Helping Our Kids Through Trauma can Trigger Our Own Abuse

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Real Talk. I am Ann and I'm Denise. You know Denise is filling in for us today, during the holidays, and you know, denise, you came to me last week with an amazing topic and I thought that we could bring it to our listeners, because we tend to try to talk about things that other podcasts aren't talking about. And you actually found somebody who was talking about this and you sent it to me and I found it really interesting and I think this falls under the category that I think our listeners will like. I know that we have trauma. I mean, you and I have had a lot of trauma and we have triggers, for sure. But it takes to a different level when we see that our kids have either gone through something or they are doing something. That actually triggers us. But it takes me maybe you too, you know to a completely different level. It takes me to read instantly, if I see something like that, I mean like a reaction, that you have to remind yourself if our reaction fits, really what is going on. You know, because I have to, like, check myself and be like now, is my reaction fitting? What's happening Now? I have to say, with most of what we are talking about today. Yes, I think it does, because some of these things are just, you know, they're things that happen that we really need to make sure that our kids are taken care of and protected and that they're not being hurt. So it does go to a deeper level as a parent, so I think our reactions can be more magnified For sure. Yeah, I mean now with me, I have to go straight to the mother of all triggers right here. The inappropriateness. Yeah, I mean anything that appears sexual in nature to me with my kids, or something on TV that they have seen, or somebody acts that way with them, I just instantly go to red. I mean I have to really make sure that I handle it appropriately.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Yeah Well, I'm the same way. I think I'm super sensitive or hyper focused on whatever it is and, yes, the sexual inappropriateness is definitely like on very heightened alert on that. So much so. I agree, we tend to think of it as our own being, of what's happening to us that we have a hard time of separating that some of the things that are happening aren't necessarily with bad intention because we've never seen it before. So, for instance, my husband's cousin is very affectionate to my kids. Like you know, he had never had, you know, so I've never had children, but they're just very affectionate and I am so guarded about that where I realized there is no bad intentions, everything is good intended. I like it makes me so uncomfortable because I don't know I didn't have that. You know, anytime somebody was like that with me. You know it wasn't good, you know. So, having somebody love my kids in an appropriate way, where I don't see it that way because it was so negative to me. I have to work through that and I just don't see it that way and I just, you know, my it's just something that weighs on me and it's so sad because I wonder sometime if you know, my protectiveness is too much that it allows them to miss out on some things that are are appropriate. But we just don't see it that way because we've experienced things differently.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Right. I mean, I know what it feels like for somebody to do inappropriate things to me and I guess sometimes there's that line where I have to ask myself am I thinking that this is inappropriate? And it's not, and but the things that I think that are inappropriate with my kids, that we've had to take care of I think that they were bad, they were, and and that instinct of me having to, and I'll tell you what Mama Bear jumps in and I am all about it Don't mess with my kids. I've been messed with, I didn't have that protectiveness with me and I want to make sure that my kids know that they're protected.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Yeah, absolutely, and that and that's you know. Again, there's that fine line of are we being too overprotective or are we doing what is appropriate? That we know, you know, are we too guarded? But yet you know, there we have to have that guard up, especially like now. You know you have to. You have to be guarding your child because you know what it was like for you and you never want them to feel that way. Yeah, yeah, Because you know and again, it's like we don't know what's appropriate really and what's not appropriate. Well, I should say this we know what's not appropriate. It's just that you know those things that are innocent. Nothing is innocent to us. Everything comes with, like you say, the red flags.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Yeah, well, we have a situation, and I try to always leave names out, because I. I don't ever do that. So anyway, we had a situation where somebody was inappropriate with my kids, especially my one son. He has a hard time being able to really stand up for himself, his academics and everything. He is on the lower part of the spectrum. There's just that's just where he is and he would do anything for anybody to be their friend. That's just the way he is and he doesn't understand that this was hurtful to him. Even after this kid did something extremely inappropriate with him. He wanted to be his friend again and he didn't understand, because this kid tried to reach out to him to say that they were still friends and he's like this is my friend, I'm like buddy friends. Don't do that.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:10

No, he's not your friend. I think it's our responsibility to make them understand. I mean, as they go into adulthood, as they're going on in life, they need somebody to guide them and let them know this is wrong. You shouldn't tolerate this. This is a boundary. This is your body. You have the right to say no. If somebody says these things to you, you have every right to protect your own self. I think that, now that they're young, I think it's important that we do do these things.

Speaker 2: 7:47

Yeah, it's interesting because I have my daughter's older but I mean she's neurotypical. I mean she has ADHD and all these wonderful things, but she's neurotypical. But then I have my son, who's almost two years younger than her, who has autism, developmentally behind higher functioning, I guess, but developmentally lower. My daughter, obviously is easy for me to express to her and explain to her know your worth. I always say that, know your worth.

Speaker 1: 8:27

If something is not making you feel worthy. That's good.

Speaker 2: 8:32

Yeah, then you need to have me remind you if I need to step in, whatever I need to do. And again, one of those protectiveness is that when we see things are going on, if I'm not comfortable with it, I actually, as she's gotten older, I can go to her and I'll just kind of toy around with it. I don't come out with it, but I get her feeling and there's been times where she has said I feel overwhelmed with this affection. I know it's innocent, but I feel overwhelmed with it. So then I have to come in and how do I navigate it where you're not hurting someone's feelings that you know is not having bad intentions, but you have to figure out, because they don't know my past and so I don't want it's like really that, that. How do you do this? How do I step in? I'm always going to be behind my daughter, however she feels, but I'm going to step in in a in a way where I'm just like you can't come. You know, I'm not going to say you can't come near her or whatever. I just kind of give that distance between them. Now, my son, that is complicated. When you have a child on the spectrum who doesn't quite you know, you can say to him you know, people shouldn't do this, you shouldn't have this, you shouldn't have this. And they say I know mom, I know mom, but you can tell that they're he's a people pleaser, he doesn't like to get in trouble. He wants to follow all the rules. He wants to do this. So I always have to say to him you're not in trouble If you don't feel a certain way. That doesn't make you in trouble, and it doesn't make the other person in trouble because I don't want him to feel because he's the same way, like I don't want to hurt, like get anybody else in trouble, so I have to put it as nobody's in trouble. All I want to know is you know here's what people should do. This is, this is normal. This is not okay. If someone does this, it's not okay. And it's okay, though, to tell me you know, but you don't know if they totally get that at all. I mean, I, you know, I'd like to believe he gets it, but I think that there's always going to be this, um, that extra garden, this that we have to do and we have to be detectives. That's how I kind of feel. When you have a child on the spectrum, you are being a detective on everything, so your guard is right now.

Speaker 1: 11:01

You know, so you know how I also kind of judge if my reaction is normal or not, and being a detective is that when this situation happened I went to our, you know, disability person in the county and I told her because my son was having such a difficult time he's still having a difficult time with what happened to him and so we went to her and she was like, oh and so you know we're going to be in a situation where you know when somebody else reacts, the way that you've reacted, you know it's removed from the situation. So she actually, because she's a mandated reporter, told the you know children services who then it went up where detectives got involved and we had to actually go somewhere where they told everything that happened and my kids went in one at a time and like a mirror room and played and told the police and they were all behind a glass, a mirror, so they couldn't see them. But it was really interesting to see that everywhere we went and everybody that heard the story and it was found substantiated.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:20

That's what we found broadcast. Okay, it was wrong. So you know, I mean, I knew it was wrong and of course we're going to tell. But what's really good is that everybody else got to tell my kids this was wrong. Yeah, don't hang out with this kid anymore. Yeah, yeah, if you need to. They even said, you know, file a protection order or whatever. If it gets to that point you know it was it's just really good to be able to, for my kids to see to what level of we are protecting them and that they have that right to be able to tell.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:56

When somebody does something to you, don't keep it to yourself, because you know. You and I both went where people told us these are secrets.

Speaker 2: 13:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Yeah, don't tell yeah. And when I had things happen to me when I was older, I took that with me into adulthood.

Speaker 2: 13:15

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:16

And I didn't tell.

Speaker 2: 13:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:18

And people can sniff out, and I really believe this. You know, if there is somebody who is going to abuse, they could walk into a room of a thousand people and sniff out at somebody they can abuse. They can do it too and get away with it.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Oh sure, yeah, you know. Again. Same thing here it's you don't know where your comfortability is. Well, let me back that up. You said we don't know the right and the wrong because we didn't grow up understanding what the right is. And so you, when you don't know what the right is, you feel isolated and alone. You kind of know it's wrong. Well, you do. You know it's not a right thing, but you've been told so many times as growing up that this is type of normal thing. And it's interesting because and I'll share this probably was 21. And I got date rapes, but I didn't know that that's what it was, until a friend said it to me. She's like that is what it was, and I'm like no, I just, you know, it was my fault, I should have done this, this and this, I did this, this and this it would have. And and she was like no, because that person intimidated you and made you believe that you had to be silent and that is what you had done your whole life, because this friend kind of knew what was going on, I hadn't known. So it didn't click to me to understand what was happening in that moment. Which taught me, though, that I can now teach my daughter hey, listen, sometimes if no is not working because you're trying to say no, just because you don't verbalize no, there's other things that they're doing to make you feel like you can't, and anytime you have that hesitation or you're like this doesn't feel right, then that you know. Call it what it is. You know, and thankfully she's never been in that situation. But you know, yeah, you bring it into. You know, because we don't know. You never taught right from wrong. You know good touch, bad touch, oh, I have to tell you this. So you've read some of my book in one of my later chapters, which it just reinforced this I remember my mother and my grandmother gave me this book. I was in elementary school I was probably fourth, maybe fifth grade somewhere in there and it was a book called where do babies come from, and in there it was illustrations. It was all cartoon like, but it was sexual like. It showed, you know, the sexual positions people having sex which just reinforced to me that all the bad things were normal, because I was told they were normal. So this has to be normal. You know what I mean. So those are the things. Where had I known early on? I probably would have known. Well, there's a lot that happened to me. I should have known, but you don't. So we get as moms, we get to that where you know right away. You need to know this is appropriate, this is not appropriate, and, and to find the way to say it where you're not handing your kid a book. You know what I mean. As far as that is, we need to come up with conversations or ways to express it, because for me it's two different ways one to my daughter and then one to my son, who has autism, and I get that across. Yeah, both of them in the appropriate manner, in the that you don't have to be afraid of everything you know and your guard up, because that's what we do, or at least I do. Everything is guarded, everything, even the good things.

Speaker 1: 17:17

I'm very guarded, I'm very cautious in who I talk to and who I'm friendly with, and I will back out of relationships pretty quickly if I start feeling that something isn't right. So you know. But I've had to be that way because our radars were going off all the time and we were told what we were in was normal.

Speaker 2: 17:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:42

And you know, going back to something happened to me that kind of relates to what happened to my son. I had a babysitter act out on me when I was like three or something like that, yeah, and so I and this babysitter would come over every now and then and sometimes they would just kind of want to just play or whatever, because they were old enough, where they still, you know, I don't know, they like coming over to our house or something, I'm not really sure, and their parents were friendly with mine. They would come over, you know. And so what ended up happening is I didn't want to be around this person, you know, and I said no and I was told by my mom just let it go, get over it. It, you know, it was just and play with this person. I want you to play with them anyway, and I would be made to be with this person. That hurt me. So, you know, with my son, I felt that in me and it just came out like, oh no, I don't care if we're friends, I don't care if I'm friends with your parents, I don't care if, you know, you could have play dates in the future with this person. It's not ever happening again, and it is my job to make you feel safe and for you to know what's wrong with your body when somebody does these things to you and that you do not have to continue a relationship with them later. So I guess, in a way, it's kind of good that I've taken these things from my past and made sure that my kids will never feel what I did. Now, unfortunately, you know I've tried to keep them as naive and, as you know, away from this stuff as possible. We try to keep things in our house pretty PG, pg 13 at the most, but that's just violence from Marvel movies and things like that. But we definitely even I am so uncomfortable when it comes to sexual things that I personally don't even watch it and all fast forward like we're just. I was telling you how I'm binge watching a show. The show when it came on and there was like a sexual scene, it was like probably more like a PG 13 sexual scene, but even for me I fast forwarded it because I just instantly it triggered me and I didn't want anything to do with it. Now I don't want my kids to feel that extreme about how I am, because I want them to feel that those things are normal. Eventually, when it's age appropriate, that's fine. Anyway, they're kids, they're young, we're not there yet, so I don't have to worry about that.

Speaker 2: 20:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:52

But I do feel that us keeping our house pretty clean, that and it allows them to know this is not normal. Now I even go crazy because my one son, who just doesn't get it that I'm talking about right now, he'll just walk through the hallway naked in front of his sister and he's 10. And now I know he has to George syndrome. He has autism. He just is so impulsive he doesn't think about it. He'll just think I'm getting dressed, I got to go to the bathroom, I'll just go to the bathroom. Right, it was not intentional, he didn't mean to do anything in front of his sister on purpose. But then I turn around and he's walking and she's standing there. My instant reaction is what are you doing? Yeah, Get in that room. This is so inappropriate and, I don't know, maybe I'm overreacting. But I want them to get it. I want them to really understand that these are your body, this is your body, these are your boundaries and I don't want, and I want my daughter to understand that that was just as wrong.

Speaker 2: 22:16

Right, right, yeah, I mean, I'd probably be the same way, because you do react. You react is what you know and what you felt and it's not. Is that the right way to react? Right, those are the questions. Was that the right way to react or should I? I mean, it's just spontaneous. Do you know what I mean? Just spontaneous? And I think I told you about this my couple of years ago, my daughter being a teenager, and you know you love them always, but you don't always like them when they act out. She was going through you know a moodiness and we were out at a Walmart and we were in the restroom and she wanted to just leave and I kind of was lagging. You know, I was in front of her but I like turned around, I was like moping out and she pushed me, and not in a, you know, an aggressive, like it was wrong. She knows that, like you shouldn't even do that, but but it wasn't in the, in the you know she's gonna beat up our mom type thing. My reaction Because this is the same with what you did um, my reaction is I turned around and my fist went up. I wasn't gonna hit her, but like, just that quick reaction where you're like and you catch yourself. You know what I mean. I'm like holy crap, you cannot do that. You, you just can't do that. You don't know, you just can't you know. And it was like you know, and this is before I told her my past. I waited till she was 18 To know anything, so this was before that. Right, I didn't even explain to her. You just don't understand. So I went into it and I never put my fist up when I was getting hit. My reaction was, you know, you always had to be guarded outside and I would get into this fights all the time because I I Couldn't protect myself in the house. I am darn gonna protect myself out of the house, and I lived in a city and that's you know. We did a lot of people fall and this was just the way it was. So my instincts went back to that like I'm not gonna be pushed around, don't you push me around. And you know, it's just that quick. You don't even have the time to process what is happening, to even know. Oh, I shouldn't be doing that. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1: 24:45

Yeah, I React that quickly when it comes to some things and that was one of those times where I just reacted very quickly. Now, I I don't always and the physical things. Now, we did have a lot of abuse in our home. My mom would beat my sister to a pulp and it was very scary. I would be in the next room and my sister would have asthma attacks frequently and I don't know. I I still to this day and my mom's gone, my adopted mom, but you know, I don't other than Somebody had told me once that my because she wasn't my sister really. So my mom's sister had MS and Wasn't really bad shape, okay, and she had two kids that she was raising and I'm I'm not going to go into everything on their end because that's not my story to tell but we ended up with them, which then we only ended up with one because my cousin went with another aunt and we were raising them. So when I was right, my mom was raising my sister, supposedly from people who have told me that my sister reminded my mom, my adopted mom, so much of her mom and her trauma, so she Lashed out at my sister in the absolute worst ways and would meet her Just for being oh yeah. So I would be in the next room listening to my sister be beat up on a regular basis, and I was maybe I don't know well, and but she ended up by the time my dad had passed away, when I was 11, where they gave her. She gave her away to the system, but I can remember just going over to see if she was still alive in her room after my mom had done that and and you know so I can see how Something like that can trickle down in the absolute worst way. So you know, I can have that same reaction and I said that I would never be like any of my parents any of them I've had, and I won't ever in my life be like any of them. And I also, you know, I have been tested and tested when I had two older kids that were one especially difficult. I adopted them and then I got her three kids, and these three have a lot of issues and a lot of behaviors. I'll tell you what it has made me have a different view of my adopted mom. I'm getting getting rid of my sister and doing the things that she did to her because she Reminded, she was reminded of her mom, or whatever the reason was. I actually Am more upset with her. Yeah because now I really do get it. Yeah and there is no excuse right. For getting rid of a child. There is no excuse for treating a child the way she did ever, whatever reason right. And you know, I think that she probably and I don't know why she became a parent. I don't know why she adopted me when she did, I don't know. I do think that people do things to fulfill themselves, you know, and think that maybe if I Do this, maybe it will fill something up in me that I didn't have Of before, and I'm not sure if that's why. And I'm surprised because I know that some people would look at me and say you know what? You? I can't believe that you are such a good mom, with everything that you had going on right, all the disabilities and how messed up you were in your 20s, especially Growing up into my 20s, people would have said, oh man, she can't even take care of herself, let alone somebody else.

Speaker 2: 29:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Yeah, I am doing a damn good job, job raising these kids with all of the I mean from doctors appointments and and Advocating for them 24-7. Sometimes and I'm not kidding there's always something with one of them. It's whack-a-mole in my house and I am so proud of myself and I Don't understand. I just don't understand why my mom did the things that she did. So you know, shame on her, yeah, and it just made me a better mom. I think my abuse made me a better mom.

Speaker 2: 29:51

Oh, absolutely, I, you know. So there's a cycle. My, my mother was being abused as well. Again, I, I am one to say, well, it doesn't matter, she was, doesn't give her, doesn't give her excuse the way I was raised, because I know that there's people out there who say, oh, it's not her fault. I mean literally people will say to really another family it's not her fault, it happened to her, or it's not her fault, it was the drugs. Well, hmm, there you know, because that then that would give me permission to treat my children the way that I was treated, and I won't like you, I will never do that. I don't know what I'm doing, but I definitely times right, but I definitely know what I'm not going to do. I mean not no.

Speaker 1: 30:41

We are going to stop there this week. Next week we will pick up right where we left off. Denise and I will talk more on how helping our kids through their own trauma Can trigger our own abuse. Thank you for listening and see you next week.