Trauma Informed Parenting

Heart to Heart Child and Family Counseling supports Trauma Informed Parenting!

Child Challenges: Loss  Rejection  Guilt   Shame  Grief  Identity  Intimacy  Control

                        Nine Essential Rules of Trauma Informed Parenting:

1. Recognize the impact trauma has on your child.

 2. Help your child feel safe.

3. Help your child to understand and manage overwhelming emotions. 

4. Help your child to understand and manage difficult behaviors. 

5. Respect and support the positive, stable, and enduring relationships in the life of your child.

 6. Help your child to develop a strength-based understanding of his or her life story.

 7. Be an advocate for your child.

 8. Promote and support trauma focused assessment and treatment for your child. 

9. Take care of yourself.

Critical items for a home environment to assist children in recovery includes:

● Provide a safe and calm environment 

● Provide additional supervision due to developmental lags, cognitive deficits, and trauma reactions like dissociation 

● Maintain working relationships with the child’s trauma team of providers 

● Be proactive in behavioral and affective problem issues 

● Prevent any additional trauma  

Myths to Avoid

● My love should be enough to erase the effects of everything bad that happened before.

 ● My child should be grateful and love me as much as I love him/her.

 ● My child should not love or feel loyal to an abusive parent.

 ● It is better to just move on, forget and not talk about painful past experiences.