I’m trying to keep up my Lenten commitment of daily devotional time or listening to Christian speakers. That has been easier than my commitment of daily exercise/walking; but both have been challenging.

This morning, however, the message I heard was one that relates to all of us, and to our children as well. The speaker was talking about change and growth. He started by explaining that everyone, because we’re living, is either growing or dying. And that true growth requires change. As he explored the topic of change he said something profound:

Change occurs when one of three things happen:
1. You hurt enough you have to.
2. You learn enough you want to.
3. You receive enough you’re able to.

Sometimes, as the speaker pointed out, all three things happen. I would submit as you think about this that all three do have to happen for change to be complete.

Many of us are parenting challenging children with very challenging behaviors – some diagnosable and some not quite so straight-forward. How much healing can a child have from mental illness or neurological disabilities? How much change can actually occur? How much is the individual child responsible for this change? These are unanswerable questions. So much varies from individual to individual. From our own “healing” process with LuLu, I have seen all three of these change agents in action.

Hurting Enough.
Traumatized children (children of abuse, neglect, maltreatment, lack of stimulation) are hurting children. Some are given the title of “resilient” – meaning that they seemingly bounce back from horrific situations and look unscathed. I personally hate that term, because it gives way to the idea that children are some how emotionally stronger than adults, when nothing could be further from the truth. We call those who lived through 9-11 or those veterans who returned from active duty “survivors”. Our children are definitely “survivors”.

But along the way, they learned adaptive behaviors for that survival that are very likely hurtful to building intimate relationships with parents and families, and ultimately with learning how to live a full relational life in society. They are “hurting”. The question is what is enough hurting to bring motivation for change?

Motivation to let down their protective shell, to let in others, is hard to come by for children who have been severely hurt by relationships before. Even those not traumatized at the magnitude we think of trauma being, still have hurts from the very act of adoption, feelings of loss, grief and abandonment. They may indeed be hurting “enough”, but not willing to risk what they perceive as the potential for more of that kind of hurt by trusting again.

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