Why Traditional Parenting Doesn’t Work

When it comes to parenting kids who have had trauma, I struggle with imposter syndrome. I often ask myself, “How can I help other parents when I couldn’t do it perfectly or even well myself sometimes?”

We must let go of the myth that perfect parents exist. They don’t. And raising kids who have had trauma means a huge learning curve for us parents — especially if we have parented our bio children okayish with great results.

A Foundation of Connection

Traditional parenting is for securely attached children — kids who want to please. Any sort of parenting requires a foundation of connection with the child. That connection comes more easily with kids who haven’t experienced trauma. For those who have, the foundation is absent or shaky, and as a result, the child feels no need to follow commands or listen. 

Traditional parenting tends to swoop in and fix the immediate problematic behavior. It is a short-term approach that doesn’t work with kids who have trauma. Instead, you need to take the time to consider the need behind the child’s behavior and focus on the ultimate goal of connection.

Kids who have trauma care more about control and survival. When a child has a disorganized attachment style born out of trauma, he will want to control his surroundings. Control will trump following instructions every time. In fact, the very thing that would make him feel more connected, he will fight. 

As the authors of The Connected Child explain, “Children who encountered deprivation or harm before they were brought home lack many types of connections. They can lack social connections, emotional connections, neurochemical connections, cognitive connections, and sensory connections.” Because these connections do not exist, traditional parenting will not work.

In other words, feeling safe and in control trumps pleasing you and/or doing the right thing.

The Importance of Felt Safety

I talk more about this in Chapter 2, but it’s worth touching on for a minute. Felt safety is just as important and real as actual safety, even for adults. Think of a time that you were perfectly safe and yet you had anxiety. Everyone has something that raises their anxiety level. It could be heights, snakes, spiders, elevators, flying, or crowds. 

Now think about how you react to those around you when confronted with those fears, and you’ll understand your children’s behavior better.

When I was a junior in high school, I had a panic attack at a basketball game. It was brought on by the combination of a large crowd, lack of sleep, and a day full of activities. When friends tried to help me, I ran — literally ran — to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face. 

A lot of my response was a blur. A girl reported me to someone in authority. The paramedics came in the bathroom and assumed I was on drugs. I am pretty sure I fought with them. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the back of an ambulance and they called my parents, who were bowling nearby, that I calmed down. I was becoming an “earned secure” teen with my stepfather. I was connecting in healthier ways than my original attachment style. I had gone from fearing my stepfather to him being my place of safety. 

Anyone who has had an attachment style other than secure can earn secure attachment by developing more positive thought patterns, reacting to the present instead of the past, and choosing to attach in a healthy way.

This is what we want to help our foster or adopted kiddos do. When a child has experienced trauma, they don’t have a safe base. They find no security in you (at first). They need time for you to connect, relieve their fears, and build a relationship with them.

The Role of Reason

Another reason traditional parenting doesn’t work is that kids from hard places often have little or no cause-and-effect thinking. 

“But hurt children do not have good cause-and-effect thinking. Even when faced with natural consequences, they truly do not comprehend that their actions caused their predicament.” - Parenting the Hurt Child

The problem is, traditional parenting relies heavily on if-then statements, which mean nothing to a child who has no sense of cause and effect. You may be familiar with this approach from your own childhood:

• If you don’t eat your food, then you don’t get dessert.

• If you don’t clean up your room, then you can’t go outside.

• If you don’t go to sleep right now, then you will be tired tomorrow.

• If you don’t listen, then I will be mad.

If-then statements also popped up during another time in my life, in the context of mathematics, science, and computer science. When I did simple programming, it looked like “If x is ___, then ______.”

All if-then statements assume the simple fact that our brains operate in the realm of logic.

If you are parenting traditionally, you assume that your youngster has the basics of logic under his belt. You assume that statements like those in the list above will cause a synapse to fire, starting the child down a line of logical, cause-and-effect reasoning that ends with a valid conclusion.

If a child has had trauma, it’s as though his brain has a bunch of loose wires that don’t connect. If I were back in computer programming, I could imagine that for every if-then statement, I would get an error message: “Does not compute.”

Breaks in Attachment

Breaks in attachment affect more than connection with a parent or caregiver. They also impede a child’s development of cause-and-effect thinking. 

The basics of attachment are simple: The child expresses a need, and the parent meets the need. (That may be oversimplifying things, but it works for the purposes of this explanation.) The attachment cycle is where cause and effect thinking is born. Neural pathways are formed each time the parent meets a need. This is how the infant builds the foundation for understanding if-then statements.

• If I cry, then my mother comes. 

• If I am hungry, then my mother feeds me.

• If I am tired, then my mother rocks me to sleep.

By the time a securely attached child is old enough to be corrected, he has a basic foundation for cause-and-effect thinking. However, when a child experiences breaks in attachment, those pathways are not built. It is as if the child has a bunch of loose wires in his brain that connect to nothing. He will develop a disorganized attachment style because his manual for cause-and-effect thinking looks more like this:

• If I am hungry, then sometimes I get fed.

• If I am tired, then I cry myself to sleep or get smacked.

• If I need comfort, then I am yelled at.

• If I am cold, then I am ignored and put on an old mattress in the middle of the room.

• If I am afraid, then no one comforts me.

These scenarios may not be accurate for every child, but they paint a valid picture for many. In disorganized attachment, children receive different responses for the same need, depending on the day and the whims of their caregiver. If you were raised in a home with an alcoholic or a drug addict, you’re familiar with this pattern. One day, dad rewards you with a lollipop and a pat on the head for reading to him. The next day, you receive a slap across the face and a “Shut UP!” for the same performance. Developing logical cause-and-effect thinking is impossible when your needs, actions, and experiences do not lead to consistent, predictable reactions.

Living in the Downstairs Brain

We can get stuck in our downstairs brain when under severe stress or in a dangerous situation. We call this “flipping our lid.” When our lid is flipped, we cannot be reasoned with (see my panic attack example). Now imagine living like this most of the time. When kids are in the downstairs brain, this is known as dis-integration. 

“Imagine that your brain is a house, with both a downstairs and an upstairs. The downstairs brain includes the brain stem and the limbic region, which are located in the lower parts of the brain, from the top of your neck to about the bridge of your nose. Scientists talk about these lower areas as being more primitive because they are responsible for basic functions (like breathing and blinking), for innate reactions and impulses (like flight and fight), and for strong emotions (like anger and fear).” – The Whole-Brain Child

The downstairs brain is survival mode. In this state, no logic is applied. No reasoning — just illogical responses. When a child gets stuck here, his body shoots cortisol through his system, and he lives on the edge. A simple request sounds like YELLING. In fact, EVERYTHING IS AMPLIFIED. A CAR THAT PASSES THROUGH THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS A THREAT. A COMPLIMENT IS TWISTED INTO A CORRECTION. You get the point.

Scary, huh? It’s no fun to live there — for you or for your kids.

Since the foundation of traditional parenting is logic, kids from hard places can’t be parented this way. When they are stuck in primitive functions such as fight, flight, or freeze (survival mode), they simply cannot comply. 

Instead of immediate obedience, we must work on integration.

The Five Bs and Mistaken Goals

Using punitive or corporal punishment disciplinary techniques are not useful when kids are in this state. In fact, traditional discipline usually compounds the problem because it keeps them in survival mode.

“These children are operating under developmental delays, impairments, deep shame, and lingering trauma. Harsh punishments and sermons aren’t effective for gaining compliance. At risk children respond far better to a constructive approach to discipline, one that guides them to think more consciously about choices and consequences without being shamed.” - The Connected Child

Several traditional parenting practices backfire in this way:

• Time-outs.

• Lectures.

• Consequences.

• Punishment.

• Anger.

• Rewards.

• Sermons.

• Shame.

Traditional parenting doesn’t work with kids from hard places because of the way trauma shapes the five B’s we discussed in Chapter 7: brain, biology, body, and beliefs, and behavior. As a result of trauma, these kids are operating under the mistaken goals we discussed in Chapter 5.

Being parented in a culture of abuse creates a mindset of “I don’t matter.” Children who have been abused may revert to the first mistaken goal and seek constant attention. “Unless you pay attention to me, I am nothing. I have a place only when you are busy with me. If you don’t pay attention to me, I don’t matter.” This becomes their anthem.

Alternatively, they may adopt the second mistaken goal and strive for total control. When a child has had no control in his life, no guarantee that he will be cared for, he will try to maintain control at all costs.

Being parented in a culture of neglect creates a mindset of “I don’t exist.” These kids may go straight to the third and fourth mistaken goals: retaliation/revenge and giving up. For the former, kids from hard places often displace anger from their past to their present. When they blame mom for what bio mom did, it is usually subconscious behavior. However, it becomes a rut that gets deeper and deeper until the habit of retaliation becomes the norm. 

In the latter, kids feel a sense of complete inadequacy: “I can’t do this, so I won’t try.” 

This is the bottom of the barrel. Many kids seem as if they start here, but that’s an illusion. In reality, these kiddos are just waiting for someone to connect with them. When parents go back and fill the gaps in attachment — proving to these kiddos that they do matter, they do exist, and they do have a voice and value — then healing can begin. “Bad” behaviors will diminish.