Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
Parenting Strategies and Hope for Children Impacted by Trauma
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
When you're at the end of your rope with parenting challenges that seem insurmountable, finding a beacon of hope is crucial. This episode of Legit Parenting welcomes the remarkable Gina He-man, who lights the way for parents grappling with the complexities of raising children impacted by trauma. With a heartfelt blend of personal insight and unwavering support, Gina reflects on her world and the creation of Trauma Drama University, which offers strategies and hope to those facing similar trials.
Parenting isn't a one-size-fits-all journey, Our conversation with Gina is a testament to the power of personalized parenting strategies that resonate with each unique child and situation and having the proper support.
Gina Heumann is a professor, author, speaker, designer, and founder & CEO of Trauma Drama University. In her day job, she is a professor of interior design at Rocky Mountain College or Art + Design.
After adopting their boys from Guatemala, Gina & her husband were thrust into the eye of the trauma storm, realizing their youngest was neglected by his previous caregiver. After over a decade of researching and testing out a multitude of therapies and treatments, the family finally found the right combination of tools and began healing together. Now, a connected unit, the family is dedicated to sharing experiences, offering hope, and passing on what they've learned with the next generation of parents.
The journey began in 2019, when Gina launched her book, Love Never Quits: Surviving & Thriving After Infertility, Adoption, and Reactive Attachment Disorder, winner of a gold seal from the prestigious Mom's Choice awards. In 2020, Gina spoke at TEDx Grand Junction about how "Childhood Trauma Affects Us All". As a curriculum designer, Gina began creating TDU's online courses during COVID and launched as an official non-profit in the Fall of 2022.
Parenting Challenges and Solutions
Speaker 1Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resilient kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth dad, a single parent, a step parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages, preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life.
Speaker 2Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nippenberg, along with our producer, my producer, sydney Moreau. Well, today we have a very special guest who's going to be talking to us about if you have a child or teen who's experienced trauma or attachment issues, and I can't wait for Gina Newman to come on and talk about Trauma Drama University, which I'm on the board of the professional board for, and I'm happy to do so. First, I want to thank Steve Carlton for being on our last show talking about kids' use of substances.
Speaker 2I was really blown away by some of the latest research on marijuana and its link to anxiety and when you get addicted to it and the withdrawals you go through and the sleep disruption. As he said, I love this line there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's always going to be the backside and, especially with substances, there's always going to be struggles after the high is over. I think also what he said for parents was really important is first try not to blow up. That's the first instinct for every parent is what the hell? I'm sorry, but try not to blow up. That's the first instinct for every parent is what the hell? I'm sorry, but try not to blow up and really just try to focus on what's the reason they're using, what's it about, and then approach it from a fact-based medical perspective. But here's what it does to you. Here's how it drops intelligence for chronic use. These are the things you need to be looking for.
Speaker 2I really appreciated his advice on that. I want to get to Gina. Gina, it's so good to see you again. I just a couple days ago found that link for that little promo we did for Trauma Drama University over at what's the name of that place? Fast Food, no Mod.
Speaker 3Market, mod Market.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that was really fun. I just love doing it. But welcome to the show, thank you. Before you tell us your background, I want to tell the parents out there that Gina has more energy than both my wife and I combined, and we're known to be quite energetic and always doing things. Gina puts us to shame and she is the ultimate advocate for parents. She's just amazing. So, gina, tell us about how you started Trauma Derm, like your story, and then the unfolding of TDU.
Speaker 3Yeah, this isn't what I planned to do with my life, and I like to say I created the club that I didn't want to be a part of but it's necessary.
Speaker 2Yeah, I feel the same way about helping people through traumas. I didn't want to be a trauma specialist, but it just happened.
Speaker 3Yep. So my husband and I adopted two amazing boys from Guatemala. First one was easy peasy and we were wondering why other parents complain so much because he was. My friends called him the Stepford child he was. He was like two and a half and all the other kids would finish lunch and start running around the room and he would sit there and raise his hand and go may I please be excused? So they were like, oh my God, he's so good. So I thought it was of course our stellar parenting.
Speaker 3And then our second one came along and he was neglected by his foster mom. We strongly believe we have all the evidence of it and he came to us angry and agitated all the time. He was only six months old, but as he grew it just got harder and harder instead of easier. And we tried all the different therapies, we tried different parenting books, we tried every piece of advice that would come our way and nothing was working. And it took until he was about 12 years old to finally get the right diagnosis and the right help. So he was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder. If anybody's familiar with that, it comes with punching holes in your walls and breaking your furniture and breaking your lamps and your electronics. And I'd have my mom say to me, if he broke the TV, there's no more TV.
Speaker 2And I said, yeah, that's a nice rule, but then I'm being punished too, and I want to watch TV, and your husband probably wants to watch sports.
Speaker 1Yes, exactly, maybe you as well.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. So again, we didn't know if that was the right parenting thing, but we didn't want to punish ourselves either. So, yes, about age 12, we were encouraged to find a different school and he ended up in the juvenile assessment center. One day he was thrown in handcuffs, thrown in the back of a police car and hauled off to the juvenile assessment center and they kept him, oh my God, like six hours and wouldn't let me see him or be with him. They wanted to find out what was going on at home and I seriously thought I was going to lose both my kids that day, because kids with reactive attachment disorder don't always tell the truth. So I wasn't sure what he was saying about us to all these people and I was scared to death. And I don't know if you've been there, but you have to walk through the prison to get there and people in orange jumpsuits down below and it's really scary. And that was the day we started thinking we're never going to survive this.
Speaker 3And there was a girl there that gave us the. She gave us a referral to the right therapy. That was family therapy, which I highly recommend because it's not just the problem of one kid, it's the problem that we all need to work together and we all need to learn some new techniques to make this work, and that was the most beneficial thing we did. We also found a new school that was designed for kids with social and behavioral issues. He did really well there and then he decided he wanted to go to mainstream high school, which I don't think was the best decision. But then COVID happened. School was hard for him, but he now has his GED. He went to trade school. He's got a job in the music industry that he loves. He's really mellow now. It's hard to believe that it's the same kid.
Speaker 3And in fact he just joined the board.
Speaker 2So he's now on the board. That's awesome, that's so exciting. But I just can't imagine one seeing your child in handcuffs. That's got to be brutal. Yeah, I didn't see it though. Oh okay, but just the thought of it your child in handcuffs, yes. And then the fear of oh no, they're going to take our kids away, they're going to blame us as parents, and there's going to be all this stuff said and we'll have to defend ourselves. I can't even imagine going through that.
Speaker 3No, my self-esteem was at an all-time low. I felt like a complete failure all the time, and I remember there was one night I was crying at the bottom of my walk-in closet and say, praying to God, universe, whoever's out there. I said, if I ever get to the other side of this, I promise I will pay it forward somehow. So that was our plan. When we got to 2019, things were like calm and stable and we were all like starting to really connect with each other, and so I wrote a book about our experiences, called Love Never Quits. And then I did a TED Talk about a year later and I wanted to start speaking about trauma. And then COVID happened, like the very next week. So my TED Talk was March 7th 2020.
Speaker 3So if that date rings any bells? The?
Parenting Tips for Traumatized Children
Speaker 3very next weekend the entire world shut down, yeah, and after six months of being locked in my house, I was like all right, so speaking is probably not going to happen. So what else am I good at? And I'm a professor in my day job. I went back and got a degree in adult education and I wanted to write some courses that might help some parents. So I started putting a curriculum together. I put it into an online interactive program and tried to make it interesting and fun, and we started with our classes. We became a 501c3 last October 22. Oh, actually we filed for the 501c3 then, but we didn't get it until like February. So we're just coming up where we just finished a year as a nonprofit. It's pretty amazing. We started a podcast last year, so we have our own podcast where we talk to people like you and different healing professionals.
Speaker 3Yes, you've been on our show and we talk to people like you and different healing professionals yes, you've been on our show and we try to inform parents of what else is out there. We also talk to other parents, like warrior parents, who've been through this oh, I love it and just really try to give hope and inspiration to parents that they can overcome these severe behaviors.
Speaker 2A couple clinical points that you intersected with. First of all, when you're adopting a child, as we did ourselves, you don't always know the backstory or what they've been through, especially if they're a little bit older. So you frequently see these children having attachment issues. That means bonding to someone and to feel like they can trust them and love them. And reflecting on my favorite story, the genie in the bottle story the original version actually, which I'll share with our audience here I shared it with yours, but the original story of the genie in the bottle is the fisherman goes out and one day he pulls up his net and there's this bottle in there. And he opens the bottle and out comes this genie wielding a huge sword. And the fisherman was like whoa. He said I thought you were going to come out and give me three wishes, and the genie says no. When I first got thrown into the bottle by the king and tossed in the ocean, I decided that every day, if someone rescued me, I would love and worship them forever. But no one came. After the second hundred years I thought whoever saves me, I'll grant them a wish. And no one came. After the next hundred years, the genie decided they would grant the person two wishes and then the next hundred years it was three wishes but no one came. So he decided the next person who found him he would kill.
Speaker 2And within that story is this longing for this genie to be attached. The infant wants to be attached and have their needs met so when they cry there's someone to take care of them and hold them and feed them and change their diaper all those things parents do, listened to, not being taken care of, it just becomes rage and it's anger and a lack of trust in the universe and trust of others and trust of new adoptive parents or primary caregivers. Now that can also happen to your biological child when they've experienced trauma at home or somewhere else where they have traumatic experiences, experiences and they lose that sense of trust, of safety. I think Maslow, one of the first hierarchy of needs by Maslow, the famous psychologist, was safety. And when you don't feel that you really lose your trust in the universe and you can't open up or trust and it often comes out in anger and rage and testing and testing.
Speaker 2And so many parents with kids who have had trauma or reactive attachment disorders, as our daughter does I'll talk about her at the end they just are mystified. They try all the things you're supposed to do, and that's one of the things I can't stand about momfluencers. On Instagram and all the other social medias. You always have one or two solutions that works for every job. They don't work for these kids, but as a parent, you're like what am I doing wrong? Am I doing something wrong? What's going on? I must not be doing it right.
Speaker 2So you internalize so much guilt and shame until you finally had someone turn the light on and go no, you're not crazy, you're not a bad parent, this is your child and this is what they're struggling with. And I can't tell you how many amazing parents I've known, like you, that are just incredible parents, but they're very difficult children and those little one or two techniques just don't work, and so you find yourself hopeless and helpless and really struggling. And that's where Trauma Drama University really fits in. It's to support parents, to let them know maybe other techniques, but just to validate their existence and what they're going through.
Speaker 3It's incredible, and what they're going through.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 3It's incredible and to tell them they're not doing anything wrong. We just need some different techniques to work with kids with trauma.
Speaker 2Is there any techniques that you can pick off the top of your head that you found was helpful for your son?
Speaker 3Oh yeah. Well, first of all I was journaling because after I don't know six years of this, I was afraid CPS would come. So I was starting to journal his incidents just to protect myself. So that's one thing we offer at Trauma Drama University. We have new journals. They're easy to fill out, they're graphically fun. But you can circle the day of the week, you can check the boxes that say what kind of nutrition we had today, what kind of incidents happened and what was the trigger. And it helped us to start to see patterns so we could see if, when he eats lots of sugar, there's a bad day, or if he had a birthday party that day that riled him up and now he's triggered by something. So we started to learn what kind of things we had to do differently or avoid. So that was really helpful.
Speaker 3One of the things that I learned was the 90-second pause. So 90 seconds is enough time to squash the fight-or-flight reaction. So when you feel you're starting to bubble up and get angry and want to yell at your kid, you take a 90-second pause. And at first he wouldn't do it with me. I was like all right, I need to just move to another room for a little bit and close the door and then I'll come back and we'll deal with this. And after I did it enough times, eventually I could say let's both take a 90 second pause and we just sit down and not say anything and try to calm down, take some deep breaths and then after 90 seconds you're like in a different frame of mind. So that was helpful as well.
Speaker 2We've got all kinds of tips on our first like with our daughter when she was seven and came to our home we would try to take a pause in our bedroom. And came to our home, we would try to take a pause in our bedroom but then she would run and pound on the door over and over and it took a while for her to realize that wasn't going to help. And we got through that and she left us alone. She never opened the door, but she would pound on it and finally that behavior got extinguished. And I think, when I think about our experience, is you really have to take just small steps.
Speaker 3Yes, and it takes a long time to heal trauma. It's not? Oh, if we do that, because they tell you oh give them a timeout, they'll learn. Timeouts don't work on our kids, but you try these techniques and you have to be patient for years and years before it really gets better.
Speaker 2I remember our process of the first goal was can you just go to your room when you're upset and not stand here and yell curse words at us or throw things at us? Can you just go to your room? And we had a little sticker chart, positive sticker chart. She went to her room. She earned a sticker. She'd go to her room and then she would trash it. She would throw every stuffed animal. She'd go to a room and then she would trash it. She would throw every stuffed animal. She one time tipped over her. It was one of those lofted beds where she had a little desk underneath from.
Speaker 2Ikea and one time she actually and she was little and she'd flip that thing over. It was incredible, or she'd get up in that bed and she'd kick the ceiling.
Speaker 2There's still marks up there from her scratching on it, but then we worked on. The next step was to just calm yourself. We started a journal for her, a feelings journal. That was very helpful with her therapist Katie Matea is her name. She's a wonderful child therapist and Lily would then quietly draw her feelings and then we got stickers for that. And then we moved to talking to us about the feelings and we got stickers for that.
Speaker 3But we were talking okay, two or three years yeah, and I'll just tell you, stickers did not there was a payoff though.
Speaker 2So her first 50 stickers. She got to go to Target and get a $10 item, right Back in the days when Target was pink for girls and blue for boys, right. And then we started at zero and she had to go to 100. And then she got to go to Build-A-Bear I still have the little dog I made. And then, after we started zero and after 150, we got to go see the mermaid show at the aquarium, and that was a long process.
Speaker 2Yeah, we got to go see the mermaid show at the aquarium and that was a long process.
Speaker 3Yeah, we tried that. He basically said when I don't need it, then I don't care. I forgot what I was going to say about that.
Speaker 2Yeah, so it's really based on the individual child what motivates them. But I think the key is trying to understand that and then it takes so much time. It's not a quick easy step.
Speaker 3Oh, I know what I was going to say. Yeah, dr Ross Green, I know you're familiar with him.
Speaker 3He says kids do well if they can, which really that was so validating for me to understand that he's not doing this to get back at me or whatever. He's not doing this to be defiant. He's doing this because he's missing a skill. And so when we learned that and learned how to dig out what the reasons are behind his behavior and what the real underlying reasons were, things got a lot better.
Speaker 3Then we could understand like we would say go clean your room. And he would just throw, he'd just destroy it. He'd say, no, I'm not doing that. And we're like oh, if you clean your room, you'll be able to do that. Or we'll give you your tablet for a half an hour and he's I just don't need it. Then I am not, just take it away because I'm not going to clean my room. And so then we learned about the skill thing and so we started like baby steps. My husband went up with and started like all right, number one, let's pick up the trash. And then we put up a post-it that said you know, take out trash.
Speaker 3We had a lot of those basket. That was the next post-it, and then we started teaching him all the different steps and it's still. We had to do it with him for probably a year before he would go.
Speaker 2Okay, I know what we do next and that togetherness is their longing for attachment right, and so you're doing it together and you feel bonded and attached while you're doing that task, and it makes it a little more interesting, a little bit more fun. You'll also see quite a few of the children in this range struggle with ADHD as well, and so for them, cleaning the room is like not on the list of getting a dopamine juice, even when there's a reward attached. They just can't muster it. But also doing it together, I think, is critical, and what you find is there's so many landmines that you can stumble upon. So when you were talking about me, it was a birthday party for our daughter.
Speaker 2Her birthday party was always a mixed blessing. It was joyous, and she was older when we adopted her, so she had all her memories of her past and it would bring up her past memories and every year, after Christmas and her birthday, she would cry the next day because she thought her birth mom was going to show up and she didn't, and so she was all those birthdays. She'd be hoping that her birth mom would come and that wasn't her gift. It's it's so many landmines that are there that what other children might just enjoy a birthday party? Have a lot of fun get wound up on cake or whatever and then chill out, but it just brought up so many other issues it. It's a tricky field for sure, and what?
Speaker 3you're doing to help parents is just amazing.
Speaker 3Oh, I was going to say the most important thing that we discovered was connection first, correction second. So first sitting down with getting him to calm down, maybe having a snack together or watching a TV show together, something that would calm his nerves. Then we could ask him to do his chores, like we couldn't just like the minute he walked in the door. Timing is everything. Yeah, we'd have to get him to a calm place where we're connected before we could ask him to do something, and then it usually worked. And I'm going to tell you he's 20 now. My husband just spent like a whole afternoon helping him redo the basement because he's got a whole bunch of music equipment down there. He's got a little performing area and he wanted to invite some friends over so they put up posters and everything. It's an unfinished basement but it looks really cool.
Speaker 3Awesome. And right after that he emptied the dishwasher. He made us each a snack. It was incredible and I'm like we didn't even ask him to do that, but connection all of a sudden he wants to help us. So that was amazing.
Speaker 2He's feeling attached and wants to give back as well which we all do. When we're attached, we want to take care of the other person as well, or both of you and the basement sounds awesome. I'm hoping he's into grunge. That's my favorite genre of music is grunge. Could be a good grunge.
Speaker 3EDM oh.
Speaker 2EDM. I call it EDMR because I always need to have trauma therapy after I listen to EDM At Orange Theory, they always insist the young coaches on EDM and I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 1God, I'm dying, give me some nirvana and I can bike faster.
Parental Burnout and Trauma Support
Speaker 2It's hard to EDM, but that is just such a lovely, heartwarming story for your family and what you're doing for other families too. And if parents have a friend whose child's struggling, or they have a child who's struggling, tell us what they should do. How do they find you?
Speaker 3wwwtraumadramayuniversityorg. And then everything attaches to our podcast, to our YouTube channel. We're hoping to start up a respite care program. We're actually working with Impact Denver on that, so we're hoping. I don't know, that might take a little extra time. I need to talk to you about that one.
Speaker 2I'm very excited about that program because for the parents out there who are in this situation, it is exhausting. It is so exhausting You're just burnt out and you need a break. So we had a guest on recently, Dr Mata, who was talking about every parent needs 30 minutes a day to themselves to to recharge, and every three months like a weekend away, and every year a week away. But when you're in trenches like that, it is just mind-numbing and so exhausting. It's brutal on the parental dynamics if you're half a partner of how each of you see the situation or want to respond to it and try to get on the same page, but then your own exhaustion overspills out on your partner. Right, you didn't do it the way you were supposed to Remember, we said we would do that and it didn't happen. And it really isn't about what they did or didn't do, it's about I'm just exhausted. I just can't take anymore, Right.
Speaker 3And I will say if there's a working parent and a home parent, the home parent. If they tell you that things are going on that sound off the wall and crazy, they're not lying. It's a lot of times there's one parent who's the punching bag and the other one who's like the cool parent.
Speaker 2I was the fun dad. My wife got most of it. She got pounded on.
Speaker 3The cool parent doesn't see it. But believe your partner when they tell you that, yes, my kid is punching holes in the walls and it wasn't because I did something wrong, yeah, and the children?
Speaker 2in addition to having that range, they're often very sneaky and can be very manipulative to get what they think they want, which is usually something or soda pop or something, whatever it is. And boy, my daughter had my.
Speaker 2I was wrapped around her finger on that one, but after enough times of seeing her catching in her lie or manipulation, I started to clue in, but my wife was always the first one to go no, we're not doing that. Actually, when she was in second grade or something, I went out for Christmas and I got her. She was telling me about this deluxe cosmetic kit they had at Michael's and I thought, oh, that'd be a great gift for me to get her, not knowing that the rule was no makeup till, I think, fifth grade or something. That was well established with mom, right. But she went after me and I bought the thing and I brought it home. My wife you're taking it back she knows that you just got manipulated again. I got manipulated again. I'm going to manipulate it again.
Speaker 2But it takes a lot of just trying to work together and being insightful. But you're right about one parent usually is the punching bag, and that's so often. Moms are typically, but it can be dad too and sometimes. I remember one of the first children I saw had attachment disorder in public at the school, where he was delightful mannered and a lot of that, and the same was with our daughter. But that's just a facade they put out there, but at home, where you're supposed to have this trusting, caring, attached relationship. Then you see it all and I just couldn't believe these parents were saying that this kid was capable of all this stuff.
Speaker 2And then one day I couldn't find my keys to my office. I was with a group of kids and we were playing in the gym and I couldn't find my keys anywhere and finally I found them at a stack of coffee cups and that little child took my keys and stuffed them in the coffee cups. It took me two hours to find them. I was like, okay, I believe the parents I get it. Now I understand what you're talking about, but it's hard for a parent if you've got friends with certain neurotypical kids who have attachment and don't present these issues, the other parents don't get it. You feel different. Again, it must be me. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, right?
Speaker 3Embarrassing, isolating. It's horrible, it really is.
Speaker 2And I think one of the things I used to be on the board for creative adoptions and I would do a talk with parents who were in the adoption process about some of the neurological deficits, about attachment, about some of the neurological deficits about attachment, about exposure to drugs and alcohol in utero, just to help them be aware of adoption is an amazing thing and I am so pro-adoption.
Speaker 3Me too.
Speaker 2And it's changed our lives for the better. There are times when we thought what did we do? We could have just retired and be playing golf right now in North Carolina somewhere. And here we are with a terrorized seven-year-old pounding on our door. What did we get in? But really to help them, inform them of that. And the other piece to it is that stress hormone, cortisol, and when a baby has high levels of cortisol in utero, so if the mother's in stressful environments when she's pregnant, that baby picks up the cortisol, they become more reactive because of that and that cortisol hangs around for a long time until it settles down.
Speaker 2But it takes a long time, and fascinating research I read years ago was about children with trauma attachment issues who, after a while long enough, when they're in loving homes and I don't remember the time frame they actually saw an increase in their serotonin levels, and serotonin is that chemical that makes you feel peaceful and bonded. They actually had higher serotonin levels from when they first came into the home. But it does take a lot of time. Now we're going to switch gears because this is just so. Gina, tell us about your reality TV show experience. I've never been on a reality TV show. I don't know if I can handle it. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3I didn't think I could either. This was so out of my comfort zone. But I wanted to get the word about Trauma Drama University out to more people and I saw this thing come across my Facebook feed for a reality TV show that is also an entrepreneur bootcamp and I'm like all right, I'm not like a business person, I'm just a mom with a mission, so I need to learn the business stuff. And they select out of 100,000 applicants. They select for each class like 100 people and they do probably like three a year. So we were incredibly blessed to be chosen. And then in the end, when it was getting closer and I was like, oh my God, I have to be on TV and this is really not in my comfort zone. Maybe we should not do it. But then I decided you know what? I'm 55 years old, I'm going to take every opportunity that comes my way and live life to the fullest.
Speaker 3I went many years and living in sadness and I'm like I'm just going to try new things now. So I went and did it and it was incredibly hard. It was 16 hours a day there. I got nervous in front of the camera pretty quickly because you forget it's there after like day three of 16 hours of this. It was a really unique experience. I learned a lot about how to get our business up and off the ground and get more parents involved, and we're going to take what we learned and run with it and hopefully grow somebody like me, paired with somebody who maybe has a four-year-old that is just starting to go through this, and then I could be there to be their sounding board and give them encouragement and stuff like that. But we need to get more parents in before we can start that.
Speaker 2So that's a goal. This respite idea is so great because these parents need a break, but the average teen babysitter is not going to be equipped to deal with the child.
Speaker 3Not at all. No.
Speaker 2Maybe graduate students training people who can come in, know about trauma, know about what's going on with the child behaviorally, how to handle it, how to manage it, so that parents can get a break, even if it's just going on for the evening, and hopefully at a cost that they can afford, but have someone who really is there for them, because it is so isolating when your child is doing all that stuff.
Speaker 2And then, in any school, words spread fast among the parents about this child or that child, and then pretty soon you find yourself alienated from the other parents as well, and that's a tough place to be in. But you've just done some amazing things that I could see you on a reality TV show, and there is nothing more powerful than a mom with a mission.
Speaker 2Might be the most powerful thing in the universe and I was thinking when you said that, I was thinking back to the 80s, 70s, 80s, with MAD Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and they literally changed the landscape in this country around alcohol use and driving. It has totally changed for the better, but moms are the mission and you are one of them. You're the ultimate.
Speaker 3That's great and, of course, in addition to getting support if you're a parent out there and you'd like to help Trauma Dharma University? We're always looking for donations. Exactly, you know, it's a seamless plug. What's that? Yeah, we also have a store where you can buy great stuff. There's inspirational gifts. We actually have our new key chain, which I'm really excited about.
Speaker 3It has the mental health crisis line number on it because not everybody knows it or remembers it and if you're in a crisis situation your mind goes blank. To have that with you all the time. That's one of our favorite new products I post on social media.
Speaker 2unfortunately I wrote the number down wrong. I put 911 instead of 611, right, and then it was like oops, I had to repost that.
Speaker 3No, it's 988. 988, there we go.
Speaker 2I knew it was something like that. I knew it was three numbers but 988.
Speaker 3Yes, See, even you don't remember it, and you?
Speaker 2can get mental health support in a crisis, which is really important. And I got to tell you you are the queen of bling. Gina has so many different things at the store. I've got coffee mugs, t-shirts, the key chain. It's awesome.
Speaker 3Yep, yeah, so come check it out, and it doesn't not all trauma related.
Speaker 2So you've done it from the ground up, literally just one brick at a time, and so I want to wish you more bricks and even better achievements because you're doing a great job for parents out there. So for your parents listening. If you want to check it out, go to tduorg or drama, drama, universityorg.
Speaker 2Okay, you got to spell it out Trauma drama university. I'm just so used to TDU, it's so easy to remember. You can check it out or tell a friend about it. If you have a family friend or a friend who's struggling with these issues, let them know. And if you want to support the organization, that would be lovely as well. Gina, thank you so much for being with us today, and I was in.
Speaker 2Every show with things of beauty make me cry, and this one fits perfect. I've mentioned part of the story on the last show about taking my daughter prom dress shopping for her senior prom and it was just an amazing experience seeing her come out of the dressing room in these different gowns and I got to tell you it was awe. I experienced just pure awe and amazement of my little girl, now a young woman, and there's more of that story that we're going to have some guests on from Riley's Ark. But on the drive home she felt so good about it too that she just started talking about her adoption and what it was like for her and she said it took me so long to trust you all and I just couldn't trust you and it took me so long to open my heart and she talked about my wife and she said I always knew mom was always going to be there and would be consistent and she would always follow through on what she said and I really learned from that and I just said to her in the car.
Parental Advice on Healthy Vulnerability
Speaker 2I just said well, honey, thank you for letting us in. It took years for her to let us in and now her and she wouldn't mind me sharing this she's a very open child but she's working with her group therapist now on being more vulnerable with kids her own age right and maybe dating and being open and vulnerable. Because she's had a high, she hit her vulnerability because of her experiences early on it didn't feel safe. Of her experiences early on it didn't feel safe. Now to have a really secure attachment with friends deep, intimate relationships with friends or a partner someday requires both. You have some sense of authority about you. You can stand up for yourself, you can advocate for yourself, and she didn't have that authority in her early life experience. She was pretty helpless and had to rely on herself, sneaking around and all sorts of things of behaviors that we had to help her come past. But she has authority and with authority then you match vulnerability that you can feel open and vulnerable. So she's got authority in her life now and now she's working on opening up and being more emotionally vulnerable with others her own age group, and we couldn't be happier for her.
Speaker 2It's been quite a journey to see my little girl grow up and talking about how to be vulnerable. And then I try to coach her on the dating scene and I said go slow, don't be too vulnerable too quick. She's all about protecting herself. So I don't think she'd take much guff from anybody. So that's my moment of beauty. I want to thank our audience for tuning in and listening today. If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend about it and remember, as a parent, despite what's on the internet and social media about how you have to be that perfect mom, you don't. You just have to be this side of good enough and the rest will take care of itself. Thank you very much.