Parenting with ACEs Resources: Power Sharing & Sharing Powerfully

Sharing as a trauma survivor, parent (via adoption), writer, and advocate, I'm going to detail what I find crucial in any program or perspective geared towards those currently parenting with ACEs.

Most important, is that any program be survivor and peer-led (or co-led). If that's the only change done, it's a good one. Who shares content, and how, is as important as the content being shared.

So often, programs to parents are patronizing, punitive, and can come across as "edupuking" all over people, though meant to be helpful. It's can be like hearing advice on menstrual cramps or hot flashes from men, nutrition tips and weight loss advice from someone who has never struggled with weight, or money talk from someone who has never been poor. It's simply not as effective and much harder to listen to, take in, and engage with than getting the same content from someone who gets it, has been there, and has maybe figured some stuff out that are still a challenge for the listener.

Who delivers content and how is a HUGE aspect that isn't addressed enough, in my opinion. To me, If talking and working with parents with lots of ACEs, get content and training and workshops led by parents with lots of ACEs as often as possible, and if that's not possible, work content in from those groups doing that parent and survivor-led work. Why does this matter so much? It makes the content and environment safer, accessible, and relevant. it safer and more gentle for the listener and eliminates much of the awkwardness, judgement, and language problems when we're talking in us vs. them tones rather than as, to, and about us and we.

I think if we are learning together as peers, it helps. We've all had teachers who aren't parents giving parent advice. And it's as welcome as parents who aren't teachers giving teaching advice.

When asking people to think about, share, consider and reconsider parenting styles and approaches, the impact of early trauma and ACEs, safety and power sharing are not optional. Parent trauma survivors, like trauma survivors in general, are often re-traumatized by policies, programs, and systems that may be meant to help. Meant to help and actually helping are not the same. And for trauma survivor parents who also deal with racism, classism, homophobia, ableism, there are legit and well-documented reasons to have fear or mistrust of systems, policies and programs. I think this has to be acknowledged and addressed early and often - and often it's not done at all.

Just as we now know that kids in classrooms we used to say were difficult or disruptive or non-compliant were actually in overwhelm or not regulated, that's often the case as well for many parents. However, even in the ACEs and trauma-informed movement, many parents are harshly judged and poorly understood, as if we forget, as Rebecca Lewis Pankratz says, that many parents with ACEs are just kids with ACEs who grew up.

We have to make sure we understand that little or no regulation as a kid, and living in survival mode offers unique challenges to parents that those without ACEs or who haven't lived in survival mode don't share.

It's not just that peer and survivor-led is more compassionate, it's likely to be far more effective and less likely to cause more harm.

Specifically, I think these people/programs/orgs are great:

@Louise Godbold of Echo for centering survivor leadership, power-sharing, and speaking as parents to other parents.
Rebecca Rebecca Lewis Pankratz of Poverty's Edge & Essdack, for helping address generational poverty along with generational trauma in ways where parents are helping other parents.
Father's Uplift for making sure that fathers are not forgotten and that men of color have a face and space in all conversations about parenting.
The Attachment Trauma Network and summit on Trauma-Sensitive Parenting for helping make information about trauma, attachment, neglect available to parents and families as well as educators.
Rise Magazine (for and by parents involved in the child welfare system) for centering the experience of parents who have been in the child welfare system, and for helping reform policies and programs and to support parents.
Vital Village for a resident helping resident and parent helping parent approach.
Parenting with PTSD and Beating Trauma share a lot of resources online for and as parent survivors.
Documentary Wrestling Ghosts is a great film for opening the subject of Parenting with ACEs and showing how long, arduous, complicated healing is even when one has access to countless healing modalities and for also showing how much of what is evidence-based and available to parents has often not been particularly helpful to parents.
Donna Jackson Nakazawa's book Childhood Disrupted is one of the few that addresses parenting and parents directly as relates to ACEs and is why we worked with her (and she worked with us) to update our Understanding ACEs and Parenting to Prevent and Heal ACEs flyers (though we still need one that's supportive to parents).
I also think sharing videos about ACEs on You Tube are great ways to open conversations or community cafes for helping start and continue conversations about Parenting with ACEs and ACEs Science.
For some quotes and resources and conversations between parents and other experts, check this out. It's from the Parenting with ACEs Chat series.
For first-person essays, there are a lot of great articles about Parenting with ACEs, Break-the-Cycle Parenting, Parenting with PTSD, Trauma-Informed Parenting.
This is a bit older but it's a slide deck I use when talking about Parenting with ACEs and these are my guiding quotes/principles.
This is art and a quote from @Robin Saenger of Peace4Tarpon (she made the wishing tree artwork and it represents wishes for the community)

I know there are lots of programs and tools many professionals use such as Near@home, but in this post, I want to share what I have used and shared parent to parent, survivor to survivor, as someone with 8 ACEs talking to others with lots of ACEs.

Personally, I found all I learned about attachment as an adoptive parent-to-be was far more healing to my own complex PTSD, than more than a decade plus of evidence-based therapy for PTSD. I wish this information were shared earlier and more regularly with trauma survivors. So often, we show what goes wrong in the body and the brain when there's lots of trauma and ACEs. However, we also need to show what goes right in the body and the brain when there's no ACEs. It's not intuitive information and for some of us parents, learning that 1 in 3 people have no ACEs is far more shocking than learning than 2 out of 3 have at least one ACE.

Depending on what we experienced in our lives, as children and adults, as well as lots of other other factors, will shape how we learn about ACEs and ACEs science. For me, understanding child development, and how it differs when there is or is not war, trauma, poverty, ACEs, oppression, family or community support, and how each and all of these when combined create a cumulative impact was a game-changer for me in my understanding of my own parents, childhood, and helped me get some distance from intense and personal experiences because I saw a much wider context.