National Recovery Month 2012

September is National Recovery Month.  In honor of this month I am reprinting an earlier post about a child I worked with many years ago.  Whenever I wonder if what I do matters, I think of Josh....

What does it really, truly mean to be "in recovery" from addiction in your family?

Let me tell you about Josh.

Josh was in a group I co-facilitated about ten years ago.  Josh's father is an alcoholic. He had been in and out of AA, but couldn't seem to pull together even a week of sobriety.  There was a good deal of fighting and turmoil at home.  Josh had been acting out and having trouble in school, and Mom brought him after a referral from the school district.

The Parent Process

Working with families struggling with addiction can be challenging, inspiring,  interesting and very rewarding.  

In the groups that I facilitate, parents join us on the third and fourth days of the program.  This adds a whole new element to our process, as the adult group tends to be more diverse than the kids.  

We work with parents who are just new to recovery, grandparents raising their grandchildren, non-using parents, and sometimes caregivers who have a long period of sobriety under their belt.  

Addicted and non-addicted people alike sit across from each other, share their struggles, receive some education and offer support to one another.

This week Elizabeth Devine, the clinical coordinator at the Betty Ford Five Star Kids Children's Program wrote a great article about dynamics in the parent group titled The Challenges and Benefits of Group Work With Addicted and Non-Addicted Parents.  

Elizabeth is an excellent facilitator and has been doing this work for many years.  Her article covers the complexity of a typical parent group.  With all of the different dynamics that occur in a group like this, it can be easy and tempting for facilitators to lose focus and become sidetracked.  Elizabeth breaks it down to three key points when working with parents and other caregivers.  These points keep the focus on the purpose of the program - helping children and families heal.  

For more information and articles for professionals, check out the Betty Ford Children's Program Planting Seeds publication.

Grief

I did a guest post on Life Without Baby today!  Appropriate at this time, because in the past month I've been inundated with grief about not having a child.  It's left me in a bit of a funk as far as posting on this blog (as well as in other areas of my life!).

Grief is a funny thing.  For me it tends to come and go in waves.  I am attributing this bout to the  change in seasons, a transition that has always been difficult.  Summer is slipping away, and another winter season will soon be upon us.

So if you are visiting from Life Without Baby, welcome to my blog, and know that I generally write more than what I have been as of late.  Thanks for taking the time to visit!

Transitions

Last week I attended a hot yoga class where the teacher focussed on "transitions."  Acknowledging that the poses were significantly important, she challenged us to concentrate on smooth, graceful passages from one to the next.  "We all want to master the poses, but today I want you work on the transition between each one.  That is just as crucial," she explained.

The definition of 'Transition' is as follows:  The passage from one form, state, style or place to another. In yoga this meant concentrating on breath, avoiding fidgeting, and preparing your body.  It means coming back to a sense of calm in anticipation of the next move.  As I worked on this in my class, I began to think of facilitating children's groups.

Transitions are vitally important in group, especially when you are with kids all day.  Just like a yoga practice, moving smoothly and gracefully from one activity to the next is crucial.  In my experience training other professionals, it's often a piece that is overlooked.

What are some key things to remember when working on transitions in group?

The Nature of Childhood

I've met too many children who are put in grown-up roles before their time.  It's a frequent occurrence in families with addiction. Kids become parentified, making adult decisions that are complex, complicated, and not their responsibility to make.

For this reason alone, it's important to keep kid's group fun while at the same time ensuring that YOU are in charge, providing guidance and support.

The philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau was one of the first advocates of developmentally appropriate education. He recognized that the experience of childhood is vitally important to growth and development:

"Nature wants children to be children before they are adults.  If we deliberately depart from this order, we shall get premature fruits which are neither ripe nor well flavored and which soon decay."   

"We shall have youthful sages and grown up children.  Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking and feeling, peculiar to itself; nothing can be more foolish than to substitute our ways for them." 

Childhood is a gift you only get once. If you are working with children who are already "grown up", allow them to be free to make mistakes, act silly, and express their feelings with spontaneity. Fire them from their adult role, if only for the small amount of time you have them in your group. 

The ACE Study

Early in my college-career I engaged in a heated discussion with a peer about whether or not each one of us has the same opportunity for a successful, fulfilling, healthy life. We had both been student-teaching in a poor, rural school district for the semester and were sharing observations of some of the kids in our classrooms. A few of our students were excelling, but a good deal were not. I pointed out that many of my kids weren't getting what they needed at home, making it difficult to focus on their schoolwork, which was no fault of their own.

I was thinking in particular of a little girl in my 3rd grade room who struggled academically more than any of my other students. Melissa was clearly very bright, but just didn't seem to care about school.  She had already been held back a grade. One afternoon I opened up her classroom journal and saw that she had written, over and over: "I HATE MYSELF." 

Scrawled in big, block letters, her words filled the page. After reading them, it was clear to me; why should she care about school if she didn't care about herself? I knew her basic needs, emotional and physical, weren't being met at home.  Melissa was constantly hearing the message that she was not good enough.

My peer's argument was that no matter what, everybody has to give life their best shot. And if they don't, regardless of the circumstances, it's their own fault.  "I don't care what you grow up with. Life is what you make it," he informed me.  It was hard to argue with him.

Wild Things and Rough Waters

On May 8th author Maurice Sendack died. "Where The Wild Things Are" was one of my favorite books as a child. It remains in my library.

As an adult I often read it to groups of kids. Their eyes brightened in anticipation as I turned to the first page, no matter how many times they'd already heard it. I always had a rapt audience.

Frequently banned and receiving negative reviews when first published, "Wild Things" was deemed questionable material for children. Parents, teachers and librarians disapproved. The main character was sailing the waters of a very treacherous land, too treacherous for kids to be exposed to. The monsters were grotesque, the content scary.  Grownups cringed at the idea of letting kids in on the secret we all already knew - that the world could indeed be a very frightening place.

But children flocked to the book, reading it repeatedly. Why? Because it clearly spoke to them and to their experiences.  After a few years it became clear, we adults weren't hiding anything.  Kids already knew of the treacherous world around them.

28 Years Later

On May 2nd, my Mom celebrated 28 years of sobriety. Her recovery completely changed the dynamics in our family. In honor of this, I am re-posting an article I wrote in January (with a few revisions), called "The Gift." Congratulations, Mom...I'm proud of you!

My mom got sober when I was thirteen.  She did it through Alcoholics Anonymous.  I can't say that I was excited. As a new teenager, the last thing I wanted to talk about was my mom's alcoholism or the fact that she was going to meetings.

I found it incredibly annoying that all of a sudden, I was inundated with "recovery" speak. I just wanted to be a normal kid.  I didn't care about the terminology and quite frankly didn't want to hear about it.  But for those of you out there who've had a family member new to AA, you know what happens....

....without warning and without even realizing it, your life becomes a twelve-step meeting.

It became my mother's hot topic of conversation.  Her car seemed to grow bumper stickers that said things like "Let Go and Let God" and "One Day At A Time."  The last thing I wanted was for her to advertise to the small town I grew up in that she was going to those notorious noon meetings at the local church. It was bad enough that my parents were getting a divorce and that my life felt like it was falling apart.

I abruptly entered my denial stage.

When friends asked about my mom I would roll my eyes, "She thinks she's an alcoholic, but she's not.  I know, I was there."  I spent my teenage years disregarding the fact that both of my parents drank way too much for a very long time.  I knew what normal was to me and I didn't want things to change.  I minimized what had happened in my family. I was scared and confused.

My vision of an alcoholic did not apply to my mom.  She was a successful woman, not some drunk in the gutter.  More than that, she was MY mother.  She was NOT an alcoholic.  And neither was my dad.  It was all a huge mistake.

Before A Rule Is Broken; 10 Tips for Behavior Management

I'm a strong believer in having rules and structure when working with children, as you may have noticed from prior posts.  But I will be the first to admit that behavior management can be the most challenging part of running these types of groups.

Whether you are teaching a classroom full of pupils, or facilitating an hour long process, being the leader can be painful at times.  It's significantly easier to be proactive and prevent disruptive behavior from the get-go than it is to be constantly monitoring rule-breaks and doling out consequences. Make it easier on yourself by following these tips:

Merging Work and Life

Today I am lucky to be a guest blogger on Life Without Baby.  If you ended up on my blog from that site, welcome!

For the rest of you, check out my post, What's Lost...And Gained.  You will see it's an adaptation of an earlier one from this blog, "Your Heart." That particular piece happened to be the first time I (ever) wrote about my struggle around not being a mother.  The second time was just the other day, in honor of National Infertility Awareness Week.

For quite a while, I knew I needed to write, specifically about my feelings surrounding my grief.  This turned out to be too painful and I found myself unable to get the words out.

Instead, I chose to write about a different topic - my experiences working with young children growing up in families with addiction. When you work with kids, there's always an abundance of material!

Now the personal and professional have merged, as they always do. The end result is this blog.  Feel free to contact me and leave comments.  I love hearing from people!