Dashawn   Age 3

Elizabeth is an eight-year-old who has dark blonde hair, brown eyes and a heavy build. She is the most shy of the three children. Elizabeth often comes across as soft spoken, yet she has the ability to  be socially engaging and highly cooperative. She likes sports and other outside activities.

Dylan is a very likable five-year-old child who thrives when given affection and structure. Dylan has very good manners, he says please, thank you, and knocks on the bathroom door before entering. He likes to be helpful around the house, assisting with chores such as sweeping and wiping down counters. Dylan appears to attach very quickly (much like his sisters) however with this attachment comes a fear that he will get "left" somewhere.

Vicktorea, Elizabeth, and Dylan need parents who can offer a high level of consistency, stability and routine. These children thrive on regular routines because they have lacked stability and security in their young lives. These children need a family that can provide positive attention and calm, consistent limit setting.

All three of these children will need to learn to trust adults and understand that they will be there to take care of them. These children will need a family that can provide patience and understanding of their special needs, the trauma they have suffered and their attachment issues.

It is estimated that 85-95% of children in foster care will have experienced some level of sexual abuse before coming into foster care and/or while in foster care.

1. Have boundaries and rules that are clear and safe. 

2. Emphasize that feelings can be experi-enced without choosing to act on them.

3. Supervise in ways that allow you to keep tack of your kids at all times and know who they are with, as well as to give opportunities to redirect trigger behaviors (aggressive horseplay or teasing and lack of boundaries).

4. Present opportunities for increasing self-control by helping kids learn to identify trigger feelings (fear, frustration, anxi-ety, and stress are possible triggers which may stimulate sexual feelings and trigger behaviors, and unsafe situations); reduce stress through slow breathing, word hugs, prayers, imaging, etc: develop social, communication and problem solving abilities; understand cause and effect; and develop goal-oriented behavior.

5. Make the "rule of three" a new family rule; avoid just one adult alone with a child, or two kids without an adult. And teach kids the No/Go/Tell defense.

6. Talk respectfully about sexuality using correct terms for body parts. Suggestive and ambiguous words, slang, and ob-scenities can be triggers that create feelings of stimulation and shame.

7. Communicate actions and intentions clearly. Touching and cuddling between children and adults may be threatening and may trigger sexualized feelings or behaviors.

8. Discuss how secrets, surprises and privacy differ. Emphasize that there are to be no secret games, stories, clubs, or presents, especially between them and adults or older kids.

9. Discuss openly as a family the boundaries and rules for bedrooms, bathroom, bedtimes, and dressing and undressing. All members need to understand that for kids who have been hurt and compromised by sexual abuse, these may carry sexual or aggressive messages and that all adults (regardless of sex) may be perceived as potentially threatening.

10.Provide separate beds for children and separate bedrooms for boys and for girls to help set safe boundaries and encourage privacy.

11.Use logical consequences and behav-ioral contracts for misbehavior:

The family sense of optimism for a future child can make it resistant to the realities addressed in training or to what is told to the family by the social worker. And any child, they believe, will thrive in their family with the love, commitment and guidance they will be provided. Norma Nelson, a former state adoption placement worker and no the project manager for the Alaska Adoption Exchange at NWAE, finds the following parental characteristics valuable in helping sexually traumatized children:

 A certain comfort level about sex, e.g., masturbation, reproduction, and birth control can be talked about among family members.

 Every family member has worked through any of their own past sexual abuse issues.

 Comfortable with an intrusive parenting style, "This is the way we do things in this house!"

 A family that is between being what she describes as closed and too loose. The closed family won't want anyone to help because they believe they know how to handle all problems. The too loose family is often highly influenced by extended family and friends and has little structure. An appropriate family tends to have a healthy flexibility but knows its boundaries and will seek out help. A good sense of humor is usually an important and very useful trait in such a family.

 A family who plans to prepare birth chil-dren and talk about the transition of the new child into their home.

For many families, therapeutic intervention becomes the primary source of post-placement training. The child may have begun therapy before being placed in the home. Because therapy can be pivotal in recovery, it is important that the parents be aware of how to choose therapy for their child or determine if the current therapy is work-ing. For many parents, this may be their first experience with therapy and they may have to overcome their own resis-tance to seeking therapy.

Many families express difficulty finding a mental health professional who understands the issues of their adopted children. A therapist who is doing individual therapy but is not sensitive to the importance of transferring attachments may usurp the parental role and aggravate the child's ability to attaché to the new family. It is important that parents understand the goals of therapy and the child's needs and actively participate in helping the child change behaviors.

For therapy to be successful, it must directly relate to the presenting problems the family and child are experiencing and be based on a good understanding of adoption dynamics. The therapeutic interventions that are viewed as most helpful are those that are active and direct and focused on strategies to help children change negative behaviors and to learn to trust sufficiently to be able and willing to form attachments with their adoptive parents.