Click here to send us a topic idea or question for Weekend Wisdom.

Does it feel like your adopted or foster child is sabotaging the holidays? Are there more tantrums, sullenness, and anxiety during the holiday season? In this episode, we explore why holidays are difficult for kids who have been exposed to trauma and what to do about it.  We talk with Rebeccca Robotham, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Beehive Counseling & Wellness in Connecticut. She is also an adoptee and former foster child.

In this episode, we cover:

• There are many sources of trauma for children, and many adopted and foster children have experienced trauma before they come to our homes. Trauma can include neglect, prenatal exposure, abuse, domestic violence, and the actual act of being removed from your parents.
• How can trauma impact children both physically and emotionally?
• What is it about the holidays that makes it hard for kids with trauma? (change in routine, lots of people, bringing up memories, over-stimulation, change in diet, distracted parents, build up of anticipation, let down after the fact…)
• What type of behaviors might you see? (more tantrums, dysregulation, “sabotaging” the holidays, sibling bickering, depression, sullenness, anxiety, …)
• How can families do the holidays differently to help kids who have experienced trauma?
• Trauma in adoption and foster care
• Adoptive Parenting/Foster Parenting Tips

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building