Yesterday while I was on the road I made good use of my time (and played with my new Bluetooth earpiece) and returned several phone calls. One call was to one of the most awesome moms I have met in this gig … the mom I wrote about in this post. In a nutshell, her son has serious attachment and trauma issues as a result of repeated medical procedures. He’s not yet three years old, but he’s quite angry. He sees his mother as both the source of his abuse (she took him to doctors) and his protector.


She is still struggling to find the right kind of help. Several things she shared with me really bothered me.


First of all, she articulates that she can’t find anyone who cares about her son except one speech therapist. None of the mental health or physical health professionals she and her son deal with on a regular basis are really emotionally involved in their situation. Now I get that professionals can’t get emotionally involved with all their clients, but I don’t get how this incredible mom can work with so many people and have only one of them invest themselves in this family. I was a practicing veterinarian at one time, and I most certainly invested in my clients and my patients. Not all of them, but some of them. Especially the ones who were really invested in their pets and who tried very hard to be the best pet owner they could be. It is pathetic that no one will step up to the plate and help this mom.


Secondly, she told me how she rarely wears makeup, but she has to “dress up” when she takes her son to the psychiatrist. She didn’t approach the appointment like a business meeting the first time, and she could feel the criticism and judgment and psychoanalytic vibes emanating from the “p-doc”. Now when she “prepares” herself, she receives a better response. How crazy is that? She understands that these “professionals” are human too, and subject to all the regular foibles of humanity. But we’re not talking about her showing up in curlers and a bathrobe … we’re talking about a “regular” mom with a severely disturbed child trying to get someone to have a clue about the depth and breadth of her son’s trauma issues, and how those issues impacted his attachment.


What this mom needs is someone who understands trauma in children, and who can also understand, assess and address the interplay between mother and child, and who recognizes the mom’s own trauma piece. She needs someone who can say, “OK, let’s try this, and if it doesn’t have the desired impact, we’ll try this instead … but whatever happens, I’ll help you through it.” She needs someone to be the therapist so she can be the mom … And she needs not to be judged just because she is a mom who has issues along with her son because of their shared trauma. What mom wouldn’t be traumatized after this ordeal?


Does anyone know such a person?


Here is a lengthy article discussing this exact situation--medical trauma in children--and the impact on adult mental and physical health.



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