Raising Littles In Today's Culture

If I only knew back then what I know now, I am not sure I would have made the same decisions. I could have easily wrote the chapter I just read. A chapter on the variety of family structures. We are a blended family of eight. A his mine and ours brood. Divorce, parental rights being taken away, custody battles, failed coparenting, the list goes on. All I can say is I did the best I could with the information I had back then, and I can continue to do better as I know better. Our two oldest daughters will turn 18 this year. They both have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly about marriage and divorce. They both have vowed to make their selection carefully on who they will marry because they never want their children to go thru what they have gone through. Am I allowed to call that a success?? 2009 was a year of pure hell...excuse me for using such language. My husband and I had just gotten married, then there was a custody battle because a custodial parent had moved out and left grandpa...

Trauma is an event, series of events, or a set of circumstances that are experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening and can have lasting adverse effects on an individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being” (Substance Abuse and Mental HealthServices Administration, 2017, para. 1) Trauma is so much more prevalent than it was decades ago. It was estimated by one of my professors a couple years ago that over 75% of the students at the local high school had experienced some type of trauma during their short lives already. I grew up in a relatively small city and led what many would call a sheltered life. Unfortunately that wasn't the case for my husband. He experienced neglect, physical abuse, as well as emotional and mental abuse. One of his daughters was also neglected, physically abused and possibly even sexually abused while living with biological mother and step father before coming to live with...