There is a moment many adoptive parents recognise, although we rarely say it out loud.
It is the moment you realise that “normal parenting” doesn’t work.
Not a little bit doesn’t work. Not “we need to tweak our approach” doesn’t work. Completely, fundamentally ineffective. The strategies that seem to work in other families – boundaries, consequences, consistency – begin to fall apart. And once they do, it becomes something far more difficult to navigate.
Because what replaces them is a loop.
A loop of behaviour, consequence, escalation, frustration, and then back again.
The behaviour doesn’t shift. The consequences carry no weight. The adult becomes more frustrated, more desperate, more reactive. And the whole thing tightens.
We found ourselves in that loop.
Parenting Through Trauma
We adopted two children. Our eldest carries deep-seated trauma.
What that means in practice is that age becomes a misleading concept. You might be parenting a 14-year-old, but in key moments, emotionally and neurologically, you are dealing with a child who is 10, or 6, or sometimes 4.
And that changes everything.
How do you apply consequences to a four-year-old in a teenager’s body?
How do you ask, “Why did you do that?” when they may not know, or may not even have fully processed that it has happened?
Trauma doesn’t respond to logic in the way we expect. The brain, when overwhelmed, doesn’t calmly reflect and connect cause and effect. It protects. It shuts down. It reacts.
And so the tools we instinctively reach for as parents simply don’t land.
The Reality of Support
When things reached a crisis point, we went back to adoption support.
That journey is not straightforward.
Support often only becomes accessible when things are already difficult, and even then, there is delay. We had already been through parts of the system the previous year, fighting for an Education, Health and Care Plan, navigating processes that, while not unusually slow, still take months.
So when things came to a head more recently, we were, in an odd way, fortunate. We were already in the queue.
That is not something you expect to feel fortunate about.
“We’re Not Doing a Parenting Course”
We had drawn a line.
We had both seen and read enough to be wary of being offered yet another parenting course. Too often, these are repeated, recycled, and ultimately ineffective when the underlying issue is trauma rather than behaviour alone.
So when we were offered a therapist instead, there was hesitation.
If we are being honest, there was more than hesitation. There was scepticism. A sense that this might be another well-intentioned intervention that wouldn’t translate into the reality of day-to-day family life.
We were wrong.
Completely wrong.
Being Seen
What made the difference was not just the theory of therapeutic parenting. We had already encountered that. We had tried to apply it, in a partial and inconsistent way.
The difference was being seen.
There is something powerful in working with someone who doesn’t just tell you what to do, but takes the time to understand how you think, how you react, and where you struggle. Someone who meets you where you are, not where a model says you should be.
Through that process, therapeutic parenting stopped being an abstract concept and became something practical. Something usable. Something that could fit into the reality of our home.
And just as importantly, we felt supported as parents, not judged.
The Subtle Art of Letting Go
Part of therapeutic parenting, at least as we have experienced it, is learning what not to hold onto.
Sometimes that means not escalating.
Sometimes it means not revisiting something that has already passed.
Sometimes, it means letting a moment go far more quickly than instinct suggests you should.
It can feel counterintuitive.
If a situation resolves in seconds, why do we come back to it, dissect it, and layer it with additional consequence or commentary? What are we adding in that moment? Often, it is not learning. It is shame.
And shame is not a foundation for change.
Letting go in those moments is not about lowering expectations. It is about understanding capacity. Recognising whether a child, in that moment, is able to learn, reflect, and respond in the way we are asking them to.
Often, they are not.
A Different Kind of Progress
Therapeutic parenting is not a quick fix.
It does not eliminate challenge. It does not remove difficult days. What it does is shift the trajectory.
Things are calmer. Not always calm, but calmer.
There is more connection.
There is less escalation.
There is, importantly, a sense that we are not stuck in the same loop.
We are also beginning to have conversations with school about this approach. That is more complex. Systems are slower to change than families. But the foundations are there.
And sometimes, foundations are the most important thing.
A Week That Reminds You
And then weeks like this happen.
In the space of a few days, we had everything from breakfast requests that would raise eyebrows in most households, to a trip to A&E after a bike accident that ended in a broken collarbone.
I found myself driving out to collect him from a set of bike jumps in the middle of nowhere, wondering, not for the first time, whether I had made the right call in letting him go.
That is the tension.
You cannot wrap a child in cotton wool.
But freedom carries risk.
If I had said no, he would not have broken his collarbone. That much is certain. But the desire to go would not have disappeared. It would have resurfaced, again and again.
So is this how he learns? Maybe.
Will I let him go again? I am not sure.
And perhaps that uncertainty is part of the reality of parenting through trauma.
Green Shoots
What I do know is this.
Therapeutic parenting is working for us.
Not perfectly. Not completely. But meaningfully.
We are happier as a family.
We are responding differently.
We are beginning to understand, rather than simply react.
And in a space that can often feel overwhelming, that matters.
Because sometimes progress does not look like transformation.
Sometimes it looks like green shoots.
And that is enough to keep going.
