempt to maintain their own level of existence. Before long, the entire family can find themselves living in survival mode and parents often demonstrate difficulties in responding to their children in nurturing ways. Parents find themselves asking how they went from a state of love, in wanting so badly to adopt a child, to a state of fear-wanting to so badly to get away from the child.

The shift from an initial emotional state of love to this resultant emotional state of chaos and helplessness is simply the outcome of living with a child whose internal stress level is in a state of perpetual overdrive. This level of stress energy within a family system is a powerful force. The adoptive parents often find themselves yelling, screaming, and verging on the edge of abusiveness. This can be so severe at times that parents feel as if they could physically hurt or injure their child. This type of reactionary behavior is simply an internal safety mechanism used to avoid uncomfortable feelings and memories of their own past. In the study by me and Dziegielewski mentioned previously, the findings showed that of the adoptive mothers of children with special needs interviewed, 77 percent either strongly agreed or agreed that since adopting their child, they had experienced more rage and anger than ever before in their lives.

There is, however, hope for these families. Neuroscience tells us that the brain is ever changing, and neuroplasticity tells us that the brain has the ability to continually formulate new connections. We were previously told that once we were hardwired one way, we simply had to accept what we were given. However, brain scan imaging shows us that we are actually creating new connections all the time. When the parents can reduce their stress and return to a state of calm, their interactions with the child have the ability to create new healthy and functioning connections in the child's neuropatterning.

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