I’m honored to introduce Christian mental health therapist, Melissa Gendreau, as she contributes her wisdom and advice on the tricky topic of disciplining children who have experienced trauma. Welcome, Melissa!

This post contains affiliate links. You may read full disclosure here.

---

Tips for Trauma-Informed Discipline

Discipline is a difficult topic in the best of parenting situations. Everyone has an opinion on what to do and how to do it. When we add trauma to the equation, the waters get a whole lot muddier.

I’m a mental health therapist having worked with traumatized and abused children and families for eight years. One thing I can tell you this there is no “one way” to discipline a child who has endured trauma. (There is no “one way” for any child for that matter.)

Your child is unique. Their trauma history and story is unique. So I caution you to not hold too tight to any source that touts having the magic formula to heal, fix, or change your child if only you follow their way to a T.

You will become tremendously frustrated and so will your child.

It is also likely that your child is going to need different discipline strategies as time goes on and as they grow, change, and progress. Just like any other child. I don’t say that to make the situation feel all the more overwhelming but rather as a reminder that this is a process.

So my hope is to offer some guidelines that I have found to be beneficial for the clients I have worked with. We work with these five principles but then make them specific to their child and situation.

Support Your Child

First and foremost be consistent in expressing your commitment and love for your child no matter what they are doing or saying. They have not known unconditional love prior to your home.

Your child’s negative behavior can come from multiple places – dysregulation, having been triggered, lack of food/sleep, transition time, control, willful/purposeful disobedience and/or to test you.

And the hard part is that your child may or may not actually have any insight into which of the above is why their behavior happened. This is all the more reason why they need you. Even if they don’t realize it or actively try to push against you. (This is a large part of my work with parents – helping them find patterns and triggers to their child’s behaviors. This can help to regulate, alter, and shift environmental situations when a child may not be able to.)

You are to be their rock. Their steady. Roots firmly planted in messages of love and stability.

Ways to offer support and phrases to say:

• Offer physical touch in whatever way your child is comfortable with and that is good boundaries.
• “I love you.”
• “We’ll get through this together.”
• “You are important to me.”
• “I won’t give up on you.”
• “You can share whatever you want with me.”
• “I want you here.”

Validate Their Emotions

All emotions are valid. Meaning they’re real. Whatever emotion your child is experiencing. It is valid. It’s happening.

Our emotional response takes place because of our past experiences, situations, and thoughts. Given your child’s history, their emotional experience is often not “typical”.

Now there is a huge difference between valid and justified. But when your child is experiencing an emotion, it is not the time to have the discussion as to whether their emotion is justified or unjustified.

Saying things such as, “Don’t get so upset/sad/angry.” is only going to cause more emotional distress in the moment. It also doesn’t help your child to feel heard, known, or understood. Instead, it leads to feeling minimized, insignificant, and not cared for. Feelings your child certainly doesn’t need more of.

Ways to Validate emotions:

• “I can see you’re…”
• “It’s okay to be…”
• “You seem…”
• “That must be difficult to feel so…”
• “Feeling…is hard.”
• “Feeling…can be confusing.”
• “You can always share your emotions with me.”
• “I get that your…”
• “Help me understand why you’re feeling…”

Consequence The Behavior

It is important to separate the behavior from the person. Your child is not “bad” – the behavior may have been. This may not seem like a huge difference however for a child who was abused or neglected, often they were viewed as their behaviors.

So instead of saying, “You are being bad/naughty.” say something along the lines of “Your behaviors are bad/naughty.” or “You’re making bad behaviors.” The focus then becomes the behavior and the choices not your child as a person.

Ways to Consequence the Behavior:

• Use natural consequences. (Consequences that directly relate to the behavior.) For example – if your child was throwing a toy, they lose the toy for the rest of the day. If you child was cutting up their clothes, they don’t have access to the scissors for a prolonged period of time.
• Create an extensive list of consequences ahead of time for specific behaviors. (And I mean extensive!) That way the consequence is not decided based on your emotional state. It also separates you, as the parent, from the consequence. You are then able to use language such as, “The chart says the consequence is…” and you stay connected with your child. This is where variations may be necessary. Some choose to do the list with their child so the child has an understanding and a say in the consequences. Some post the chart as a visual reminder of cause and effect.

Have a Safety Plan

Sometimes safety comes into play due to aggressive and/or destructive behaviors. In those situations, the focus then needs to be on keeping all members of the family safe.

Following any crisis situation, make sure you debrief with other members of the family to discuss what could, if anything, have been approached differently to avoid the situation.

It is also important to take time to reconnect with your child. This is so necessary to help reinforce for your child that you love him/her and don’t want to give up on them. Refer back to the ways to support and validate emotions.

Examples and aspects of potential safety plans:

• Have a “safe zone” – a designated area of the home that is meant for cooling off and calming down. This is not a place that your child is forced to go to. This is not a place for discipline but rather calming down. The ideal hope is that this place can be utilized before it gets to a situation of crisis. This could be a closet without a door, a corner or section of a room, a small spare room without a door, etc.
• Have a designated place for the other children and one person to take care of the pets.
• Utilize another adult (your spouse, adult child, neighbor, adoption worker, etc.) to help defuse and de-escalate the situation.
• Call the police as a last result. If the situation is to the point of a dangerous safety risk to your child or any other member of your family it is important to utilize outside support.

Don’t Take It Personal

I know this is something that may take superhero strength to achieve on a daily basis. But you are not the cause of your child’s trauma. The result of the trauma leads to an innate, unconscious emotional struggle within the home environment.

God brought your child into your home for a reason. Hold onto that truth firmly. Speak that over and over. You are an important component of your child’s life and healing process.

This means you need to engage in appropriate self-care practices. (Don’t roll your eyes!) If you don’t adequately care for yourself you will struggle with empathy fatigue. Empathy fatigue is common for health care providers and parents of traumatized, mentally ill, and special needs children. It is when you lose your ability to provide empathy, support, compassion, and unconditional love for the person who needs it. Instead, you get to a point of “I can’t.” “I’m done.” or “I don’t even like my child anymore.”

Please invest in yourself for your child’s sake.

One Caveat – No Spanking

The one rule, however, that I am firm on with my clients is “no spanking”.

Spanking breaks down the relational connection between you and your traumatized child. It also could lead to resurfacing of past trauma. As well as an all too easy lumping of you into the same category of any other adult who has harmed them.

There are just far too many risks to spanking when parenting a child who has endured past trauma.

Do you realize how little of this post actually addressed the specifics of discipline? That’s because there is so much more that goes into the interactions and parenting of your traumatized child.

I pray that you find this post beneficial and that it offers some guidance.

God bless!
Melissa Gendreau MS, LMHC

**To read more helpful articles on parenting children with trauma histories, be sure to browse the articles found on Melissa’s attachment issues page.

Melissa is a Christian mental health therapist. She works with children, families, and couples to work through past trauma and current issues to decrease distress and hopefully find a greater relationship with God in the process. Melissa is also a wife and mommy of two pretty neat kids. She can be found at Humble Faith Family Wellness, as well as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.