Concluding for now

So I have decided that children of incarcerated parents are affected in more ways then we probably even realize.  The superficial scares this kind of traumatic event leaves on a child is unprecedented.  Even if a child could describe in words the kinds of things they go through mentally, emotionally, physically and psychologically, I do not feel we could truly understand what it is like to have to suffer like that.  Unless you have been through it yourself.  Even then, each experience is very different in many ways.

source:  Not being able to be with his mom every day is a pain that stays with... upworthy.com

I do not think that I am quit satisfied with what I have discovered and I have come to realize that I may never be.  I say this because this is am ever increasing issues and as our economy changes, I think then so will the affects be on these children.  Yes, many will stay the same such as feelings of detachment and abandonment issues. I feel like their may be some answers and solutions to some just in time for new problems presented from the children of the incarcerated to arise.  This may be my new viscous cycle;  Trying to find answers only to have more questions.

I will still wonder about how our communities are going to better fund and support such children in order for them to thrive?  I will still wounder if a child can completely heal from such traumatic events?  I will still wonder if when a child experiences such strong, frequent and prolonged adversities, can they themselves be successful at having a stable family environment as an adult?

For now I will sign off with these thoughts and questions lingering in my head.  Maybe through my own healing of my children and their trauma, I will find answers to my questions?

Source:  Cori Walter, 32(R) hugs her daughter Hannah Walters, 6, at...  blogs.re

Trials and Tribulations

In my next source by David Murphey and P. Mae Cooper.  Parents Behind Bars:  What Happens to Their Children?  October 2015.  Print.  I learned a lot about how many different circumstantial situations that these children of the incarcerated experience compared to children with non-incarcerated parents. On page six their is a chart showing just how much more traumatic events occur in these children s' lives before a parent is incarcerated.

  The numbers are very different and very shocking to see on paper.  Having said that, I just want to point out that in a school setting or even just in a setting with a lot of people, children of incarcerated parents tend to feel stigmatized.  Their self-worth is very little to none and they often feel ashamed of their situation.  This really hurts their ability to socialize or build any healthy relationships.

 So in my last post I shared a link that showed how PBS was starting to open the public eyes to this problem by creating episodes around the topic of incarceration.   I think this is very helpful to kids in that it helps them to not feel singled out or alone in handling such big challenges for themselves.  One big thing that my children struggle with even after being reunited with me and having a stable, consistent environment is feeling like they do not fit in.

 My son is doing very well in school and was able to gain some awesome social skills.  He still tends to feel different from the other kids and like people do not understand him.  I get the sense that at times he is starting to dis-regulate, it is when he is feeling like this the most.  This causes him to feel that rejection and abandonment all over again.  To others, it looks like he is being very sensitive or really emotional.  At times it looks like he is trying to be bossy by trying to control others.  Really it is his trauma being triggered through these feelings of rejection and abandonment that is causing him to act this way.  Unless the people around him are aware of his situation, then they treat it as such.  Kids who suffer high amounts of stress and trauma are not to be dealt with in the manner as children who have not.  If you do, then you will usually see an escalation in behaviors without understanding why.

This is why it is very important for the public to get on  board with what is really going on in order to properly and successfully support the children of the incarcerated.  I advocate for my children consistently so that I can see to it that they are getting the proper support they need in order for them to heal.  For example, My son just started Karate and in his classes, they teach a lot of self-discipline.  When you have a child like my son, then some forms of discipline can be very triggering for him.  So I make sure that the people that are consistently in his life know what his situation his by presenting them with what I call a Trauma-Focused Family Regulation Plan.  This basically talks about what are his triggers for dis-regulation and the things that the people around him can do to support him when he is in different levels.  Each child is unique in that they are going to respond differently to having such trauma in their lives.  Just like each child is effected in several different ways and in a number of ways to hardly any.

source:  MN Strengthening Families Affected by Incarceration Collaborative.  wilder.org

So what else can be done to get this information out?  How else can our schools, communities and even families help improve the quality of living for children of incarcerated parents?

Children suffer when their parents are incarcerated.

SOURCE:  magazine

Charts: Kids Are Paying the Price for America’s Prison Binge

Katie Rose Quandt Aug. 26, 2014 6:00 AM


      This article was very informative in several ways to me.  The one thing that I found most shocking was how having an incarcerated parent, children suffer higher rates of negative physical conditions such as obesity, speech and language problems, bone and joint or muscle problems, and even vision problems.  I am very aware of the fact that stress is bad for your body, but after reading this article, it has really brought to light just how damaging stress can be on ones body.

  In the article from Mother Jones, the charts that are provided comparing how mental health and physical effects differentiate from parental incarceration and no parental incarceration are rather shocking to say the least.  When a child's parent is incarcerated, the lack of control they must feel is probably very overwhelming.  Thus, contributing to a lot of behavioral issues that one might see from such a child.  When a child is separated from what they know to be their family dynamic, then they struggle to find their place and the role they play in their new environment.  I can very easily see how just this one issue can cause anxiety and/or depression in a child.  How sad and heartbreaking to know that at such a young age, a child must go through such things like feeling abandoned and misplaced.

 So what can we do as a community to help these children heal from this trauma and eventually find their place and know their role, in order for them to become stable and secure again?  What kinds of programs and resources are already out their for these children and what kinds of different ideas for newer and improved programs are floating around?

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 The thing that strikes me is that our communities seem to be overlooking this ever raising problem and therefore, the children who are suffering go unnoticed.  So what can be done to raise awareness to this taboo subject matter?  One example from the article in Mother Jones is the recent introduction to how to help kids express their feelings around having an incarcerated parent from Sesame Street .  In the video,  the character expresses his feelings around his Dad being in jail.  Then an adult is their to be supportive and explain to the other characters what incarceration means.  This kind of program that is opening up the communities eyes to the reality of how real this issue is for half the children population is very much needed in my opinion.  After watching the short two minute video, tell others what you think and how it makes you feel?

In a second source from the Children's Mental Health eReview, The authors agree on several viewpoints as far as how having an incarcerated parent impacts parents.  What I especially liked about this source is that they considered developmental needs of children at varies ages.  The point was made that a child's needs change over the years of development.  The example the article used on page six paragraph 2, was that if a child is separated during infancy this could ultimately cause a separation of their primary attachment figure.  The source speaks on ..." how separation of even just a couple years could have extreme consequences."

In my first source from Mother Jones,  the author speaks a lot about the negative and physical effects on children with incarcerated parents.  It is different from the Children's Mental Health eReview  in that this source does not really clarify the different kinds of consequences being at different points in their development bring, but rather the extreme differences on effects on children with incarcerated parents compared to children without incarcerated parents. Both of these sources were very informative.




     
  

Love and Loss

SOURCE;  Intersection of Love and Loss:  "Children of Incarcerated parents" by Isadora Kosofsky, Time Magazine, May 17, 2016.  Link:  time.com/4327836/love-and-loss-children-of-incarcerated-parents/


According to the article in Time Magazine; " In 2010 more than 2.7 million children in the US had an incarcerated parent at some point in their lives.  Nationally there are more than 120,000 incarcerated mothers and 1.1 million incarcerated fathers who are parents of minor children."  This leads me to the question of what happens to the children of the incarcerated?  From first hand experience, I know that the department of human services first tries to place the child or children with family.  If that presents to be unsuccessful then their next step is to reach out to friends of the family.  Then if yet, they are unsuccessful, the department has no other choice but to place the child or children in a temporary home usually called a foster home.  In a lot of cases if their is more then one child, the possibility of them being placed in the same foster home is very unlikely.

source:  Effects of Parental incarceration on young children/ASPE. aspe.hhs.gov

  This is what happened to my children.  They were forced to be split up, causing more trauma.  The loss of an attachment figure is very devastating to a child and when they are separated from their siblings, this just adds to the many devastation's they suffer through.  Needless to say, when a child is placed outside of family or friends, the possibility of keeping some kind of connection with their parent or parents is difficult.  A lot of times, children are not told the whole truth as to why the separation and placement into a foster home occurred.  This is meant to be a means to try and protect the child or children from further trauma but in the end, hurts them more.  This can leave the child or children feeling angry, confused, scared, feel rejected or like they did something wrong to cause the separation themselves.

  Usually the reasons behind such incarcerations are related to an addiction and/or criminal activity that was occurring in the child or children's environment.  Even with such behaviors occurring, the child or children are still attached to their parents and are accustomed to what ever may have been going on around them.  Unfortunately, they might not even realize the dangers they may have been in. So in most cases, the child or children express what is going on inside of them through their behaviors at school or in their foster home.  The behaviors displayed may look like acting out or even closing up.  With the little awareness that our communities have on such topics, it is hard to properly give these children what they need in order to stabilize again.

When I got my kids back and was trying to help them to feel secure again, my son was having tremendous difficulties in school.  So much, that he was suspended from school and after a school meeting, I was talked into trying to home school him until he became more stable in his circumstances.  This proved to be very unsuccessful, so realizing that my son was falling through the educational cracks, I begun to advocate hard for him.

 The problem was that the school was not trained in how to properly address situations where a child comes from such trauma.  So with the help of the department of social services, my therapist and the several therapist of my sons, I helped them to understand the dynamics of his situation.  Several board meetings later, my son was able to be a success through a program that the district implemented in order to help kids with backgrounds such as his.  The program is called ATLAS (please see link).  This program, unlike any other is designed to help children who are struggling in school not because of a learning disability, but rather who's situation is circumstantial. I can not begin to describe how life saving this program has been for my son.  When I first won custody back of him, he was not able to stay regulated for even 30 minutes in a school setting.  By the end of the year, my son was excited to and looked forward to going to school and was successful all day.  These are the kinds of programs that our community must advocate for in order to stop this cycle of incarceration.

In my next source by Amy Alexander."Why Children With Parents in Prison Are Especially Burdened".  The Atlantic Dec. 14, 2015.  Print. (pg. 3,para. 3)   Vallas, the director of policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at CAP said, " Because these challenges affects such a large share of our nation's children, we ignore these intergenerational consequences at our peril."  When I read this statement this is how I internalized it.  That we, as a whole community, are not doing what we can to break the cycle and in turn causing more problems by just ignoring it.  This is a cowardly thing to do.  So just because we feel that this issues is to overwhelming or to big to overcome because it is ever growing larger and larger, then our heads have been turned to it?  This puts so much at grave risk!  Then when the issue is brought to our "back yard",  we do nothing but judge and talk down to the child, the parent and/or the circumstances because it has caused some kind of ruffled feathers in our mist?  It is time to see that if we are not going to help be part of the solution, then we are just as much part of the problem.

  These children need our help as a community to get a running start at not getting griped by the same vices that have or had griped their loved ones.  Interventions are needed in order to help  schools with proper programs, to help neighborhoods to build better support systems in keeping each other safe, and to help families break these vicious cycles of whatever it is that is keeping them from being reunited back with each other.  A majority of children with these types of back round also come from low-income families.  The funding for such programs as ATLAS has become scarce, causing fear of shut-down in the future.  We, as tax payer, are spending millions of dollars a year on focusing on the well being of the inmate themselves, that the children's needs are being overlooked.  So what can be done?  Who do we go to in order to get the support needed in order to advocate for such matters?  where do we begin?  There are already so many programs and resources that I begin to wonder what kinds of new ideas has anyone with a voice for these helpless children come up with or even tried to present to the table?

   

With every challenge their is a valuable lesson to be learned.

Melissa Radcliff, Our Children;s Place Executive Director.  ourchildrensplace.com

Hello, My name is Natasha and my blog topic is a topic I am very familiar with.   You may wonder how I am familiar with such a topic?  I am a recovering addict who went to prison in the past due to my poor choices.  This lead me to being separated from my children and unfortunately they had to go through a lot of things that they never should have experienced or been exposed to.  This exposure did not only occur while they had to be shipped around foster homes, but sadly it occurred more so when they where home with me while I was still lost in my spiral of my addiction.

 Now that I am doing very well and more stable then I have ever been, my children and I are still trying to put the pieces together and heal from all the pain, trauma, suffering and loss that occurred during the time that my meth monster had it's deathly grip on me, my children, my family, and all of our lives.  So now that I am going through the therapy and all the extra TLC for my children to start to feel safe and secure again, I question exactly what are the effects of not just my children, but all children who have had to go through similar situations as mine?

 As I have watched my son struggle in school and socially, I wonder what more could be done for him or what could of been done for him and the millions of other children who without a choice of their own, got dragged through such horrible situations?  While the United States is busy trying to improve jails, prisons, and institutions, our children are not getting their needs meet and the things they need in order to strive and develop into healthy and happy people.

  If our communities would pull together and try to put their judgments aside for the sake of the suffering child, then would their be such recidivism rates?  How do these children respond to being separated from all that they know and put in the system of foster care?  Is reunification successful in most cases, or do the parents fall back into their old distorted thinking and criminal activity?

  I am blessed to have been reunited with my children.  This did not come easy, I had to work hard and show a lot of stability and sobriety in order to prove I could be a fit mother for my beautiful children again.  Now as a family, we are all working hard to heal from the past.  I wonder how many parents get free from incarceration and feel that what is expected of them is too much to fast and just give up?  Are their better built programs that help these parents to slowly transition from addiction, to incarceration, and then back into freedom and their children's lives again?  How is the awareness of the community around such a topic?  How do the schools help support children who come from such situation?