367 | Night Terrors, Adoption, and Age-Appropriate Truth

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You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks,

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your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.

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Hi,

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I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,

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The Kid Counselor.

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This is the Play Therapy Podcast where you get

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a master class in child-centered play therapy

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and practical support and application for your

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work with children and their families.

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In today's episode,

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I am answering a question from Penny in South Africa.

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Hello to all of my South Africans.

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Nice to hear from you all and

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It's kind of exciting.

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I'm actually,

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I have a coaching participant in South Africa and

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there's a little bit of,

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of a charge and some buzz in South Africa related to CCPT.

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So,

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very excited for y'all and Penny,

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thank you for the email.

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This question is about

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a girl client,

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young six year old that has had night terrors

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and processing that with parents and how to

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make sense of it through the therapeutic journey.

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And

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night terrors are a very consistent issue

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with the children

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on our cases and in our clients.

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So I think this is going to be really helpful.

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So Penny,

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I appreciate the email.

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Let me read parts of it and then we'll dive in together.

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I have a case-related query regarding best practice around night terrors.

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We have an adopted daughter aged 6,

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who's been in parents' care since infancy.

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They adopted her because the biological mom,

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who was a friend and a neighbor,

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had a very unstable life and asked them to take care

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of her baby and then agreed to giving full rights.

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During the 1st 6 to 8 months.

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She was exposed to an unknown amount of violence and instability.

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Years later,

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she began to have night terrors where she would wake up

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with her arms lifted in a defensive position in full panic.

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These terrors would last up to 2 hours and were happening fairly frequently,

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at least once a month.

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Parents would always respond quickly and support her through.

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When the night terrors seemed to never be getting better,

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they sought support through play therapy.

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I advised them to co-sleep with her as this so

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far had been the only thing that was helping.

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After a year,

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they moved through the co-sleeping phase,

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and she's now sleeping on her own,

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and night terrors hardly happen anymore.

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However,

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over the last month,

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she's had 4 in 2 weeks,

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and we're wondering what,

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what might be causing this increase.

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The only known stressor is that she is ending

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little school and heading to big school next year.

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I think it's plausible that this is what's driving the terrors.

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In terms of prepping her for next year,

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they've visited the new school once and had chats about what might be different.

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Would it be beneficial for the parents to

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return to co-sleeping over this transition period?

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Are there other ways to increase support for this child?

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I'm also wondering if there will ever be a time when it

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might be beneficial for her to know more about her rocky start.

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She knows she's adopted,

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but her understanding is limited,

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and she does not remember having any other parents

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than those she has now.

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But we know that trauma gets stored in the body

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and brain-body integration might become valuable at some point.

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OK,

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so let's dive in.

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There's kind of two components to this,

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so let me dive into the first one.

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Whenever a child has night terrors or night tremors.

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They're usually pretty unresponsive in the midst of it,

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and it's not always trauma related.

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It's not always because of high levels of anxiety.

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It's actually a pretty common developmental thing for children to

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have nightmares,

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night tremors,

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night terrors.

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That's pretty appropriate

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for that age range.

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Now,

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the intensity,

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the frequency,

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and the severity are factors.

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So while it's normal for children to have those

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at a semi-consistent

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frequency,

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it would not be common for a child to have them all the time

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for 2 hours at a time,

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etc.

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So we're always looking at

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what is in the normal scope of child behavior

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and or

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how much does it interfere with daily function.

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Because if a child has a night terror once a week,

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but

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they don't remember it,

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they fall back asleep within 15 minutes,

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and

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it doesn't interfere with anything else in the child's life,

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then we're not really as concerned

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as if the child only has one a month.

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But

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the one a month,

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you know,

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it causes a whole tailspin and there's a spiral of behavior,

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and for 3 days we're recovering from it and it takes 3 hours to get back to sleep.

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So on and so forth.

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So

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we're not just looking at the behavior,

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we're also looking at the context of the behavior.

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I think that's really helpful to point out.

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So the fact that

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they worked through.

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That in play therapy,

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the fact that they

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did a co-sleeping stint for a while and then they are no longer co-sleeping,

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that is a testimony to CCPT

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and it obviously indicates that

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she is at an internal state of calm and peace.

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She has less anxiety.

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She's able to sleep through the night without parents in the room.

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And there's a stability there.

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That's what we expect when a child's in play therapy.

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We get regulation in all environments,

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and there's an increased stability and calm in the child's world.

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So I'm actually really encouraged to hear that,

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Penny.

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As far as the last 2 weeks where there have been 4,

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sometimes we cannot figure out

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what is causing

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an increase in behavior.

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It's also very common to see regressive behavior

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when a child is in therapy or has gone through therapy.

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There will be times of regression.

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That's also very normal.

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So what we haven't seen in a very long time out of the blue emerges,

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and it kind of freaks everybody out because everyone's like,

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where did this come from and why is this happening and what's the catalyst?

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And,

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and there's all of this that we're trying to sort out.

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Sometimes we don't know.

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But what we have to remember

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is the notion of reverse Pandora's box.

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Essentially,

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this client has not forgotten

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that she

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has less anxiety.

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She's not forgotten that she's worked through all of this stuff.

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She's not forgotten that she can keep herself calm and regulated.

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She's not forgotten

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that she has worked through these things.

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So even when we see a spike in regressive behaviors

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or something that we haven't seen in a long time.

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First of all,

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we have to accept it as normal.

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Second of all,

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we have to realize

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she's just

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dealing with something in the moment,

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but she hasn't lost the ability

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to do what she has been doing,

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which is sleep by herself without night terrors.

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So in this case,

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I would not encourage parents

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to co-sleep again.

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Because

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the client already possesses

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the ability

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to sleep on her own

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without issue.

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So while we need to support her while there's this uptick in behavior,

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we don't need to go back to what we were doing before because

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the girl will no longer be back where she was before either.

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So that's the notion of reverse Pandora's box.

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So I really believe that this will sort itself out,

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and it's a temporary blip.

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That's always the way that it works.

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We see something emerge

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and it's a little bit unnerving,

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and then it disappears again

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and everyone's like,

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Oh,

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OK,

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well,

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who knows what that was about,

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but we've moved on now.

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So I think that that would be the way that I would encourage you to handle it.

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And then,

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is there ever a time when it's beneficial for her to know about her start in life?

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I would say age appropriate truth.

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This is one of the things that we have to encourage parents to do all the time.

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Age appropriate truth.

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What can she understand at 6 years old?

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What can she understand at 8 or 10 or 12?

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So obviously what the child is made aware of will change over time.

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What we would tell a 4 year old is

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totally different than what we would tell an 11-year-old.

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Age appropriate truth based on developmental level,

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based on cognitive capacity.

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And what we are trying to avoid is fracture in relationship.

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It's preservation of relationship at all costs.

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We would never want a child

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to feel lied to.

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We would never want a child to feel kept in the dark.

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We would never want a child to feel that they were not told the truth,

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that they were not told the whole truth.

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So everything that we do

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as clinicians and everything we encourage parents to do

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is age-appropriate truth.

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So

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your mom wasn't able to take care of you.

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So

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she told us that we could take care of you.

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It wasn't safe

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when

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your mom and your dad lived together,

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and so it was safer for you to live with us.

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And of course the story is bigger than that,

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but at 6 she doesn't need the rest of the story,

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she needs age appropriate truth.

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And then as she gets to 10, 12,

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14,

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and abstract reasoning kicks in.

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Then obviously the conversation can become much,

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much more nuanced,

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much more in depth.

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But at this point in time,

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the only thing she needs to know are the basic facts

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that she wasn't safe.

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They weren't able to care for her well,

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and they loved her enough to let

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other people take care of her better.

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That will be appropriate and it will align with the bigger part of the story

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when she's older and she's privy to it.

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But right now,

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it just needs to be simple and basic because she's 6.

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So,

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Penny,

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thank you so much for the question.

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That was really helpful.

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And

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as kind of a,

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an addendum to that.

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I have quite a few parenting podcast episodes

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about

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having difficult discussions about difficult topics

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and you know,

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how parents can navigate those kinds of hard conversations.

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So you might want to search through the archives of the parenting podcast

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and have them listen to some of those if you think that that would be helpful.

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That's always an option because I have covered that topic several times

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in the parenting podcast as well.

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So.

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All right,

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Penny,

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again,

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thank you.

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If you all want to reach out,

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I would love to hear from you,

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brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

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Come hang out with us in the Collective.

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We have an online community,

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ccptcollective.com.

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I'd love to have you there.

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And playherapynow.com is where you can find out about all the stuff going on.

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So,

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if you want a one-stop shop for everything

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going on in the world of The Kid Counselor,

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go to playtherapynow.com.

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I love y'all.

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We'll talk again soon.

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Bye.

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Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.

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For more episodes and resources,

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please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.