April 9, 2025 • 58 mins
What happens when the romanticized dream of adoption crashes into the complex realities of parenting children from trauma? April Ficklin knows this collision intimately. From a teenage mission trip where she first felt called to adoption, to the Good Friday when her family doubled overnight with the addition of two siblings from foster care, April's journey has been one of profound transformation.
The chaos was immediate. Despite years of successful parenting with her biological children, April found herself utterly unprepared for the behaviors that emerged from her adopted children's fear responses. "I'm not the parent I used to be. I'm not the parent I thought I would be. I'm definitely not the mom I want to be," she remembers thinking during those early days.
This raw conversation peels back the layers of what trauma-aware parenting truly demands. April shares how she discovered that traditional parenting methods focused on compliance and behavior correction were failing both her children and herself. The breakthrough came when she shifted her entire approach from changing behaviors to building trust - recognizing that she needed to prove her trustworthiness before expecting her children to trust her.
Now working as an adoption professional and raising four teenagers, April offers a message of hope grounded in reality. Healing happens, but it's measured in moments like when her once fiercely independent child said, "Mama made me a peanut butter sandwich. That's what mamas do." Those small victories reveal the power of connection-based parenting that values relationship over compliance.
Whether you're considering adoption, in the trenches of foster parenting, or simply want to understand trauma-responsive approaches better, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and heartfelt encouragement. The journey may not be what you expected, but the healing – for both you and your children – is worth every step.
Please connect with April by following her growing Instagram account where she shares encouragement for stressed out moms, tips for trust-based parenting, and stories to help create hope in the overwhelm. https://www.instagram.com/april_ficklin/
The Connected Child: https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Child-healing-adoptive-family/dp/0071475001
TBRI: https://child.tcu.edu/about-us/tbri/#sthash.3OROkCJX.dpbs
Nicole's 5 Day Belly Blast Challenge: http://www.fasterwaycoach.com/5-day-belly-blast-2025?aid=nicolebarlow
I'd love to hear from you! Send me a text!
Connect with me on Instagram: @Fosterparentwell
@nicoletbarlow https://www.instagram.com/nicoletbarlow/
Website: https://nicoletbarlow.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we
have real candid, faith-filledconversations about all things
foster care, adoption and trauma.
I'm your host, nicole T Barlow.
I'm a certified parent trainer,a certified health coach and an
adoptive parent myself.
This is a space where you canfind support so that you can
care for your kids with asteadfast faith, endurance and
(00:32):
joy.
I want you to, Nicole T Barlow.
We are going to jump right intoday because my guest, april
(01:02):
Fricklin, has so much value toshare.
We're going to be talking aboutbecoming trauma aware as we
parent.
April is a TBRI practitioner,she's a former high school
English teacher and she's a momof four teens whose family grew
through adoption over eightyears ago.
Well, welcome to the show,April.
(01:22):
I'm so excited to have you ontoday eight years ago.
Well, welcome to the show,april.
I'm so excited to have you ontoday.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and how you got started
in adoption.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Awesome, yes, so I am so happy to be here.
Thank you for inviting me,nicole.
So I actually really began tothink about adoption as part of
something I was interested indoing in my life way back when I
was a teenager, and so at thatpoint I was 15 or 16 years old
and I attended a short-termBible study not Bible study
(02:00):
mission trip, sorry inProvidence, rhode Island, which
I think now is such irony.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Providence.
Yes, that we were in the cityof.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Providence right, and while I was engaging with the
children there, while I wasserving there, I just felt this
really strong pull from God thatadoption at some point would be
part of my life.
It wasn't anything inparticular that was happening.
I remember the one vision Ihave from that trip was spending
(02:34):
time with some children in aplayground and pushing them on a
tire swing, and so that littlesymbol of a tire swing has
always kind of just stuck in mymind of just remembering this
calling that God kind of put onmy life way before I knew what
things were going to look likeand how that was going to evolve
, so it just kind of stayedthere in the back of my mind for
(02:56):
years and years.
My husband and I we starteddating in our early 20s and from
the very beginning I let himknow that this was something I
was thinking about.
This was something I felt likeGod was leading me to, so this
needed to be something that wewere on the same page about at
some point.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's awesome.
So I'll let you know.
So I train, I do pre-servicetraining for foster and adoptive
parents and I am always supersurprised about how many parents
that we have come through andthey say, like this was part of
the conversation on our firstdate, because I knew that we
were, that this was thedirection that God had for me
(03:36):
and so this person needed to beon board.
So I just love that.
I love, I love people that havethe, that vision that God has
given that them that visionahead of time, and that they put
that on the table from the veryget go.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, it was definitely something really
important to me.
But it's nice because in ourrelationship I am kind of the
green light and my husband iskind of the yellow light, you
know, and so he's always helpsme kind of gauge how quickly I
move into things.
So it wasn't something wejumped immediately into, but it
(04:11):
was something that over theyears God aligned our hearts at
the right time for us to be ableto do.
So we didn't jump into adoptionimmediately after getting
married, but several years intoour marriage we began having
children and growing our family.
So we have two biologicalchildren.
So they came first, and whenthey were young, elementary
(04:33):
school kids, we decided that thetime was right for us to take
the steps to look into adoptingthrough foster care, adopting
through foster care.
And so we did that, and welearned really quickly that
everything that had beenromanticized in my head about
adoption all of those years wassomething really different from
(04:57):
the reality of it.
And so in that process God kindof made it clear to me that
this was going to be somethingthat was going to be really hard
in a lot of ways, but he alsopromised a lot of joy, and so
that's definitely been fulfilledin what we've experienced over
the last year.
So it was actually nine yearsago today that our two children
(05:22):
moved in to our house, Um, so weadopted a brother and a sister
from foster care and um kind ofgrew our family that way.
So we had four kiddos, um, allschool aged.
It happened on good Friday of2016.
We went from two to fourovernight, Um, and then it was
immediate chaos.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I bet now okay, so a couple of questions about
y'all's journey.
Did y'all know that you weregoing to adopt them?
Were they an adoptive placementor were they?
Did you start out with fostercare as a reunification case?
And how old were your adoptedkiddos when you um, when they
(06:07):
were placed with you, versusyour biological kids?
Cause I think people alwayslike to know.
You know kind of what thosedynamics look like when people
get started.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, so we um no, we never fostered, so that wasn't
ever the calling that we felt.
So we went into it knowing thatwe would be adopting and kind
of opened our options up toconsidering taking at least two
children One, because my twobiological children were very
(06:40):
close and I didn't kind of Ididn't want like an odd man out,
you know.
So if we just took in one child, I was kind of afraid it would
create this weird dynamic.
And so, even though we didn'tnecessarily feel equipped to
double, double the children inthe home, we felt like that
might be the best option for us.
Um, so my biological childrenwere in third and first grade
(07:03):
when we decided to adopt.
It was a conversation we had asa whole family.
The process of licensingactually took us a while.
We had to wait a really longtime to get our home study done
with an investigator and ourchildren moved in and they were
four and almost six, so theyfell in line really closely and
(07:28):
my biological children stayed inthe birth order originally.
So that did help the transitiona lot.
But they're also all very closein age.
So there's a five-year spanbetween the four of them.
So they're pretty close in age.
So right now they're allteenagers.
I have four.
I have a house full ofteenagers.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I kind of like that.
Like my kids are.
Like that, we have a set.
I have six kiddos and we have aset of big kids.
We have three big kids andthree little kids and my three
big kids are all really close inage and my three little kids
are.
I mean, my girls are only 10and a half months apart, so,
like my littles are, are reallyclose, um, together.
(08:08):
And I like it because my, mykids have each other to play
with and and you know, to befriends with and that kind of
stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, we have a.
We call them the bigs and thelittles too, so we were able to
differentiate that and it's nicethat they had each other.
It was also nice that they wereable to stay together being
siblings, so that was somethingthat felt really special to us
to be able to be able to givethem that.
I mean, they lost so much inthose transitions of their life,
(08:36):
but we were able to give themthe home to stay together, so
that was really special to us.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I love that.
Now, how long had they been infoster care before they came to
you?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They had been in care for.
Let me remember I think it wasaround maybe total, close to two
years, and they were so sincewe had gone into the process.
So, since we had gone into theprocess planning to adopt, their
(09:06):
case had already gone throughTPR and the appeal process, and
so we didn't have to walk thatpart of the journey and, in fact
, even though our licensing tooka while, the adoption itself
was almost like a miracle fromGod as far as how quickly it
went compared to how most thingsgo in this realm.
(09:27):
And so they moved in and theadoption was finalized six
months to the day, so basically,as quickly as it could go, that
part of the journey went reallyquickly and smoothly.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, for those of you that don't know, I think in
most states and this may varyfrom state to state, but in most
states you have to foster achild for six months before you
can finalize the adoption.
So that child has to live withyou for at least six months
before you're able to finalizethat adoption.
So that is super fast.
(10:00):
If you're doing it six monthsto the day, yeah, that's really
fast.
But how great for them thatthey didn't have to spend more
time in that transition, becauseI think sometimes the
transitions are super hard forour kids.
Well, okay, so you go throughthis adoption process super fast
(10:24):
.
What was life like afteradoption?
Like yay, your house justdoubled.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yes.
So you know we were.
It was.
We were very excited.
We were really looking forwardto this transition.
All of us were very excited.
But I very vividly remember theymoved in on Good Friday, so it
was a Friday night right beforeEaster and we spent the day
shopping and making sure we wereprepared for them.
We knew the things that theyliked.
We had done several visitsgetting the house prepared.
(10:54):
But I remember waking up onSaturday morning and quite
transparently thinking what inthe world have we just done?
Because already out in theliving room from our bedroom I
already heard the chaos.
So from going from the two tofour literally overnight, just
created so much new energy inthe house and it really didn't
(11:18):
take long before we realizedthat the needs, meeting the
needs of our kids, was going tolook different than what we
expected.
Um, and we didn't have theanswers to that for a long time,
quite honestly.
But because things didn't gothe way that the romanticized,
(11:41):
idealistic idea in my head hadbeen, we really started to hit
some challenges when it came towhether our parenting was really
effective for meeting the needsof our kids.
So that was really hard in thebeginning.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, how much training did you guys get
heading into this adoption?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Not a lot.
I remember two days.
We had two days of training,kind of spread out.
I don't even remember a wholelot of details.
I do remember a little bit ofkind of like hey, you could have
these big behaviors, make sureyou know what you're doing
before you walk this road.
But I don't remember a lot ofpractical tools about what was
(12:28):
going on or what in my mind.
I knew the kids would have somefear right, that makes sense,
like they're transitioning to anew home.
We're basically strangers, eventhough we're excited.
I understood there'd be someapprehension, there'd be some
fear.
But what I didn't understand iswhat that fear would look like
(12:51):
and how it would manifest and sowhere I was in this belief that
the fear would be.
You know, they might be scaredat night when it was time to go
to bed, or maybe they would beshy, those kinds of things.
I wasn't prepared for the fearcoming out in behaviors, yeah,
and that was really shocking tome.
(13:11):
And because the chaos kind ofdoubled in parenting, all of a
sudden I found myself like adeer in headlights of trying to
figure out how to navigate thenew behaviors that were coming
out of that baseline of what wasreally fear in my kids, but I
didn't understand that for areally long time.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Sure, yeah, that's really hard.
So, like I said, I do thepre-service training for foster
and adoptive parents in our areaand you know there are some.
I try to be very transparent,like I try to give the worst of
the worst so that they see, likeyou know, this is how this
could look.
But I still think, when you gothrough that process, how this
(13:58):
could look.
But I still think, when you gothrough that process, if you've
never seen it in your home, ifyou don't know how it feels, if
you don't know what it lookslike in a specific child,
there's no, there's nothingtangible you can kind of latch
onto.
You know, we actually at theagency that I trained for, we
actually just created a trainingfor where we kind of filmed
(14:21):
pre-service training for peopleto watch afterwards, because
it's like afterwards is whenyou're like, oh, this is what it
looks like.
Now I need some tools.
I need some tools Now.
I need to know how to implementthese things, because it's
really hard to prepare parentsahead of time, especially, I
(14:41):
think, when parents do kind ofenter in a lot of times with
these romanticized ideas of whatit's going to look like, and
sometimes I will say stuff and Ican see it in parents' eyes.
They're like oh, that's notgoing to be me, right?
Like, okay, well, we'll talk toyou in six months, we'll talk
to you in a year and let me know, but and it may not Do you know
what I'm saying?
(15:02):
Like it doesn't look the samefor everybody's journey, but I
do think that people kind of gointo it not really expecting you
know what is to come, what isto come.
And one of the things I reallytry to help parents with is not
give them necessarily all thepractical tools and how to
(15:22):
implement every single littlething, but where to go.
What kind of information dothey need to search for, who do
they need to connect with?
What books do they need to read?
Those sort of things so thatthey know where to turn when
things get crazy.
So where did you go?
(15:42):
Right, like if you, if you'reentering into this and not
expecting what is happening orwhat you're seeing or what
you're feeling in your home,right then, where did you turn
at that point?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That's a great question.
So at first, honestly, we justkept pulling out the same tools
that we knew that had workedwell with our parenting thus far
.
We've been parenting for Idon't know nine or 10 years, and
so that was going okay.
We felt pretty good aboutourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And so, even when those strategies weren't working
great, we didn't really knowwhat other tools to pull out,
and so for a long time we keptusing those same tools and kind
of beating our head against thewall, realizing something that's
got to give.
Something has to change becausethis is not working and I'm not
the parent that I used to andI'm not the parent that I used
(16:37):
to be.
I'm not the parent that Ithought I would be in this
moment and I'm definitely notthe mom that I want to be, um,
and so I um did a lot of prayingat first.
Um eventually began to findsome resources, first online.
(16:59):
So I remember very vividlycoming across Jason Johnson,
who's with CAFO, and he had ablog post at the time about
secondary trauma, and it was oneof those instances where I read
it and I was like, oh, like,there's not, like this is not me
(17:19):
, this is not just me, I'm notthe only one with this struggle.
This is something that happenswhen we care, give um, to
children who have these complexum issues that they that they
had to deal with early in life.
And so he was one of the firstvoices that I kind of came
across, that put pieces togetherthat made sense for me.
(17:41):
Yeah, I also remember listeningto a radio show I believe it was
focused on the family where anadoptive mom was sharing about
this 45 minute battle she hadwith her child about filling up
their water water bottle one dayand I was like, oh, that's just
like this thing that justhappened in my house with
reading a book for homework.
(18:03):
And so I started just kind ofhaving these little pieces of
the puzzle start to fill inwhere I recognized, okay, it's
not that I'm just doingsomething wrong, it's that this
is a different thing, that Irecognize and that the tools and
strategies that I have thathave been successful for me
(18:24):
before they just aren't theright tools for this new job.
And so I had some fellowadoptive moms introduce me to
the Connect2 Child within thefirst year or so of our adoption
and I read that and I'll behonest about it when I first
read it I was skeptical of a lotof what I was reading.
(18:47):
I learned some greatinformation from my first read
through of that book, but I wasalso like I don't know.
This feels really differentthan how I was parented.
This feels really differentthan what's worked so far I
don't know about this, and so itwas a slow progression to be
able to embrace some of thosemore trust building, attachment
(19:10):
focused parenting strategiesthat ultimately have made the
biggest difference in ourparenting for sure.
But some moms introduced me tothat resource.
We joined a small group withother foster adoptive moms.
That was life giving.
It was probably the only way wesurvived after those first
(19:31):
couple of years, because we werejust able to sit into a in a
room where I learned theimportance of the head nod right
when I would explain you know,like this, this just happened in
my house and I don't understandwhat this is going on and the
other moms in the room wouldjust nod their head and I'm like
wait, wait, wait, wait you,this happens in your house too.
And they would say, absolutelyso.
(19:51):
It just gave me that comfort ofknowing, okay, this is
something more than I haveunderstood, but that doesn't
mean that I can't figure thisout and that there aren't tools
available to us.
So that's kind of where thejourney of learning how to
parent a little differentlybegan is kind of finding those
resources.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That's awesome.
Yeah, I do think that thatempathy that we get from other
parents and the understanding ofpeople that are in it with us
makes a huge difference, becausewhen you're talking to regular,
you know people that aren't inthis world.
(20:33):
You may say something that isgoing on in your home and it's
just a blank stare.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Because they they have that doesn't make sense to
them, that is so outside oftheir comfort zone that they
don't even know how to respondsometimes, and and so I do think
that community makes such sucha big difference, such a big
difference.
Well, okay, so you're goingthrough all of these changes,
(21:03):
right, but what's going on inyour heart during this time,
right, have, mentally, we'regoing through this game where
we're trying to figure thingsout and prepare and, you know,
kind of orchestrate our home andget it back to order and become
(21:23):
the parent that we want to bein all the things.
And I think a lot of times wedo those things in our head but
we aren't paying attention towhat's going on in our heart.
So, what was going on in yourheart during this time, during
this season, and how did thistranslate into your faith?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So I think there were several things that I was
really wrestling with in my ownheart in the beginning of the
journey, and one of those was,pretty early on, feeling some
grief.
That was unexpected, right.
So things weren't going the waythat I anticipated that they
would go.
We had found ourselves, beforethe adoption, in a pretty easy
(22:07):
parenting season, like we feltlike things were going well and
it was fun and we just wanted to, you know, slide in um two more
to join the fun and, um, thetransition just wasn't as as
easy as we wanted it to be andthe attachments didn't come as
quickly as I had dreamed up inmy head, and so I began to feel
(22:31):
that grief, but also just alsolet myself, um, grieve the
expectations that I had had, sothat I could open my heart up to
accept the reality, cause itwasn't necessarily a bad reality
, it was just a different onethan what I had expected.
Um, so that was definitely oneof the things I was wrestling
with, but I was also wrestlingwith some arrogance, to be
(22:53):
honest.
Um, like I said, parenting wasgoing well for us, so we kind of
thought we knew what we weredoing.
We got accolade from the peoplearound us, even walking into
the adoption, people would saythey've got really good kids.
Do they know what they're doing?
I'd have people warn me thatyou know this.
You know this might besomething that would be
(23:14):
detrimental to our family.
Things were already going well.
So I mean, we felt like we weregood parents and things had
gone well.
And so when things weren'tworking the way that I wanted
them to in my parenting, it wasa while before I was willing to
see that it was myresponsibility to change my
(23:35):
approach, and I desperatelywanted a change.
I was willing to do hard work,but I just didn't know what that
was, and so I kept walking inthe same parenting that I had
done for years, and it tookhumility to be able to say, okay
, this obviously is not working,I've got to figure something
(23:57):
completely different out.
And so my husband and Iactually did many, many, many
miles of walking up and down thestreet in front of our house.
We couldn't leave the houselong enough to go actually do a
real walk right, because we hadfour children.
But we'd walk up and down andas I would read things and as I
(24:17):
would learn and as I gotintroduced to Karen Purvis, with
trust-based relationalintervention and the Connected
Child, and those things.
I would just we would talkthrough them and say, like I
read this, I heard that this isthe case.
You know, this is what happenswhen a child has experienced
trauma.
This is what their brain does.
Do you think we need to changethings in this way?
(24:38):
You know?
So we'd have those kinds ofconversations where we really
had to break down what we feltconfident in and recognize that
we need some supernaturalchanges to happen.
Yeah, so that was definitely apiece the grief, the arrogance,
and then the other thing thatwas really unexpected was the
isolation.
I felt really lonely and thedifficult parenting and the
(25:03):
loneliness were so heavy that,when it came to my faith, what I
found was I would look at myBible sitting on my nightstand
and it just seemed too heavy topick up.
I was exhausted.
At the end of the day, I wasmentally exhausted.
Um, I didn't want to processscripture.
I didn't want to figure out howit applied to my life.
(25:24):
Um, it just felt really heavy,and so I clung to scripture that
I knew.
Um, that became important to mein this season because it never
really resonated before, andit's the scripture in Romans
where it talks about the spiritwill moan on our behalf.
And so I just accepted that,like so I didn't.
(25:44):
I didn't feel like I was havinga crisis of faith, I didn't
feel like I was far from God.
I actually felt very closebecause I knew I was not able to
do this on my own Right.
So, um, and I knew God hadorchestrated the process of the
adoption in a way that Icouldn't deny it, and so I held
onto that hope and thatunderstanding that he had that
(26:07):
providence all along, that hehad orchestrated those things.
Um, but man life was so heavythat it was hard to dig in.
Um, so I just clung to knowingthat the spirit was was praying
on my behalf.
The spirit was going to God onmy behalf.
And so in those moments when Iwas feeling really isolated, I
(26:28):
had this Sunday morning andSunday morning taking four kids
to church not always fun anywayand during the greeting part of
the worship, a woman who wassitting behind us we were
acquaintances, I knew her, butwe weren't close looked me in
the eyes and said I've beenpraying for your family every
(26:49):
day.
And she was really the firstperson.
I mean like we had all of thesepeople who supported us and who
loved us and they were veryexcited that we were adopting
and they loved the process.
But I find that people on theoutside sometimes make
assumptions that once theadoptions finalize, that the
healing has happened when thoseof us on the inside recognize
(27:09):
that's just the beginning.
Right, that's the beginning ofthe hard work of healing that
really is going to last a reallylong time.
Right, that's the beginning ofthe hard work of healing that
really is going to last a reallylong time.
And so people saw that life wasdifferent.
But they didn't understand itand it got a little messy and it
got a little hard, and sopeople kind of some people
pulled away and some people gotreally confused and some people
got offended because we missedthings or things were different
(27:30):
than before.
Yeah, but this woman remindedme that that's the kind of thing
I needed, was I just needed toknow that there were people who
were like man, that looks reallyhard and I'm praying for you.
So that really lit a passion inme as I was able to kind of
pull out several years later outof kind of the what I felt like
(27:52):
was the adoption fog, um, andbe able to find ways to support
other mamas who were feelingthat same need for that
intercessory prayer.
It became really important partof how I wanted to give back.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, I mean, it's so , so important.
But I think that if you are onthe outside, if you don't know
and I love that you're givingback in this way now because you
do know Right, but if you don'tknow, our families on the
outside can just look likeregular families, right, and
people don't know the battlethat is going on all day, every
(28:30):
day.
And I don't mean the battlebetween us and our kids, right,
but the fight for healing, thefight for restoration for our
kids, the fight for healing andrestoration in our whole
families, right, and so, as allof that is happening, it is, it
is a battle, and I think havingthose people on the outside that
(28:53):
can be fighting with us isreally, really, really important
and I love that.
You know the Lord prompted herto see your family in that way,
to see that need and to bepraying for you guys.
That's awesome.
To be praying for you guys,that's that's awesome.
(29:19):
Well, okay, so so you flippedkind of the script of of how you
were parenting, right.
You latched on to Karen, purvisand TBRI type stuff.
How did that change things?
What tools really helped youtransition?
What was it that made thebiggest changes for both your
(29:41):
kids and their healing process,but also for you as a parent.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So in the beginning, as I mentioned before, a lot of
the fear, the impact of trauma,those types of things came out
in behaviors that shocked us,that surprised us and that
worried us.
And so at first I felt like itwas my job to change behaviors.
(30:09):
Right, I wanted these behaviorschanged.
But over time what I recognizedwas that I really needed a
mindset shift, and that began tohappen in my parenting.
So for one, I recognized thatwhat I had envisioned my goal of
(30:29):
parenting was might need tochange a little bit, and so
traditionally, in traditionalparenting, we kind of look at
our role as being okay.
As the parent.
We are here to help guide,teach, create expectations, help
our children behave or, youknow, have certain behaviors
(30:52):
that fit into the culture sothat as adults they can be good
citizens of the world, right,they can have jobs and
relationships and be successfuland and those things.
And so that was just kind ofthe mindset that I had in my
parenting.
But I had to kind of recognizethat at the end of the day, for
(31:17):
my children, what I reallywanted and what I think was
going to be most impactful forthem was that when they are 25
and they make a mistake, thatthey're still connected to me
enough.
This is where they come back tothat they don't have to go out
into the world to find otherways to solve the problems that
(31:40):
they face, that they have a homebase.
They have a foundation in usbecause we have built a
relationship, and so that changein my mindset about parenting
then helped me understand myday-to-day parenting then had to
be focused less on changingbehaviors and more on creating
(32:05):
trust, and it's not somethingthat I had ever been
intentionally doing day-to-daywith my biological children,
because the natural progressionof our relationship built the
trust organically and I justkind of missed that.
(32:25):
I had a disconnect when myadopted children moved in.
That that was lacking right,Because I knew how I felt about
them.
I was excited, I fell in lovewith them, I was protective
immediately, but we didn't havethis trust relationship back and
forth and they didn't trust me.
They didn't have any reason totrust me.
(32:45):
They had every reason not totrust me, quite honestly, and so
I had to learn that theparenting then had to look like
what do I do to build trust?
And in traditional parentingwe're often focused on what the
child has to do to build trust.
You know you have to earn trustso that you can get privileges
(33:08):
and so that you can haveindependence.
And if you don't do thosethings.
But I had to flip that on itshead and realize no, that was my
job first.
My job first was I had to proveto them they could trust me at
my word.
They could trust that I wasgoing to stick around.
They could trust that whenthings went awry we were still
(33:29):
going to stay connected to eachother.
And so it didn't come all of asudden.
It's been years long of ajourney of figuring out then
what does that look like in themoment?
So, when there is a behavior,when there is something we have
to correct, what does that looklike in the moment?
And and so it's looked kind ofhonestly, a little crazy
(33:49):
compared to what I expectedparenting to look like a lot of
times, when I will makedecisions in the moment to deal
with an issue that's happeningin our family in a completely
different way than I ever wouldhave done seven years ago,
Because I put at the forefrontof my mind that at the end of
the correction, what I want mostis that I have built more trust
(34:12):
, Because it's that trust that'sgoing to change behavior.
I can get compliance, butcompliance does not necessarily
change the behavior and that'sreally what I wanted, and I
wanted that connection with mykid their whole lives.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Sure, sure, well and we talked about that a couple of
on the podcast a couple ofweeks ago where, you know, a lot
of times we're seekingcompliance for our own felt
safety, because compliance andorder and our kids doing what we
tell them to do actually ushaving that control makes us
feel safe instead of making ourkids feel safe.
(34:48):
Well, so I have a question,though, about how this works in
the church, right, because Ithink a lot of times it comes up
with people within the churchlike this is permissive
parenting?
This is not biblical.
You know that kind of stuff.
(35:08):
How do you address that kind ofstuff?
Or do you address it?
Do you just parent the way thatyou want and just kind of let
comments slide?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I think I mean we don't have a lot now.
Now, in the beginning we had alittle bit of like people poking
their heads in what was goingon, because it definitely looked
different and the parenting hadto happen.
You know, a lot of times ourchildren who've had a really
difficult past, butdevelopmentally they're not
(35:41):
living in their chronologicalage, so they may look like a
10-year-old but they may beoperating like a 6-year-old, and
so you have to parent thedevelopment of the child, not
necessarily the chronologicalage, and so that looks different
.
But we haven't had a whole lotof people poking their heads in,
but we do have our own mindmess.
(36:05):
I think that happens based onwhat we've experienced in our
culture.
So and we both grew up in thechurch and so that was really
instilled in us, that kind oftraditional, faith-based
parenting.
But what I love about what I'velearned about a more
trust-based parenting is that itis very gospel centered,
(36:28):
because it's a lot aboutrestoring relationship, it's
about redemption, it's aboutgrace, it's about forgiveness
and second chances and really alot more than what we were doing
before.
(36:48):
So a lot of the parenting thatwe were doing before hinged on
this idea that we have to punishbehaviors in order to change
them.
And those punitive ideas, thosepunitive responses weren't ones
(37:08):
that we necessarilyintentionally wrapped connection
around, and so a lot of timeswhat was happening was, as we
tried to correct behaviors, wewere also creating disconnection
at the time.
So there wasn't this alignmentof our hearts with our child, of
being on the same path together.
It wasn't intentional.
(37:29):
We had, we did the best wecould with what we knew, right,
Like that's what we knew.
We love our children.
We loved our children Even whenwe were missed.
What we consider was messingthings up at the time, needing a
transition in our parenting,but it definitely wasn't as
connected as what we're tryingto be now, and so it's
(37:49):
definitely not permissiveparenting, because what we're
looking for is a balance of howcan I nurture the need of my
child, especially a child whoseneeds did not get nurtured for a
long time, how do I fill thegap between what they missed and
(38:10):
where we are now?
But also how do I create goodstructure, because the structure
piece is also important fortheir felt safety.
Yes, connection is importantfor felt safety, but so is
structure.
The boundaries are reallyimportant, one of our children
in particular.
We always talk among my husbandand I with ourselves that, like
, we can just tell a differencein this child when we hold a
(38:34):
really good boundary for thembecause they feel safe in that
boundary that we've createdthrough relationship.
So it's all relational, it's notpermissive.
It's all relational, it's notpermissive, it's just relational
.
It's making sure that at theend of the day, even if we've
had a conflict, if we've had arupture in our relationship, if
we've had to come down with aconsequence, that we are also
(38:57):
staying connected to that childand that we're not staying in a
punitive mindset that is goingto have a tear in the
relationship.
So you know we have highexpectations, but we've learned
to scaffold our child to getthere if they need to, rather
than just keeping theexpectation there and constantly
(39:18):
seeing a child fail to make it.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
We actually, I think in our home anybody that knows
me or our home, our family, howour family runs I don't think
anybody would say that we'repermissive, because we are
actually much higher structured,especially for our younger kids
.
We have a lot more structurethan the traditional family.
(39:42):
My kids have a lot moreboundaries because they need
those boundaries.
That helps them feel safe andit helps them succeed.
But you do have to be.
When you have this highstructure like that, you have to
be higher nurture and I dothink when parents end up
digging in, when people in thechurch end up digging into this,
(40:03):
it is so gospel centered Likethis is how God operates and it
is how he calls us to parent.
There's a scripture in Ephesians6 that says children, obey your
parents and the Lord, for thisis right, all the things right.
But then it says fathers, donot provoke your children to
anger.
Well, our kids that haveexperienced harm are going to
(40:28):
more quickly be provoked toanger because of their fear
response, and so it is our jobas the parent to tailor how we
parent to not provoke that childto that.
It is our job to stayrelationally connected and safe
(40:50):
for them so that we're notconstantly provoking them to
that anger response which isbiblical.
But it's so funny because Ithink a lot of times in the
church people don't necessarilyunderstand what we're doing and
why.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yep, and you know, mentioning that fear response,
one of the things I had to learnwas I was actually perpetuating
a lot of the behaviors from howI was responding and so when I
learned that what I needed to doand I talked to parents about
this a lot as well in ourcoaching that I had to become
(41:26):
the person who disarms.
So what can I do to disarm inthe moment, so that my child has
an opportunity to respond in anappropriate way?
Because if I immediately addfear on top of fear, then I'm
not going to get the response Iwant from my child.
I'm going to get thosebehaviors like lying and
sneaking and stealing.
But if I can disarm them witheven my tone of voice and my
(41:50):
posture and, you know,affirmation to them, then I'm
much more likely to get what Iwant when it comes to behavior.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
I always say that like I haveto joke around with my kids.
If I say something kind ofserious to them, then I have to
be like you know and kind ofgive them a thumbs up or a goofy
smile or a laugh or a wink orsomething afterwards to kind of
take them out of that, to helpthem understand that
relationally, we're still goodthat I am holding you
(42:22):
accountable for something in themoment, but that doesn't mean
that there's anything wrong, youknow, relationally with us.
Well, now you have teens, rightLike.
So now all of these kids aregrown up, how has this shifted
in your home and what has thathealing process look like, both
(42:44):
for your kids and for you, asyou have?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
you know, as the years have gone by, so, you know
, adolescence brings with it itsown challenges, but also its
own joys, and so I was talkingwith a friend today who saw some
pictures recently that weposted on social media, and she
was, like you do such fun thingswith your kids.
Is it really that fun, like?
(43:08):
Is it as fun as it looks?
Right?
And sometimes it is.
There is a lot of joy.
I told you God promised me thatthere would be, but there is a
lot of hard work, and a lot ofhard work has come to get to the
point where we can really enjoyeach other still at this age,
and so my children range from 18to 13 now, and we have seen a
(43:31):
lot of growth.
One of the keys that has reallyhelped my husband and I as
parents is to reflect togetherverbally often about what
changes we've seen, because alot of times you can feel like
you're really still stuck in alot of the same places, like
okay, like we're still dealingwith lying or we're still
dealing with stealing or we'restill dealing with these
(43:55):
behaviors.
But if we reflect back to wherewe've come from, yes, we're
still have some things thatwe're working on, but man, we've
come a long way.
Um, and so one of the biggestchanges that just confirms for
me that this is the type ofparenting that God wants me to
do and that this is the type ofparenting that God will use to
(44:18):
heal um in my home is that, um,we have, I have children who now
are able to come to me and with, faced with a difficult
situation, they can much morequickly get to the truth, right,
they can tell me what's reallygoing on much faster than we
used to Just a few months ago.
(44:39):
So, so, one of my children wasfiercely independent when they
moved in, and we had thispattern at that point of reading
bedtime stories every night,you know, one-on-one with the
kids, and this child ofteninsisted on reading the book
themselves, which, at the time,I was like well, this is
(45:00):
fantastic, right, they lovereading, they're embracing this
time, yeah.
As I look back years later, Irecognize, though, that that was
a symptom of that child'sinability to be able to easily
receive my nurture and care.
And so, just a few months ago,this same child I was making
(45:21):
lunch for the kids, and I justwas making peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches and, for somereason, to one of the siblings,
they said mama made me a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich.
That's just what mamas do and Ithought, man, what a tiny
little glimmer of where we'vecome in our attachment.
(45:45):
Because my husband and I werewilling to say, okay, what we're
doing is not working anymoreand recognize that we needed
something different, and becausewe've focused on building that
trust and building that feltsafety, giving the nurture and
the care really intentionally.
(46:05):
Even these little things beganto demonstrate to the children
that this is what family isright, this is what it feels
like to receive care fromsomeone.
So this child, who wouldn't letme read to them, now recognizes
a peanut butter and jellysandwich is a symbol of our
attachment, our love for eachother.
So we've been able to see someof those.
(46:26):
You have to kind of look forthose little glimmers of where
the healing has happened, but itdoes come.
It's a journey, but itdefinitely comes.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Sure, but it is not immediate and it doesn't happen
at the judge's gavel kind ofthing, right Like it does.
It does take time, and to evenyou know, hear from you all
these years later, that y'allstill see behaviors, that you
still see fear, responses, thatyou still see all these things,
(46:57):
I think is actually hopeful forparents that we're not stepping
into this and we're failing inour job, that our kids haven't
healed automatically, but thatit is supposed to be a lifelong
process.
It's not something that'ssupposed to heal automatically.
I know that's something with myown journey that has been
(47:17):
reflected back to me, like Istill see glimpses of healing
that needs to happen in me fromthings that have happened along
the way.
You know, years and years andyears in my childhood, and so
you know to know that there'sstill those spaces in me, that,
but that God's revealing thosethings in all of us all along
(47:39):
the way, I think is beautiful.
What do you think, as we wrapup like?
What do you think, though, thebiggest thing that God has done
for you on this journey?
Speaker 2 (47:51):
So I really think, similar to what you were just
mentioning, right Like what werecognize is, we go into this
journey knowing that healingneeds to take place, that we
have children who've experiencedharm that they never deserved,
that has impacted who they are.
But I think the surprisingpiece is that God uses the steps
(48:17):
that you're taking in order tofacilitate healing for your
family, also begins to createhealing for yourself.
I mean, we all have things inourselves where, um, you know,
we may not recognize where ourweaknesses are.
Um, and one of the trainingsthat I did for TBRI, um, one of
(48:38):
the trainers said um, yourtriggers are your issue, and I
was like Whoa, hold on, I don'tlike that.
That's not what I signed up for.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Right, that is, these triggers are not my problem,
but it really resonated with mewith okay, why do I have these
certain responses over responses, quite honestly, to my child's
behaviors?
What is that?
What is happening in my ownheart, what needs to be healed
there so that I can be betterconnected as a person?
(49:14):
And so learning to be a moreconnected parent has allowed me
to recognize in my life wherethat has been a struggle for me
in general, so maybe where Ihave been more dismissive or I
have been more avoidant ofrelationship.
I find myself in the afternoons,which are some like the busiest
(49:38):
moments of a mother's day.
Right, you pick all the kids upfrom school and you get home
and like there's homework andthere's dinner prep and there's
all of these things.
And I used to be the mom.
I'm so much often focused onachieving and accomplishing and
those types of things that thoseafternoons would look super
(49:59):
busy and super stressful and canoften be tense and in that I
would miss connectionopportunities with my children.
And so I started just to sit onthe couch in the afternoons
just to make myself available.
Yep, so the journey has reallytaught me where I was really
(50:21):
holding back and withholdingbecause of parts of me that
needed to heal.
And as those have healed, I'veeven been able to go back to my
biological children and say I'mreally sorry I handled this
thing like this, because nowthat I understand relationship a
little different, parenting alittle different, I wish I'd
handled that differently.
And so I do believe it's madean impact on the types of
(50:44):
relationships I get to have withmy teenagers.
I mean, we're going to face bigobstacles, I feel certain as we
continue to move forwardthrough adolescence, right, but
I know I have some connectionsnow that without God own heart
and also making my aptitudesmall so that I could accept his
(51:13):
plan and that gospel centeredapproach, we would have a much
different look in our home rightnow.
And so I'm really thankful forthat, for that piece that he has
, you know, surprisingly beenable to draw me closer to him
even in the most stressfulseasons of our lives, so that he
(51:34):
could heal parts of me, so thatI could watch the healing
happen, you know, in our family.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, it really is beautiful.
Well, april, tell us what youdo now with all of this
knowledge, how you help familiesand stuff, and where we can
find you Sure.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
So I have gone from always knowing, since I was five
years old, that I was going tobe a teacher.
I used to be an educator andthen became a mama and have had
many you know side roads on thisjourney but have landed in the
last few years as an adoptionprofessional.
(52:12):
I work in South Carolina withadoptive and pre-adoptive
families.
Our organization I work for anonprofit called Flourishing
Families.
We have the opportunity to workalongside families who have
adopted through DSS.
Most of our staff has livedexperience so it makes it really
unique in how we get to linkarms.
(52:33):
Quite honestly, I get to be theperson I needed nine years ago,
like it's the biggest blessingthat I never even could have
imagined was going to come tofruition.
I literally get to be theperson I wish I had at that time
, and so it's such a joy andit's so humbling and I wake up
grateful all the time.
(52:53):
In the meantime I'm alsoworking on I'm an aspiring
writer.
So I am working on two projects.
One is a book that's not quitea devotional and not quite a
Bible study Kind of the thing Ineeded.
When I told you you know theBible felt like it would be too
heavy to pick up.
I'm kind of writing the book Iwish I had had in that moment
(53:16):
for the encouragements that Ineeded for my heart, and so I'm
in the process of finishing thatup and then hopefully moving
toward a more you know,nonfiction, bringing together
all that I've learned aboutparenting in the adoption world
and what I wish I'd known fromday one, kind of compiling that.
So in that process.
(53:37):
Right now you can find me onInstagram most easily.
I'm at April underscoreil,underscore, ficklin um on
instagram and I am growing fromscratch a brand new instagram
page because I'm also reallycareful to protect my family and
my children and so I want to beable to give back to other
(53:59):
parents and mamas while alsoprotecting, and so I would love
to see that grow so that I cancontinue to share tips, share
encouragement and come alongsideespecially moms, give them a
little hope in the overwhelmthat we experience.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Well, awesome.
I love all the insight thatyou've given everybody today,
and I watch your Instagram on aregular basis and you always
provide such good tips and toolsfor parents, so I will put all
of those links in the show notesfor you to be able to check
(54:37):
April out.
April provides some greatresources in this episode and
I've linked those things in theshow notes.
As many of you know, I am superpassionate about being
trauma-informed and the need forparents to include their own
self-care as a part of beingtruly trauma-informed.
I have a five-day challengethat starts on Monday, april
(54:58):
14th, where you can start tolearn some of these real
self-care strategies.
We're not going to be talkingbubble baths or anything like
that.
We're going to be digging intohow do you really care for your
bodies so that you can show upas the calm, regulated parent
that you need to be.
If you need a little moreguidance than five days, I do
(55:19):
have a six-week program thatbegins on April 21st.
If you message me on Instagrammy Instagram is at Nicole T
Barlow I can give you a discountcode for the six-week course if
you message me.
This week we have been calledto do really hard things, you
guys, let's do everything thatwe can to be the best that we
(55:40):
can for our kids and ourfamilies.
If you've enjoyed this episode,send it to a friend that needs
it April shares so much wisdomand be sure to subscribe and
leave a review so that moreparents can find the support
that they need.
Now let me pray for us as weclose.
Father God, we come before youtoday with open hearts.
(56:01):
We really have some deep needsin our community.
Lord, thank you for this callthat you've placed on our lives.
Thank you for the call thatyou've placed on all the lives
of foster and adoptive parents.
This is a sacred task of lovingchildren who carry heavy
stories.
Lord, it is holy work, but itis also really, really hard.
(56:26):
Lord, you see every wound thatwe carry.
You see old hurts and unspokenfears.
You see that buried grief.
You know the parts of ourhearts that feel stretched too
thin or where we're not enough.
Would you begin a fresh healingwork in us?
Gently reveal the places withinthat need with your touch,
(56:49):
shine your light into thecorners that we've tucked away
for so long.
Lord, we've forgotten that someof those old hurts are even
there, but they show up inmoments with our kids, god, help
us not to run from the workthat you're calling us to do in
us, but meet us there, meet usin that place.
(57:11):
Help us to look to you in thosemoments, to trust that you're
not asking for perfection,you're only asking for our
surrender.
Father, let the healing in usbecome the healing in our homes.
May our own restoration be atestimony of your goodness to
the children in our care and inevery moment when we feel like
(57:35):
we're not enough, remind us thatyou are, that we don't have to
be.
We love you, jesus.
We trust you In Jesus' name,amen.
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we
have real candid, faith-filledconversations about all things
foster care, adoption and trauma.
I'm your host, nicole T Barlow.
I'm a certified parent trainer,a certified health coach and an
adoptive parent myself.
This is a space where you canfind support so that you can
care for your kids with asteadfast faith, endurance and
(00:32):
joy.
I want you to, Nicole T Barlow.
We are going to jump right intoday because my guest, april
(01:02):
Fricklin, has so much value toshare.
We're going to be talking aboutbecoming trauma aware as we
parent.
April is a TBRI practitioner,she's a former high school
English teacher and she's a momof four teens whose family grew
through adoption over eightyears ago.
Well, welcome to the show,April.
(01:22):
I'm so excited to have you ontoday eight years ago.
Well, welcome to the show,april.
I'm so excited to have you ontoday.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself and how you got started
in adoption.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Awesome, yes, so I am so happy to be here.
Thank you for inviting me,nicole.
So I actually really began tothink about adoption as part of
something I was interested indoing in my life way back when I
was a teenager, and so at thatpoint I was 15 or 16 years old
and I attended a short-termBible study not Bible study
(02:00):
mission trip, sorry inProvidence, rhode Island, which
I think now is such irony.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Providence.
Yes, that we were in the cityof.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Providence right, and while I was engaging with the
children there, while I wasserving there, I just felt this
really strong pull from God thatadoption at some point would be
part of my life.
It wasn't anything inparticular that was happening.
I remember the one vision Ihave from that trip was spending
(02:34):
time with some children in aplayground and pushing them on a
tire swing, and so that littlesymbol of a tire swing has
always kind of just stuck in mymind of just remembering this
calling that God kind of put onmy life way before I knew what
things were going to look likeand how that was going to evolve
, so it just kind of stayedthere in the back of my mind for
(02:56):
years and years.
My husband and I we starteddating in our early 20s and from
the very beginning I let himknow that this was something I
was thinking about.
This was something I felt likeGod was leading me to, so this
needed to be something that wewere on the same page about at
some point.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's awesome.
So I'll let you know.
So I train, I do pre-servicetraining for foster and adoptive
parents and I am always supersurprised about how many parents
that we have come through andthey say, like this was part of
the conversation on our firstdate, because I knew that we
were, that this was thedirection that God had for me
(03:36):
and so this person needed to beon board.
So I just love that.
I love, I love people that havethe, that vision that God has
given that them that visionahead of time, and that they put
that on the table from the veryget go.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, it was definitely something really
important to me.
But it's nice because in ourrelationship I am kind of the
green light and my husband iskind of the yellow light, you
know, and so he's always helpsme kind of gauge how quickly I
move into things.
So it wasn't something wejumped immediately into, but it
(04:11):
was something that over theyears God aligned our hearts at
the right time for us to be ableto do.
So we didn't jump into adoptionimmediately after getting
married, but several years intoour marriage we began having
children and growing our family.
So we have two biologicalchildren.
So they came first, and whenthey were young, elementary
(04:33):
school kids, we decided that thetime was right for us to take
the steps to look into adoptingthrough foster care, adopting
through foster care.
And so we did that, and welearned really quickly that
everything that had beenromanticized in my head about
adoption all of those years wassomething really different from
(04:57):
the reality of it.
And so in that process God kindof made it clear to me that
this was going to be somethingthat was going to be really hard
in a lot of ways, but he alsopromised a lot of joy, and so
that's definitely been fulfilledin what we've experienced over
the last year.
So it was actually nine yearsago today that our two children
(05:22):
moved in to our house, Um, so weadopted a brother and a sister
from foster care and um kind ofgrew our family that way.
So we had four kiddos, um, allschool aged.
It happened on good Friday of2016.
We went from two to fourovernight, Um, and then it was
immediate chaos.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I bet now okay, so a couple of questions about
y'all's journey.
Did y'all know that you weregoing to adopt them?
Were they an adoptive placementor were they?
Did you start out with fostercare as a reunification case?
And how old were your adoptedkiddos when you um, when they
(06:07):
were placed with you, versusyour biological kids?
Cause I think people alwayslike to know.
You know kind of what thosedynamics look like when people
get started.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, so we um no, we never fostered, so that wasn't
ever the calling that we felt.
So we went into it knowing thatwe would be adopting and kind
of opened our options up toconsidering taking at least two
children One, because my twobiological children were very
(06:40):
close and I didn't kind of Ididn't want like an odd man out,
you know.
So if we just took in one child, I was kind of afraid it would
create this weird dynamic.
And so, even though we didn'tnecessarily feel equipped to
double, double the children inthe home, we felt like that
might be the best option for us.
Um, so my biological childrenwere in third and first grade
(07:03):
when we decided to adopt.
It was a conversation we had asa whole family.
The process of licensingactually took us a while.
We had to wait a really longtime to get our home study done
with an investigator and ourchildren moved in and they were
four and almost six, so theyfell in line really closely and
(07:28):
my biological children stayed inthe birth order originally.
So that did help the transitiona lot.
But they're also all very closein age.
So there's a five-year spanbetween the four of them.
So they're pretty close in age.
So right now they're allteenagers.
I have four.
I have a house full ofteenagers.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I kind of like that.
Like my kids are.
Like that, we have a set.
I have six kiddos and we have aset of big kids.
We have three big kids andthree little kids and my three
big kids are all really close inage and my three little kids
are.
I mean, my girls are only 10and a half months apart, so,
like my littles are, are reallyclose, um, together.
(08:08):
And I like it because my, mykids have each other to play
with and and you know, to befriends with and that kind of
stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, we have a.
We call them the bigs and thelittles too, so we were able to
differentiate that and it's nicethat they had each other.
It was also nice that they wereable to stay together being
siblings, so that was somethingthat felt really special to us
to be able to be able to givethem that.
I mean, they lost so much inthose transitions of their life,
(08:36):
but we were able to give themthe home to stay together, so
that was really special to us.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I love that.
Now, how long had they been infoster care before they came to
you?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
They had been in care for.
Let me remember I think it wasaround maybe total, close to two
years, and they were so sincewe had gone into the process.
So, since we had gone into theprocess planning to adopt, their
(09:06):
case had already gone throughTPR and the appeal process, and
so we didn't have to walk thatpart of the journey and, in fact
, even though our licensing tooka while, the adoption itself
was almost like a miracle fromGod as far as how quickly it
went compared to how most thingsgo in this realm.
(09:27):
And so they moved in and theadoption was finalized six
months to the day, so basically,as quickly as it could go, that
part of the journey went reallyquickly and smoothly.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, for those of you that don't know, I think in
most states and this may varyfrom state to state, but in most
states you have to foster achild for six months before you
can finalize the adoption.
So that child has to live withyou for at least six months
before you're able to finalizethat adoption.
So that is super fast.
(10:00):
If you're doing it six monthsto the day, yeah, that's really
fast.
But how great for them thatthey didn't have to spend more
time in that transition, becauseI think sometimes the
transitions are super hard forour kids.
Well, okay, so you go throughthis adoption process super fast
(10:24):
.
What was life like afteradoption?
Like yay, your house justdoubled.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yes.
So you know we were.
It was.
We were very excited.
We were really looking forwardto this transition.
All of us were very excited.
But I very vividly remember theymoved in on Good Friday, so it
was a Friday night right beforeEaster and we spent the day
shopping and making sure we wereprepared for them.
We knew the things that theyliked.
We had done several visitsgetting the house prepared.
(10:54):
But I remember waking up onSaturday morning and quite
transparently thinking what inthe world have we just done?
Because already out in theliving room from our bedroom I
already heard the chaos.
So from going from the two tofour literally overnight, just
created so much new energy inthe house and it really didn't
(11:18):
take long before we realizedthat the needs, meeting the
needs of our kids, was going tolook different than what we
expected.
Um, and we didn't have theanswers to that for a long time,
quite honestly.
But because things didn't gothe way that the romanticized,
(11:41):
idealistic idea in my head hadbeen, we really started to hit
some challenges when it came towhether our parenting was really
effective for meeting the needsof our kids.
So that was really hard in thebeginning.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, how much training did you guys get
heading into this adoption?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Not a lot.
I remember two days.
We had two days of training,kind of spread out.
I don't even remember a wholelot of details.
I do remember a little bit ofkind of like hey, you could have
these big behaviors, make sureyou know what you're doing
before you walk this road.
But I don't remember a lot ofpractical tools about what was
(12:28):
going on or what in my mind.
I knew the kids would have somefear right, that makes sense,
like they're transitioning to anew home.
We're basically strangers, eventhough we're excited.
I understood there'd be someapprehension, there'd be some
fear.
But what I didn't understand iswhat that fear would look like
(12:51):
and how it would manifest and sowhere I was in this belief that
the fear would be.
You know, they might be scaredat night when it was time to go
to bed, or maybe they would beshy, those kinds of things.
I wasn't prepared for the fearcoming out in behaviors, yeah,
and that was really shocking tome.
(13:11):
And because the chaos kind ofdoubled in parenting, all of a
sudden I found myself like adeer in headlights of trying to
figure out how to navigate thenew behaviors that were coming
out of that baseline of what wasreally fear in my kids, but I
didn't understand that for areally long time.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Sure, yeah, that's really hard.
So, like I said, I do thepre-service training for foster
and adoptive parents in our areaand you know there are some.
I try to be very transparent,like I try to give the worst of
the worst so that they see, likeyou know, this is how this
could look.
But I still think, when you gothrough that process, how this
(13:58):
could look.
But I still think, when you gothrough that process, if you've
never seen it in your home, ifyou don't know how it feels, if
you don't know what it lookslike in a specific child,
there's no, there's nothingtangible you can kind of latch
onto.
You know, we actually at theagency that I trained for, we
actually just created a trainingfor where we kind of filmed
(14:21):
pre-service training for peopleto watch afterwards, because
it's like afterwards is whenyou're like, oh, this is what it
looks like.
Now I need some tools.
I need some tools Now.
I need to know how to implementthese things, because it's
really hard to prepare parentsahead of time, especially, I
(14:41):
think, when parents do kind ofenter in a lot of times with
these romanticized ideas of whatit's going to look like, and
sometimes I will say stuff and Ican see it in parents' eyes.
They're like oh, that's notgoing to be me, right?
Like, okay, well, we'll talk toyou in six months, we'll talk
to you in a year and let me know, but and it may not Do you know
what I'm saying?
(15:02):
Like it doesn't look the samefor everybody's journey, but I
do think that people kind of gointo it not really expecting you
know what is to come, what isto come.
And one of the things I reallytry to help parents with is not
give them necessarily all thepractical tools and how to
(15:22):
implement every single littlething, but where to go.
What kind of information dothey need to search for, who do
they need to connect with?
What books do they need to read?
Those sort of things so thatthey know where to turn when
things get crazy.
So where did you go?
(15:42):
Right, like if you, if you'reentering into this and not
expecting what is happening orwhat you're seeing or what
you're feeling in your home,right then, where did you turn
at that point?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
That's a great question.
So at first, honestly, we justkept pulling out the same tools
that we knew that had workedwell with our parenting thus far
.
We've been parenting for Idon't know nine or 10 years, and
so that was going okay.
We felt pretty good aboutourselves.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And so, even when those strategies weren't working
great, we didn't really knowwhat other tools to pull out,
and so for a long time we keptusing those same tools and kind
of beating our head against thewall, realizing something that's
got to give.
Something has to change becausethis is not working and I'm not
the parent that I used to andI'm not the parent that I used
(16:37):
to be.
I'm not the parent that Ithought I would be in this
moment and I'm definitely notthe mom that I want to be, um,
and so I um did a lot of prayingat first.
Um eventually began to findsome resources, first online.
(16:59):
So I remember very vividlycoming across Jason Johnson,
who's with CAFO, and he had ablog post at the time about
secondary trauma, and it was oneof those instances where I read
it and I was like, oh, like,there's not, like this is not me
(17:19):
, this is not just me, I'm notthe only one with this struggle.
This is something that happenswhen we care, give um, to
children who have these complexum issues that they that they
had to deal with early in life.
And so he was one of the firstvoices that I kind of came
across, that put pieces togetherthat made sense for me.
(17:41):
Yeah, I also remember listeningto a radio show I believe it was
focused on the family where anadoptive mom was sharing about
this 45 minute battle she hadwith her child about filling up
their water water bottle one dayand I was like, oh, that's just
like this thing that justhappened in my house with
reading a book for homework.
(18:03):
And so I started just kind ofhaving these little pieces of
the puzzle start to fill inwhere I recognized, okay, it's
not that I'm just doingsomething wrong, it's that this
is a different thing, that Irecognize and that the tools and
strategies that I have thathave been successful for me
(18:24):
before they just aren't theright tools for this new job.
And so I had some fellowadoptive moms introduce me to
the Connect2 Child within thefirst year or so of our adoption
and I read that and I'll behonest about it when I first
read it I was skeptical of a lotof what I was reading.
(18:47):
I learned some greatinformation from my first read
through of that book, but I wasalso like I don't know.
This feels really differentthan how I was parented.
This feels really differentthan what's worked so far I
don't know about this, and so itwas a slow progression to be
able to embrace some of thosemore trust building, attachment
(19:10):
focused parenting strategiesthat ultimately have made the
biggest difference in ourparenting for sure.
But some moms introduced me tothat resource.
We joined a small group withother foster adoptive moms.
That was life giving.
It was probably the only way wesurvived after those first
(19:31):
couple of years, because we werejust able to sit into a in a
room where I learned theimportance of the head nod right
when I would explain you know,like this, this just happened in
my house and I don't understandwhat this is going on and the
other moms in the room wouldjust nod their head and I'm like
wait, wait, wait, wait you,this happens in your house too.
And they would say, absolutelyso.
(19:51):
It just gave me that comfort ofknowing, okay, this is
something more than I haveunderstood, but that doesn't
mean that I can't figure thisout and that there aren't tools
available to us.
So that's kind of where thejourney of learning how to
parent a little differentlybegan is kind of finding those
resources.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That's awesome.
Yeah, I do think that thatempathy that we get from other
parents and the understanding ofpeople that are in it with us
makes a huge difference, becausewhen you're talking to regular,
you know people that aren't inthis world.
(20:33):
You may say something that isgoing on in your home and it's
just a blank stare.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Because they they have that doesn't make sense to
them, that is so outside oftheir comfort zone that they
don't even know how to respondsometimes, and and so I do think
that community makes such sucha big difference, such a big
difference.
Well, okay, so you're goingthrough all of these changes,
(21:03):
right, but what's going on inyour heart during this time,
right, have, mentally, we'regoing through this game where
we're trying to figure thingsout and prepare and, you know,
kind of orchestrate our home andget it back to order and become
(21:23):
the parent that we want to bein all the things.
And I think a lot of times wedo those things in our head but
we aren't paying attention towhat's going on in our heart.
So, what was going on in yourheart during this time, during
this season, and how did thistranslate into your faith?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So I think there were several things that I was
really wrestling with in my ownheart in the beginning of the
journey, and one of those was,pretty early on, feeling some
grief.
That was unexpected, right.
So things weren't going the waythat I anticipated that they
would go.
We had found ourselves, beforethe adoption, in a pretty easy
(22:07):
parenting season, like we feltlike things were going well and
it was fun and we just wanted to, you know, slide in um two more
to join the fun and, um, thetransition just wasn't as as
easy as we wanted it to be andthe attachments didn't come as
quickly as I had dreamed up inmy head, and so I began to feel
(22:31):
that grief, but also just alsolet myself, um, grieve the
expectations that I had had, sothat I could open my heart up to
accept the reality, cause itwasn't necessarily a bad reality
, it was just a different onethan what I had expected.
Um, so that was definitely oneof the things I was wrestling
with, but I was also wrestlingwith some arrogance, to be
(22:53):
honest.
Um, like I said, parenting wasgoing well for us, so we kind of
thought we knew what we weredoing.
We got accolade from the peoplearound us, even walking into
the adoption, people would saythey've got really good kids.
Do they know what they're doing?
I'd have people warn me thatyou know this.
You know this might besomething that would be
(23:14):
detrimental to our family.
Things were already going well.
So I mean, we felt like we weregood parents and things had
gone well.
And so when things weren'tworking the way that I wanted
them to in my parenting, it wasa while before I was willing to
see that it was myresponsibility to change my
(23:35):
approach, and I desperatelywanted a change.
I was willing to do hard work,but I just didn't know what that
was, and so I kept walking inthe same parenting that I had
done for years, and it tookhumility to be able to say, okay
, this obviously is not working,I've got to figure something
(23:57):
completely different out.
And so my husband and Iactually did many, many, many
miles of walking up and down thestreet in front of our house.
We couldn't leave the houselong enough to go actually do a
real walk right, because we hadfour children.
But we'd walk up and down andas I would read things and as I
(24:17):
would learn and as I gotintroduced to Karen Purvis, with
trust-based relationalintervention and the Connected
Child, and those things.
I would just we would talkthrough them and say, like I
read this, I heard that this isthe case.
You know, this is what happenswhen a child has experienced
trauma.
This is what their brain does.
Do you think we need to changethings in this way?
(24:38):
You know?
So we'd have those kinds ofconversations where we really
had to break down what we feltconfident in and recognize that
we need some supernaturalchanges to happen.
Yeah, so that was definitely apiece the grief, the arrogance,
and then the other thing thatwas really unexpected was the
isolation.
I felt really lonely and thedifficult parenting and the
(25:03):
loneliness were so heavy that,when it came to my faith, what I
found was I would look at myBible sitting on my nightstand
and it just seemed too heavy topick up.
I was exhausted.
At the end of the day, I wasmentally exhausted.
Um, I didn't want to processscripture.
I didn't want to figure out howit applied to my life.
(25:24):
Um, it just felt really heavy,and so I clung to scripture that
I knew.
Um, that became important to mein this season because it never
really resonated before, andit's the scripture in Romans
where it talks about the spiritwill moan on our behalf.
And so I just accepted that,like so I didn't.
(25:44):
I didn't feel like I was havinga crisis of faith, I didn't
feel like I was far from God.
I actually felt very closebecause I knew I was not able to
do this on my own Right.
So, um, and I knew God hadorchestrated the process of the
adoption in a way that Icouldn't deny it, and so I held
onto that hope and thatunderstanding that he had that
(26:07):
providence all along, that hehad orchestrated those things.
Um, but man life was so heavythat it was hard to dig in.
Um, so I just clung to knowingthat the spirit was was praying
on my behalf.
The spirit was going to God onmy behalf.
And so in those moments when Iwas feeling really isolated, I
(26:28):
had this Sunday morning andSunday morning taking four kids
to church not always fun anywayand during the greeting part of
the worship, a woman who wassitting behind us we were
acquaintances, I knew her, butwe weren't close looked me in
the eyes and said I've beenpraying for your family every
(26:49):
day.
And she was really the firstperson.
I mean like we had all of thesepeople who supported us and who
loved us and they were veryexcited that we were adopting
and they loved the process.
But I find that people on theoutside sometimes make
assumptions that once theadoptions finalize, that the
healing has happened when thoseof us on the inside recognize
(27:09):
that's just the beginning.
Right, that's the beginning ofthe hard work of healing that
really is going to last a reallylong time.
Right, that's the beginning ofthe hard work of healing that
really is going to last a reallylong time.
And so people saw that life wasdifferent.
But they didn't understand itand it got a little messy and it
got a little hard, and sopeople kind of some people
pulled away and some people gotreally confused and some people
got offended because we missedthings or things were different
(27:30):
than before.
Yeah, but this woman remindedme that that's the kind of thing
I needed, was I just needed toknow that there were people who
were like man, that looks reallyhard and I'm praying for you.
So that really lit a passion inme as I was able to kind of
pull out several years later outof kind of the what I felt like
(27:52):
was the adoption fog, um, andbe able to find ways to support
other mamas who were feelingthat same need for that
intercessory prayer.
It became really important partof how I wanted to give back.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, I mean, it's so , so important.
But I think that if you are onthe outside, if you don't know
and I love that you're givingback in this way now because you
do know Right, but if you don'tknow, our families on the
outside can just look likeregular families, right, and
people don't know the battlethat is going on all day, every
(28:30):
day.
And I don't mean the battlebetween us and our kids, right,
but the fight for healing, thefight for restoration for our
kids, the fight for healing andrestoration in our whole
families, right, and so, as allof that is happening, it is, it
is a battle, and I think havingthose people on the outside that
(28:53):
can be fighting with us isreally, really, really important
and I love that.
You know the Lord prompted herto see your family in that way,
to see that need and to bepraying for you guys.
That's awesome.
To be praying for you guys,that's that's awesome.
(29:19):
Well, okay, so so you flippedkind of the script of of how you
were parenting, right.
You latched on to Karen, purvisand TBRI type stuff.
How did that change things?
What tools really helped youtransition?
What was it that made thebiggest changes for both your
(29:41):
kids and their healing process,but also for you as a parent.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So in the beginning, as I mentioned before, a lot of
the fear, the impact of trauma,those types of things came out
in behaviors that shocked us,that surprised us and that
worried us.
And so at first I felt like itwas my job to change behaviors.
(30:09):
Right, I wanted these behaviorschanged.
But over time what I recognizedwas that I really needed a
mindset shift, and that began tohappen in my parenting.
So for one, I recognized thatwhat I had envisioned my goal of
(30:29):
parenting was might need tochange a little bit, and so
traditionally, in traditionalparenting, we kind of look at
our role as being okay.
As the parent.
We are here to help guide,teach, create expectations, help
our children behave or, youknow, have certain behaviors
(30:52):
that fit into the culture sothat as adults they can be good
citizens of the world, right,they can have jobs and
relationships and be successfuland and those things.
And so that was just kind ofthe mindset that I had in my
parenting.
But I had to kind of recognizethat at the end of the day, for
(31:17):
my children, what I reallywanted and what I think was
going to be most impactful forthem was that when they are 25
and they make a mistake, thatthey're still connected to me
enough.
This is where they come back tothat they don't have to go out
into the world to find otherways to solve the problems that
(31:40):
they face, that they have a homebase.
They have a foundation in usbecause we have built a
relationship, and so that changein my mindset about parenting
then helped me understand myday-to-day parenting then had to
be focused less on changingbehaviors and more on creating
(32:05):
trust, and it's not somethingthat I had ever been
intentionally doing day-to-daywith my biological children,
because the natural progressionof our relationship built the
trust organically and I justkind of missed that.
(32:25):
I had a disconnect when myadopted children moved in.
That that was lacking right,Because I knew how I felt about
them.
I was excited, I fell in lovewith them, I was protective
immediately, but we didn't havethis trust relationship back and
forth and they didn't trust me.
They didn't have any reason totrust me.
(32:45):
They had every reason not totrust me, quite honestly, and so
I had to learn that theparenting then had to look like
what do I do to build trust?
And in traditional parentingwe're often focused on what the
child has to do to build trust.
You know you have to earn trustso that you can get privileges
(33:08):
and so that you can haveindependence.
And if you don't do thosethings.
But I had to flip that on itshead and realize no, that was my
job first.
My job first was I had to proveto them they could trust me at
my word.
They could trust that I wasgoing to stick around.
They could trust that whenthings went awry we were still
(33:29):
going to stay connected to eachother.
And so it didn't come all of asudden.
It's been years long of ajourney of figuring out then
what does that look like in themoment?
So, when there is a behavior,when there is something we have
to correct, what does that looklike in the moment?
And and so it's looked kind ofhonestly, a little crazy
(33:49):
compared to what I expectedparenting to look like a lot of
times, when I will makedecisions in the moment to deal
with an issue that's happeningin our family in a completely
different way than I ever wouldhave done seven years ago,
Because I put at the forefrontof my mind that at the end of
the correction, what I want mostis that I have built more trust
(34:12):
, Because it's that trust that'sgoing to change behavior.
I can get compliance, butcompliance does not necessarily
change the behavior and that'sreally what I wanted, and I
wanted that connection with mykid their whole lives.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Sure, sure, well and we talked about that a couple of
on the podcast a couple ofweeks ago where, you know, a lot
of times we're seekingcompliance for our own felt
safety, because compliance andorder and our kids doing what we
tell them to do actually ushaving that control makes us
feel safe instead of making ourkids feel safe.
(34:48):
Well, so I have a question,though, about how this works in
the church, right, because Ithink a lot of times it comes up
with people within the churchlike this is permissive
parenting?
This is not biblical.
You know that kind of stuff.
(35:08):
How do you address that kind ofstuff?
Or do you address it?
Do you just parent the way thatyou want and just kind of let
comments slide?
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I think I mean we don't have a lot now.
Now, in the beginning we had alittle bit of like people poking
their heads in what was goingon, because it definitely looked
different and the parenting hadto happen.
You know, a lot of times ourchildren who've had a really
difficult past, butdevelopmentally they're not
(35:41):
living in their chronologicalage, so they may look like a
10-year-old but they may beoperating like a 6-year-old, and
so you have to parent thedevelopment of the child, not
necessarily the chronologicalage, and so that looks different
.
But we haven't had a whole lotof people poking their heads in,
but we do have our own mindmess.
(36:05):
I think that happens based onwhat we've experienced in our
culture.
So and we both grew up in thechurch and so that was really
instilled in us, that kind oftraditional, faith-based
parenting.
But what I love about what I'velearned about a more
trust-based parenting is that itis very gospel centered,
(36:28):
because it's a lot aboutrestoring relationship, it's
about redemption, it's aboutgrace, it's about forgiveness
and second chances and really alot more than what we were doing
before.
(36:48):
So a lot of the parenting thatwe were doing before hinged on
this idea that we have to punishbehaviors in order to change
them.
And those punitive ideas, thosepunitive responses weren't ones
(37:08):
that we necessarilyintentionally wrapped connection
around, and so a lot of timeswhat was happening was, as we
tried to correct behaviors, wewere also creating disconnection
at the time.
So there wasn't this alignmentof our hearts with our child, of
being on the same path together.
It wasn't intentional.
(37:29):
We had, we did the best wecould with what we knew, right,
Like that's what we knew.
We love our children.
We loved our children Even whenwe were missed.
What we consider was messingthings up at the time, needing a
transition in our parenting,but it definitely wasn't as
connected as what we're tryingto be now, and so it's
(37:49):
definitely not permissiveparenting, because what we're
looking for is a balance of howcan I nurture the need of my
child, especially a child whoseneeds did not get nurtured for a
long time, how do I fill thegap between what they missed and
(38:10):
where we are now?
But also how do I create goodstructure, because the structure
piece is also important fortheir felt safety.
Yes, connection is importantfor felt safety, but so is
structure.
The boundaries are reallyimportant, one of our children
in particular.
We always talk among my husbandand I with ourselves that, like
, we can just tell a differencein this child when we hold a
(38:34):
really good boundary for thembecause they feel safe in that
boundary that we've createdthrough relationship.
So it's all relational, it's notpermissive.
It's all relational, it's notpermissive, it's just relational
.
It's making sure that at theend of the day, even if we've
had a conflict, if we've had arupture in our relationship, if
we've had to come down with aconsequence, that we are also
(38:57):
staying connected to that childand that we're not staying in a
punitive mindset that is goingto have a tear in the
relationship.
So you know we have highexpectations, but we've learned
to scaffold our child to getthere if they need to, rather
than just keeping theexpectation there and constantly
(39:18):
seeing a child fail to make it.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
We actually, I think in our home anybody that knows
me or our home, our family, howour family runs I don't think
anybody would say that we'repermissive, because we are
actually much higher structured,especially for our younger kids
.
We have a lot more structurethan the traditional family.
(39:42):
My kids have a lot moreboundaries because they need
those boundaries.
That helps them feel safe andit helps them succeed.
But you do have to be.
When you have this highstructure like that, you have to
be higher nurture and I dothink when parents end up
digging in, when people in thechurch end up digging into this,
(40:03):
it is so gospel centered Likethis is how God operates and it
is how he calls us to parent.
There's a scripture in Ephesians6 that says children, obey your
parents and the Lord, for thisis right, all the things right.
But then it says fathers, donot provoke your children to
anger.
Well, our kids that haveexperienced harm are going to
(40:28):
more quickly be provoked toanger because of their fear
response, and so it is our jobas the parent to tailor how we
parent to not provoke that childto that.
It is our job to stayrelationally connected and safe
(40:50):
for them so that we're notconstantly provoking them to
that anger response which isbiblical.
But it's so funny because Ithink a lot of times in the
church people don't necessarilyunderstand what we're doing and
why.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yep, and you know, mentioning that fear response,
one of the things I had to learnwas I was actually perpetuating
a lot of the behaviors from howI was responding and so when I
learned that what I needed to doand I talked to parents about
this a lot as well in ourcoaching that I had to become
(41:26):
the person who disarms.
So what can I do to disarm inthe moment, so that my child has
an opportunity to respond in anappropriate way?
Because if I immediately addfear on top of fear, then I'm
not going to get the response Iwant from my child.
I'm going to get thosebehaviors like lying and
sneaking and stealing.
But if I can disarm them witheven my tone of voice and my
(41:50):
posture and, you know,affirmation to them, then I'm
much more likely to get what Iwant when it comes to behavior.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
I always say that like I haveto joke around with my kids.
If I say something kind ofserious to them, then I have to
be like you know and kind ofgive them a thumbs up or a goofy
smile or a laugh or a wink orsomething afterwards to kind of
take them out of that, to helpthem understand that
relationally, we're still goodthat I am holding you
(42:22):
accountable for something in themoment, but that doesn't mean
that there's anything wrong, youknow, relationally with us.
Well, now you have teens, rightLike.
So now all of these kids aregrown up, how has this shifted
in your home and what has thathealing process look like, both
(42:44):
for your kids and for you, asyou have?
Speaker 2 (42:48):
you know, as the years have gone by, so, you know
, adolescence brings with it itsown challenges, but also its
own joys, and so I was talkingwith a friend today who saw some
pictures recently that weposted on social media, and she
was, like you do such fun thingswith your kids.
Is it really that fun, like?
(43:08):
Is it as fun as it looks?
Right?
And sometimes it is.
There is a lot of joy.
I told you God promised me thatthere would be, but there is a
lot of hard work, and a lot ofhard work has come to get to the
point where we can really enjoyeach other still at this age,
and so my children range from 18to 13 now, and we have seen a
(43:31):
lot of growth.
One of the keys that has reallyhelped my husband and I as
parents is to reflect togetherverbally often about what
changes we've seen, because alot of times you can feel like
you're really still stuck in alot of the same places, like
okay, like we're still dealingwith lying or we're still
dealing with stealing or we'restill dealing with these
(43:55):
behaviors.
But if we reflect back to wherewe've come from, yes, we're
still have some things thatwe're working on, but man, we've
come a long way.
Um, and so one of the biggestchanges that just confirms for
me that this is the type ofparenting that God wants me to
do and that this is the type ofparenting that God will use to
(44:18):
heal um in my home is that, um,we have, I have children who now
are able to come to me and with, faced with a difficult
situation, they can much morequickly get to the truth, right,
they can tell me what's reallygoing on much faster than we
used to Just a few months ago.
(44:39):
So, so, one of my children wasfiercely independent when they
moved in, and we had thispattern at that point of reading
bedtime stories every night,you know, one-on-one with the
kids, and this child ofteninsisted on reading the book
themselves, which, at the time,I was like well, this is
(45:00):
fantastic, right, they lovereading, they're embracing this
time, yeah.
As I look back years later, Irecognize, though, that that was
a symptom of that child'sinability to be able to easily
receive my nurture and care.
And so, just a few months ago,this same child I was making
(45:21):
lunch for the kids, and I justwas making peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches and, for somereason, to one of the siblings,
they said mama made me a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich.
That's just what mamas do and Ithought, man, what a tiny
little glimmer of where we'vecome in our attachment.
(45:45):
Because my husband and I werewilling to say, okay, what we're
doing is not working anymoreand recognize that we needed
something different, and becausewe've focused on building that
trust and building that feltsafety, giving the nurture and
the care really intentionally.
(46:05):
Even these little things beganto demonstrate to the children
that this is what family isright, this is what it feels
like to receive care fromsomeone.
So this child, who wouldn't letme read to them, now recognizes
a peanut butter and jellysandwich is a symbol of our
attachment, our love for eachother.
So we've been able to see someof those.
(46:26):
You have to kind of look forthose little glimmers of where
the healing has happened, but itdoes come.
It's a journey, but itdefinitely comes.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Sure, but it is not immediate and it doesn't happen
at the judge's gavel kind ofthing, right Like it does.
It does take time, and to evenyou know, hear from you all
these years later, that y'allstill see behaviors, that you
still see fear, responses, thatyou still see all these things,
(46:57):
I think is actually hopeful forparents that we're not stepping
into this and we're failing inour job, that our kids haven't
healed automatically, but thatit is supposed to be a lifelong
process.
It's not something that'ssupposed to heal automatically.
I know that's something with myown journey that has been
(47:17):
reflected back to me, like Istill see glimpses of healing
that needs to happen in me fromthings that have happened along
the way.
You know, years and years andyears in my childhood, and so
you know to know that there'sstill those spaces in me, that,
but that God's revealing thosethings in all of us all along
(47:39):
the way, I think is beautiful.
What do you think, as we wrapup like?
What do you think, though, thebiggest thing that God has done
for you on this journey?
Speaker 2 (47:51):
So I really think, similar to what you were just
mentioning, right Like what werecognize is, we go into this
journey knowing that healingneeds to take place, that we
have children who've experiencedharm that they never deserved,
that has impacted who they are.
But I think the surprisingpiece is that God uses the steps
(48:17):
that you're taking in order tofacilitate healing for your
family, also begins to createhealing for yourself.
I mean, we all have things inourselves where, um, you know,
we may not recognize where ourweaknesses are.
Um, and one of the trainingsthat I did for TBRI, um, one of
(48:38):
the trainers said um, yourtriggers are your issue, and I
was like Whoa, hold on, I don'tlike that.
That's not what I signed up for.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Right, that is, these triggers are not my problem,
but it really resonated with mewith okay, why do I have these
certain responses over responses, quite honestly, to my child's
behaviors?
What is that?
What is happening in my ownheart, what needs to be healed
there so that I can be betterconnected as a person?
(49:14):
And so learning to be a moreconnected parent has allowed me
to recognize in my life wherethat has been a struggle for me
in general, so maybe where Ihave been more dismissive or I
have been more avoidant ofrelationship.
I find myself in the afternoons,which are some like the busiest
(49:38):
moments of a mother's day.
Right, you pick all the kids upfrom school and you get home
and like there's homework andthere's dinner prep and there's
all of these things.
And I used to be the mom.
I'm so much often focused onachieving and accomplishing and
those types of things that thoseafternoons would look super
(49:59):
busy and super stressful and canoften be tense and in that I
would miss connectionopportunities with my children.
And so I started just to sit onthe couch in the afternoons
just to make myself available.
Yep, so the journey has reallytaught me where I was really
(50:21):
holding back and withholdingbecause of parts of me that
needed to heal.
And as those have healed, I'veeven been able to go back to my
biological children and say I'mreally sorry I handled this
thing like this, because nowthat I understand relationship a
little different, parenting alittle different, I wish I'd
handled that differently.
And so I do believe it's madean impact on the types of
(50:44):
relationships I get to have withmy teenagers.
I mean, we're going to face bigobstacles, I feel certain as we
continue to move forwardthrough adolescence, right, but
I know I have some connectionsnow that without God own heart
and also making my aptitudesmall so that I could accept his
(51:13):
plan and that gospel centeredapproach, we would have a much
different look in our home rightnow.
And so I'm really thankful forthat, for that piece that he has
, you know, surprisingly beenable to draw me closer to him
even in the most stressfulseasons of our lives, so that he
(51:34):
could heal parts of me, so thatI could watch the healing
happen, you know, in our family.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, it really is beautiful.
Well, april, tell us what youdo now with all of this
knowledge, how you help familiesand stuff, and where we can
find you Sure.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
So I have gone from always knowing, since I was five
years old, that I was going tobe a teacher.
I used to be an educator andthen became a mama and have had
many you know side roads on thisjourney but have landed in the
last few years as an adoptionprofessional.
(52:12):
I work in South Carolina withadoptive and pre-adoptive
families.
Our organization I work for anonprofit called Flourishing
Families.
We have the opportunity to workalongside families who have
adopted through DSS.
Most of our staff has livedexperience so it makes it really
unique in how we get to linkarms.
(52:33):
Quite honestly, I get to be theperson I needed nine years ago,
like it's the biggest blessingthat I never even could have
imagined was going to come tofruition.
I literally get to be theperson I wish I had at that time
, and so it's such a joy andit's so humbling and I wake up
grateful all the time.
(52:53):
In the meantime I'm alsoworking on I'm an aspiring
writer.
So I am working on two projects.
One is a book that's not quitea devotional and not quite a
Bible study Kind of the thing Ineeded.
When I told you you know theBible felt like it would be too
heavy to pick up.
I'm kind of writing the book Iwish I had had in that moment
(53:16):
for the encouragements that Ineeded for my heart, and so I'm
in the process of finishing thatup and then hopefully moving
toward a more you know,nonfiction, bringing together
all that I've learned aboutparenting in the adoption world
and what I wish I'd known fromday one, kind of compiling that.
So in that process.
(53:37):
Right now you can find me onInstagram most easily.
I'm at April underscoreil,underscore, ficklin um on
instagram and I am growing fromscratch a brand new instagram
page because I'm also reallycareful to protect my family and
my children and so I want to beable to give back to other
(53:59):
parents and mamas while alsoprotecting, and so I would love
to see that grow so that I cancontinue to share tips, share
encouragement and come alongsideespecially moms, give them a
little hope in the overwhelmthat we experience.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Well, awesome.
I love all the insight thatyou've given everybody today,
and I watch your Instagram on aregular basis and you always
provide such good tips and toolsfor parents, so I will put all
of those links in the show notesfor you to be able to check
(54:37):
April out.
April provides some greatresources in this episode and
I've linked those things in theshow notes.
As many of you know, I am superpassionate about being
trauma-informed and the need forparents to include their own
self-care as a part of beingtruly trauma-informed.
I have a five-day challengethat starts on Monday, april
(54:58):
14th, where you can start tolearn some of these real
self-care strategies.
We're not going to be talkingbubble baths or anything like
that.
We're going to be digging intohow do you really care for your
bodies so that you can show upas the calm, regulated parent
that you need to be.
If you need a little moreguidance than five days, I do
(55:19):
have a six-week program thatbegins on April 21st.
If you message me on Instagrammy Instagram is at Nicole T
Barlow I can give you a discountcode for the six-week course if
you message me.
This week we have been calledto do really hard things, you
guys, let's do everything thatwe can to be the best that we
(55:40):
can for our kids and ourfamilies.
If you've enjoyed this episode,send it to a friend that needs
it April shares so much wisdomand be sure to subscribe and
leave a review so that moreparents can find the support
that they need.
Now let me pray for us as weclose.
Father God, we come before youtoday with open hearts.
(56:01):
We really have some deep needsin our community.
Lord, thank you for this callthat you've placed on our lives.
Thank you for the call thatyou've placed on all the lives
of foster and adoptive parents.
This is a sacred task of lovingchildren who carry heavy
stories.
Lord, it is holy work, but itis also really, really hard.
(56:26):
Lord, you see every wound thatwe carry.
You see old hurts and unspokenfears.
You see that buried grief.
You know the parts of ourhearts that feel stretched too
thin or where we're not enough.
Would you begin a fresh healingwork in us?
Gently reveal the places withinthat need with your touch,
(56:49):
shine your light into thecorners that we've tucked away
for so long.
Lord, we've forgotten that someof those old hurts are even
there, but they show up inmoments with our kids, god, help
us not to run from the workthat you're calling us to do in
us, but meet us there, meet usin that place.
(57:11):
Help us to look to you in thosemoments, to trust that you're
not asking for perfection,you're only asking for our
surrender.
Father, let the healing in usbecome the healing in our homes.
May our own restoration be atestimony of your goodness to
the children in our care and inevery moment when we feel like
(57:35):
we're not enough, remind us thatyou are, that we don't have to
be.
We love you, jesus.
We trust you In Jesus' name,amen.
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